Quote:
Originally Posted by DirectionNorth
Success of a transit system is measured in how many real life people use the system, not by how many use cases there theoretically are. In this case, 2 million people used it annually. Hardly a high ridership system. Although you're right, it's better than the abysmal streetcar projects elsewhere. Hardly a measure of success though
Per mile and per hour cost hardly matter. A non-operating system costs $0 per mile, but it's not useful. I suppose a better question (to be answered in another thread) is: if you redirected that $12 million to buses, what ridership results would you get?
Anyways, I'm not Chicagoan, but the Loop exists and I don't see a transportation need for a PRT.
|
If you take a bus line with 10,000 riders a day that costs $50,000 per day to operate, and you spend $800 million rebuilding it as a light rail line, and since the service isn't actually an improvement it still only gets about 10,000 riders a day, and costs $250,000 per day to operate at the same frequency as before, is that a successful transit project because it carries more people than the People Mover, which is a 3 mile downtown circulator?
If the People Mover's money was redirected to the buses, you could either increase frequency across the bus network by about 10%, or you could add one additional major bus route (15 minute headways 24/7). Since the People Mover is already the 5th highest ridership route in the city, and since the potential bus routes with high ridership already have routes on them, it's almost certain that redirecting the People Mover's money to buses would result in lower overall ridership. It could be argued that the People Mover's trips are lower value, but people riding it are either downtown workers using it as part of their commute, or visitors taking it to go someplace to spend money.
And again, if you shut down the People Mover, hundreds of millions of dollars would have to be spent building parking garages, and I'm not exaggerating with that number. The NE corner of downtown has a football stadium, baseball stadium, and several large concert venues. The SW corner, over a mile away, has a convention center. In between there's offices, hotels, etc. and with more parking. Nowhere individually has enough parking within walking distance, the parking throughout downtown is shared via the People Mover.
Does a people mover make sense for Chicago?
The idea of using a people mover to connect Goose Island and the upcoming new casino to L lines makes sense. It could go from Lincoln Park to Goose Island to West Loop, and not only hit a fair number of destinations, but also relieve congestion on the loop, since people could use it to transfer between L lines without entering the loop.
Or a people mover that started in Chinatown, connected the various McCormick Place buildings together, and then ended at Alder Planetarium. It would connect a bunch of parallel transit lines with a bunch of major destinations.
Really, anywhere where you have a cluster of poorly connected destinations, where you don't need the length or the capacity of a full metro line (which Chicago needs several more of!), but where you want something better than buses, shuttles, and rideshare.