Mass Transit discussion thread

Since I saw a mass transit thread earlier i decided to do one that is dedicated to the topic as a whole. So, anyone have ideas for an AH involving the development of mass transit in america or elsewhere because id love to hear it.
 
The Transit City (Toronto, Canada) is actually a poor POD because it is already something of a non-subway wank.

A better wank for Toronto is either saving the streetcars earlier, or Network 2011 being fully funded and then something similar to Transit City being built.


For New York it would best centre on Robert Moses (as I did in my thread on it).


L.A. would need a host of PODs.


Vancouver would be pretty cool. It would mean declining the horrible SkyTrain (also the SRT in Toronto) and instead having a solid streetcar and LRT network.


If more cities adopted Madrid's practice of steadily building subways (around 1 km of track plus a station each year, if I recall correctly) the costs of building subways would plummet as trained crews came up to speed and factories would be operational year round—plus, of course, it would be a major incentive to look into new mass transit related technology.


More 24 hour mass transit networks would be interesting—New York is the only major one to keep their network up 24 hours (albeit at reduced service, of course). Toronto has a few 24 hour streetcars and buses, but the subways don't go limited 24 hour service until—I think—2011.
 
In the US, a more credible / stronger antitrust case against National City Lines in the late 1930s might well have forestalled the conversion of any number of largely-electric city transit systems to buses during the 1940s and beyond. Baltimore is a classic case: NCL bought the Baltimore Transit Company after World War II, and with the collusion of Henry Barnes, the transit commissioner of the day, sought to eliminate streetcars in favor of buses (that's a long story made short). Without that move, likely at least three of Baltimore's streetcar lines would have lasted into the 1970s, with perhaps a subway/surface system in place today. At the same time, probably trolley coach operation would have been expanded significantly, and said network would be mostly intact today.

There, by the way, is an interesting wank: had a consortium of transit operators, Ohio Brass (the key supplier of overhead hardware), Pullman-Standard, ACF-Brill (two key TC builders, with many others not mentioned) been formed, it's not entirely out of the question that an analog of the PCC car for trolley coaches might have been formulated. Had that happened, quite likely trolley coaches would be far, far more prevalent in North America than they are today (wherein only Boston, Philadelphia, Dayton, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver still operate them, to my knowledge; I believe Toronto discontinued them in 1998).
 
In the US, a more credible / stronger antitrust case against National City Lines in the late 1930s might well have forestalled the conversion of any number of largely-electric city transit systems to buses during the 1940s and beyond. Baltimore is a classic case: NCL bought the Baltimore Transit Company after World War II, and with the collusion of Henry Barnes, the transit commissioner of the day, sought to eliminate streetcars in favor of buses (that's a long story made short). Without that move, likely at least three of Baltimore's streetcar lines would have lasted into the 1970s, with perhaps a subway/surface system in place today. At the same time, probably trolley coach operation would have been expanded significantly, and said network would be mostly intact today.

There, by the way, is an interesting wank: had a consortium of transit operators, Ohio Brass (the key supplier of overhead hardware), Pullman-Standard, ACF-Brill (two key TC builders, with many others not mentioned) been formed, it's not entirely out of the question that an analog of the PCC car for trolley coaches might have been formulated. Had that happened, quite likely trolley coaches would be far, far more prevalent in North America than they are today (wherein only Boston, Philadelphia, Dayton, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver still operate them, to my knowledge; I believe Toronto discontinued them in 1998).

Trolley buses are quite nice, actually, as they work well in situations where a streetcar is overkill but you want to retain the option to go up a level to a streetcar. Additionally you could retain a higher service using trolley buses at overnight times. Say a streetcar with 1.5-2 capacity comes along every 30 minutes, you could replace it with a trolley bus every 15-20 minutes. Doesn't work at busy times, but very useful for retaining a sizeable/frequent overnight service.

Rough service requirements/load (Trolley bus is same as regular bus, except it requires overhead power lines that can, if built right, also be used by streetcars if track is put down):

Mixed Traffic Bus: 0 to 5000 people an hour.
Partially Exclusive right of way bus (aka BRT): 5000-8000 people an hour.

Mixed Traffic Streetcar: 1000 to 5000 people an hour.
Partially exclusive right of way (i.e. Spadina Avenue, Toronto): 5000-10,000 people an hour.
(Notes on streetcars: People heavily prefer streetcars to buses, therefore running a streetcar encourages people to use transit more than buses. i.e. in a marginal situation where traffic load suggests a bus, putting in a streetcar usually helps expand load and increase satisfaction.)

LRT (Streetcar with partially to fully exclusive right of way + extended distance between stops, i.e. Transit City, Toronto): 5000-14,000 people an hour.
Vancouver Skytrain, Detroit PeopleMover, Toronto SRT: Same as LRT, albeit with much higher costs and problems running as a network instead of a commuter transit system.

Subway: 10,000 to 30,000 people an hour.
 
