List of US+Canada rail transit currently under construction

[llamaorama]

Nobody is going to ride that Mid-America airport extension. What a giant load of pork.

The North-South line could also work as BRT rather than rail, it has so many stops and is mostly at-grade. They wouldn't really get value out of rail, and BRT would allow other bus routes to trunk onto whatever infrastructure is added.

Instead of spending available federal funds on building new rail lines, has any thought ever been given to improving existing lines by re-routing them, grade separations, eliminating curves, relocating stations whose original sites didn't work out, etc?

Many light rail systems built in the 1990s and 2000s made cost-cutting decisions that reduced potential ridership by making them slower or limit frequency. Some stations were built for bus route connections that don't exist anymore, or were built for some prospective urban development projects or to serve employment centers that don't exist anymore. And then on the flip side, there's opportunities for new infill stations to serve destinations along the route that weren't there when the line opened.

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by Doady

Milwaukee has been cutting bus service for over a decade to build a streetcar.

Do you have a source that shows they're robbing the bus operating fund to pay for the rail capital? Usually operating and capital come from separate budgets. Streetcar operating shouldn't be remotely enough to make that kind of dent, so either something extremely fishy is going on here, or you're describing correlation rather than causation.

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

Instead of spending available federal funds on building new rail lines, has any thought ever been given to improving existing lines by re-routing them, grade separations, eliminating curves, relocating stations whose original sites didn't work out, etc?

The federal Capital Investment Grants (formerly known as New Starts) that most cities use to pay for big new rail lines does indeed have a category of funding for "core capacity" that could in theory be used for this stuff. However, AFAIK all the core capacity money has gone to the big east coast underground rebuilding projects. It would be interesting to see an '80s era light rail system use it.

I suspect that had Dallas gone ahead with their downtown tunnel proposal a couple of years ago, that probably would have used the core capacity fund.

[mhays]

Once a line is built at-grade, replacing it with a tunnel or elevated line is often astronomically difficult.

Seattle's line in the median of MLK would be a great candidate. But it's basically unimaginable logistically, particularly with US safety priorities. My guess is they'd need to close both the line and two lanes for the duration, which would be years. That would cost billions for a useful but incremental improvement, while meanwhile we struggle to keep a large expansion program within the available funding and other parts of town will still lack rail even then.

If you have a 100'-wide corridor without much in it, then sure.

[Markitect]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Do you have a source that shows they're robbing the bus operating fund to pay for the rail capital? Usually operating and capital come from separate budgets. Streetcar operating shouldn't be remotely enough to make that kind of dent, so either something extremely fishy is going on here, or you're describing correlation rather than causation.

The bus system is overseen by Milwaukee County, whereas the streetcar is overseen by the City of Milwaukee. There is no intermixing of money between the two.