There is an enormous issue being over-looked here when it comes to light rail in the United States and it isn't strictly a financial issue. Heavy rail can be quite economical given the right infrastructure is in place.
Light rail is typically exempt from the most onerous of the Federal Railroad Administrations CFR's as light rail operates in a world all its own. A Siemens S70 will never be obliterated by a GE AC4400 Locomotive. If one is building from scratch going the light rail route allows a transit operator to keep things simple from a regulatory perspective.
Should you already have conventional rail resources available to you it might be worth while to go into the heavy route and take all the lumps that go with it.
It isn't that the FRA is unreasonable - indeed they are extremely accommodating provided a request isn't ridiculous. But heavy rail brings with it a load of issues that just don't come up in light rail systems.
As far as Calgary goes, the success of the C-Train is largely a geographic and economic accident. The river and CPR create a well defined core that is inevitably dense and suffers from limited access because of those barriers. In this dense core land values are high which kills off surface parking while hydrological issues limit potential underground parking. All the while there has been a great deal of parking available around C-Train stations allowing large numbers of people to catch the C-Train without first catching a bus. The C-Train also had the benefit of taking hold at a time when Calgary really didn't suffer from much vagrancy. There were people who thought it was stupid but there weren't too many "You wouldn't believe what I saw on the C-Train" stories in the 80's.
It isn't exactly a set of circumstances easily emulated,
__________________
Public Administration 101: Keep your mouth shut until obligated otherwise and don't get in public debates with housewives.
Last edited by Policy Wonk; Jul 8, 2010 at 9:00 AM.
|