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Will DC’s streetcar system be worth its $1.5 billion expense? A recent study indicates that the answer is a resounding yes.
One of the key differences between buses and streetcars is that streetcars induce land development. That benefits the city from a Smart Growth and urbanist perspective. It also turns out to be a big win for the city’s coffers.
The DC Office of Planning’s Streetcar Land Use Study was commissioned to determine the impact that the city’s planned (37-mile) streetcar network will have on development, and on city tax revenue. The findings are, to put it mildly, extremely positive...continued
these are the kind of benefits you just don't get with buses.
So the main benefits are:
-Increase in DC residents near rail transit from 16 to 50%
--> Fine... but I think the mobility provided by streetcars is more comparable to buses than the other form of rail transit (metro) DC has. Also, the amount of land area close to rail transit doesn't increase by nearly as much, I guess the area currently serviced by the metro contains mostly offices, so I suspect the amount of jobs near rail transit wouldn't increase as much.
-If the streetcars are built, DC will see a yearly increase in new households of 1400 per year... but I wouldn't be surprised if the number of households would increase under the "do nothing" scenario too, so how much more will it increase compared to the "do nothing" scenario? From 2000 to 2010, DC added 2996 people per year. I'm not sure how many households that would amount to, but considering even a stable population could mean there was an increase in households (due to decreasing household sizes), it's probably quite a lot.
-Adding $5-7 billion in real estate values... I'm guessing they are saying the property values will increase by $5-7billion than they otherwise would have. Anyways, this is good for the city coffers though not so much for affordability of housing.
-Sparking $5-8 billion in new development in the streetcar corridors. Sounds good, although I wonder what places will see less development as a result. For the most part, I think these sorts of investments affect where people live within an MSA, not which MSA they live in. So is it autocentric suburbs that will lose development to DC's streetcar corridors, or is it more walkable parts of NoVA and Maryland? Still, even if it partly reduces TOD development in NoVA and Maryland, I would consider this a plus since DC is more centrally located.
The 6 year pay off in terms of capital expenses looks pretty good though. I wonder what the operating expenses will be like though, and how they'll compare to any bus services that they will replace.
Ground breaking on the first line (Anacosta) began eight years ago. It's still not finished. The cars that were supposed to run along the line have been sitting for almost six years incurring millions of dollars of storage fees. Track has been laid and paved over. The project has started and stopped and changed and started over and over. All that for less than a mile of track.
The second line was supposed to be operating last year. Same deal. Starts and stops and revisions. It isn't even close to operating, although apparently it will be next year. Right.
Who knows, the tentative date is 2030 to complete the project. I guess it could happen...
Progress on the implementation phase is painfully slow. But this is the cesspool of US politics we're talking about, so what do you expect? If it takes them 30 to 50 years to build just 37 miles of track, can you imagine how long it would take to build 400 miles of high-speed track between San Francisco and Los Angeles? My toddlers would probably be dead of old age before that happens. Or even my great grand kids. I doubt any HSR line in the US would be completed by the end of the century. They love to pay lip service but not much else.
On the other hand, if this were a project to build 400 miles of roads, you know they would finish it within 5 years or less. Even if the economic return on it was zero or less than zero.
btw, it took about 30 years to build the DC Metro's 106 miles of passenger rail network. From 1976 to 2004. Daily ridership is currently at 600,000.
So there may be some hope for the DC Streetcar yet. If they can build over a 100 miles of heavy passenger rail in 30 years, then construction of 37 miles of light rail should take well under 10 years. Assuming competent city officials are in charge of the project, which is a big assumption I know.
I'm a huge proponent of the streetcar system, but I'll admit that some sections (M SE, Maine Ave) are totally unnecessary. Georgia, U, RI, 18th, Florida, and 8th SE desperately need streetcars to improve capacity, increase travel flexibility, and bring accessibility to transit starved neighborhoods. Imagine how many more people would go to places such as Bloomingdale, which are on the verge of seriously taking off, if there were better public transport?
So what usually causes things to take so long in the United States? In Toronto it's mostly a case of new politicians changing the plans.