In the US, a more credible / stronger antitrust case against National City Lines in the late 1930s might well have forestalled the conversion of any number of largely-electric city transit systems to buses during the 1940s and beyond. Baltimore is a classic case: NCL bought the Baltimore Transit Company after World War II, and with the collusion of Henry Barnes, the transit commissioner of the day, sought to eliminate streetcars in favor of buses (that's a long story made short). Without that move, likely at least three of Baltimore's streetcar lines would have lasted into the 1970s, with perhaps a subway/surface system in place today. At the same time, probably trolley coach operation would have been expanded significantly, and said network would be mostly intact today.
I don't think National City Lines can be solely blamed in a lot of places- there was a general wider movement against trolleys even in places where NCL was never involved, and operating buses was in fact cheaper than operating trolleys. In Boston after the state took control of the Boston Elevated Railway and turned it into the Metropolitan Transit Authority, it was determined to dump the bulk of the trolley system (and soon after the trolley-bus system as well) based on costs and removing overhead wire, and I believe in Washington DC Congress made it a condition on the local transit operators to dump the trolley system (which is a shame, because DC's was particularly interesting).

(wherein only Boston, Philadelphia, Dayton, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver still operate them, to my knowledge; I believe Toronto discontinued them in 1998).
Technically the "Boston" trolleybuses are only in Cambridge, where they've been kept around to reduce diesel fumes in the underground station at Harvard Square. All the ones in Boston proper are long gone. (They've also had to keep trolley-buses because no one will make a bus with a left-hand door)
 
There must be some way to incorporate mass transit construction into the New Deal. I must sadly admit my knowledge of the New Deal is weak, so it may have included transit construction, but surely more could've been done? With all the rationing and lack of new automobiles during the war, a call for more transit isn't unreasonable. You might have ended up with some interesting systems, especially considering the boom towns created by the war.
 
The best way to ensure wide acceptance and use of mass transit in the US post WWII is through zoning policies that while they do not prevent the suburbs they reduce the effect need for the automobile for commuting purposes. Industrial and business parks located on transit lines. Suburbs that are more linear rather than freeform. But one thing that attracted people to the suburbs post war was the desire to escape the congestion of the city.
 
The best way to develop Mass Transit systems is to work on density, because it does take a fair bit to make dedicated mass transit systems economical to operate.

Another problem is that every mass transit system requires subsidies to operate, none cover their costs. The TTC/GO Transit in Toronto covers much of theirs but not all, and they are far better than most, and a few factors help. All of the city of Toronto's suburbs have bus systems, and GO Transit's commuter trains benefit from Canadian law regarding freight movements (which keeps freight trains largely out of densely-populated areas) and the fact that gas prices in Canada are considerably higher than the US, and traffic on many of the key routes into the city can be downright ugly. GO technically operates about half its system on CN and CP routes, but freight movements there are restricted, and they own the Lakeshore routes.

Better idea for suburban transport is to simply have better commuter service. GO is a great example of getting it right, as their system has trains moving several times an hour on all eight routes from about five in the morning to 2 in the morning, whereas most US commuter rail lines only move a handful of trains a day on 2 or 3 routes.

And yes, Kevin Renner pretty much nailed it. You need to have mass transit be seen as an alternative to the car, even in the suburbs. Subways are not economical for most of these areas (too pricey to build) and buses don't work as well as a dedicated route. LRT works decent for some of these areas, but you need a dedicated route for it, which does get expensive rather rapidly. And yes, maintaining trolley lines is considerably more expensive than buses, and only makes economic sense if you have the infrastructure already there.

During the New Deal, you could very easily fund the extension of mass transit systems in cities to get move people on them. The problem there is that few cities had any ideas what they wanted to do, and the ones that did often focused more on automobiles than transit - Robert Moses' New York is a classic example. The best way the New Deal could help here is to fund the building of dedicated electric commuter railways lines out to the suburbs of the major cities, then have them be extended to reach the war plants and new communities. During the war gasoline rationing would make these systems very useful indeed, allowing the people needed to move in and out of the cities easily even without their cars.

The sad fact for trollies and streetcars is that buses are more flexible, and don't require major costs to build. I really cannot see them being very useful in suburban regions, as they are too expensive to operate and build and too inflexible. Trolley buses could work better, but again they require electrical lines which are ugly and a nuisance in many places.
 
Four blocks west from where I am sitting right now is the right of way for the old North Shore. Seven blocks east is the right of way for the northern terminus of the Northern Illinios metra system. Metra gets pretty heavy ridership into Chicago along with the northern suburbs with people commuting to work and pleasure trips into the city. Actually in the past I have advised people who are attending the IMTS show at McCormick Place http://www.imts.com/ to stay in Kenosha and ride Metra in rather than pay Chicago hotel prices and avoid the hassels and costs of driving and parking. The last time I rode into the city* it was $7 one way IIRC. Parking alone is gonna ding you at least 15. There has been talk of a RTA in SE Wisconsin but it continues to meet with opposition, Mainly for stupid reasons. But locally we do have this http://www.lightrailnow.org/facts/fa_ken_2005-01.htm which the city hopes to expand. One way it has paid off is because it is a non-poluting transportation (I know it takes electricity to run but it is clean at point of use) it has allowed the city to attract new manufacturing into the city with out a lot of hassle from the EPA

* Notice the use of lower case, I'll reserve upper case for San Francisco
 
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