[edale]

Originally Posted by Doady

Cincinatti's transit ridership was 20% lower in 2019 compared to 2013, when this fareless, circulator streetcar was announced. Kansas City lost 23% of its transit ridership during that same time period.

Maybe it's time for these places to build real transit systems? And real system means a complete system, not only with parallel routes closer together so that riders can travel more directly and thus faster, but also covering the entire urban area so that everyone has a transit stop within walking distance of both their origin and their destination. Reduce the demand for parking, allow for intensification through the redevelopment of parking lots and garages, and so bring people even closer to transit. Then you can build more higher capacity transit options like light rail and subways and attract even more riders and even more development. And the beginning of this entire process is with buses, with fares, not free streetcar service.

You cannot build a complete system with rail alone. Even NYC has a massive bus fleet and bus network, with over 50 times the bus ridership of Cincinatti. Thousands of buses to fill in the gaps, to reduce the walking distances to transit, that is one of main principles of TOD, and these gaps and the long walking distances they create is the number one reason transit in places in Cincinatti and Kansas City and so many other places in the USA fail. And that is the problem that these streetcars in turn fail to solve.

You can see all over the USA and Canada, the common feature of every successful system is lots of people using buses, not streetcars. NYC, Washington, SF, Toronto, Montreal, Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Portland, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas - big bus networks and complete systems, with fewer gaps, for more direct travel and reduced walking distances, not lots of rail and incomplete systems with more gaps. Time to follow the lead of the successful cities and stop making better transit more complicated than it actually is, build a complete transit network, fill in those gaps. And in the case of Cincinnati, we are talking about some huge gaps.

Oh damn, I wonder why Cincy never thought about having a bus system! They should totally get on that!

The streetcar was intended to be a pedestrian circulator for the downtown core, not a complete transit system. It was originally supposed to be twice as long, and connect the urban basin with the university up the hill, but politics got in the way and that part of the system was scrapped.

Going forward, Cincinnati could really benefit from an expanded streetcar to the University/Uptown, and some BRT lines along key arterials feeding into both Uptown and Downtown. But even with a limited route, political sabotage, and a pandemic, the streetcar has helped attract tons of development along its route which largely would not have happened without it. As OTR repopulates, the streetcar's importance as a transit tool will rise.