For example with transit along Eglinton Avenue, a crosstown arterial that has lots of bus traffic, the initial plan in 1985 was for bus rapid transit. However, local politicians wanted a subway since another part of the city was getting a subway along a similar corridor, so in 1994 they started building a subway. Then in 1995, a new provincial government was formed and cancelled the project. In 2007, the Mayor of Toronto came up with a plan to build light rail across the city, and got some support from the province, with a plan to build light rail along Eglinton with a portion underground in higher density areas and then surface light rail in the road median in suburban areas. Then the provincial government postponed about $4billion in funding for transit, which affected the light rail plan and meant construction had to be delayed. Then a new Mayor took office, he didn't want to give up any space dedicated to cars to transit, plus he likes subways, so he decided he wanted the whole Eglinton line underground. Of course this is much more expensive, so the light rail would have to be built on a shorter segment of Eglinton Avenue. There has been a lot of opposition to the idea of building light rail passenger capacity at the same cost as a subway, so the Chair of the Toronto Transit Commission proposed going back to the idea of building parts of Eglinton at surface and use the extra funding for the new mayor's other pet project, the Sheppard Subway... and now there's a whole lot of politicking and who knows what will happen in the end...
Does that sound like most US transit projects or do those take a long time for other reasons?
Meanwhile they can build a state-of-the-art Metro in Dubai that carries 300,000 passengers a day in less time than it take to futz around not building less than a mile of light rail in America that's expected to carry 1% of that. I don't get it. Even when things do actually happen such as S.L.U.T. in Seattle, it's timidly slow and too small to make much of an impact. We're too busy here splitting hairs over how unprecedentedly low taxes are destroying the economy and hell bent on actually destroying it with crippling deficits and corporatism to actually get anything done.
memph: It takes so long because the system of developing public transit is designed to take too long and not work very well--one is supposed to justify funding of transit dollars with an already extant dense population, even though generally you don't get a dense population without public transit, and a transit system overlaid on a car-centric community won't work well because it is already designed to accommodate the car, and retrofitting costs more than designing a transit-oriented neighborhood in the first place. Meanwhile, building public highways through uninhabited areas was considered just fine, and suburbs popped up in their wake.
Why is this? Because the lobby for cars and roads and gasoline is incredibly enormous, and the lobby for public transit is pretty feeble.
That, and our taxes are absurdly low for the folks who make the most money.
So what usually causes things to take so long in the United States? In Toronto it's mostly a case of new politicians changing the plans.
For example with transit along Eglinton Avenue, a crosstown arterial that has lots of bus traffic, the initial plan in 1985 was for bus rapid transit. However, local politicians wanted a subway since another part of the city was getting a subway along a similar corridor, so in 1994 they started building a subway. Then in 1995, a new provincial government was formed and cancelled the project. In 2007, the Mayor of Toronto came up with a plan to build light rail across the city, and got some support from the province, with a plan to build light rail along Eglinton with a portion underground in higher density areas and then surface light rail in the road median in suburban areas. Then the provincial government postponed about $4billion in funding for transit, which affected the light rail plan and meant construction had to be delayed. Then a new Mayor took office, he didn't want to give up any space dedicated to cars to transit, plus he likes subways, so he decided he wanted the whole Eglinton line underground. Of course this is much more expensive, so the light rail would have to be built on a shorter segment of Eglinton Avenue. There has been a lot of opposition to the idea of building light rail passenger capacity at the same cost as a subway, so the Chair of the Toronto Transit Commission proposed going back to the idea of building parts of Eglinton at surface and use the extra funding for the new mayor's other pet project, the Sheppard Subway... and now there's a whole lot of politicking and who knows what will happen in the end...
Does that sound like most US transit projects or do those take a long time for other reasons?
I don't think the new mayor wants any kind of rail transit in Toronto, period. Ford's subway plan is a veiled attempt to kill Transit City altogether, imo. The subway plan is prohibitively expensive and relies exclusively on private investment for funding. Whereas Transit City has nearly 100% of its funding in place. Its a joke. Ford knows the subway scheme will never see the light of day because there is zero funding for it.
Fortunately, the city council seems to be waking up to the mayor's cockamamie scheme and is now pushing hard to put Transit City back on track. We'll see what happens.
btw, how does a knuckledragger like Ford ever get elected to Canada's most important city in the first place? and to think I moved here a few years ago to get away from the GOP. This guy makes Bush look like a moderate!
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