Living Car Free - The Seattle Street Car

http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/ride-the-seattle-streetcar/

This StreetFilm presentation on the Seattle Street car is your car free solution. I could not believe how this 1.3 mile line is creating so much development in just such a short period of time. Luxury condos, quality businesses and restaurants relocating or opening all around this line. The whole line is going to be 30 miles long when completed and you can just imagine how many billions this is going to attract. Incredible.

Looking at how attractive those cars are, who wouldn’t want to start building new businesses, hotels and restaurants? You run those electric cars through blight and in five or 10 years, all that land is bought up and developed. There’s no question in my mind that light rail is a jobs creator.

Watching this film reminded me of the light rail line in my neck of the woods. You would never suspect that life by the light rail line was in the middle of a recession because luxury condos are STILL going up this very moment. I think the president should be dedicating billions in light rail because this type of urban construction attracts hundreds of millions in private development.

A lot of people think you’re going to need a lot of money to take advantage of this line. Not true. I live rather cheaply choosing to ride my bike to the line because many affordable homes and apartments can be found less than two miles from many stops. In my case, the light rail (with my bicycle) gives me access to four malls, six shopping centers, two business centers, ferry and commuter rail service and New York City!

There’s another thread on this forum discussing on the sorry state of transit! LOL! I would never know this because my 2 billion dollar electric cars arrive every 15 minutes. In fact, the Seattle Street car with only 3 cars, (2 operational at a time) still provide a 15 minute headway. Impressive! I remember reading how local trolley companies in my town were providing 10 minute headways in 1904! It’s good to know we are not that far behind!

Public transportation works today for millions of people. It’s cheap, fast, efficient and you can take advantage of it today. If you don’t have anything like this light rail line in your neighborhood, it may be time to pack up your bags. Unfortunately, only 12 states have light rail but more systems have been proposed or approved. It is what it is. If I wanted to move, Seattle might be one of the few places I’d choose to relocate to take advantage of those cars. I can no longer live in a town without light rail and to be honest, I wouldn’t want to. Life without light rail is too much of a sacrifice.

I can see why General Motors wanted to get rid of our extensive electric traction system so badly. They are inexpensive, fast and enjoyable to ride, you would never want to buy a car in the first place.

I can see why General Motors wanted to get rid of our extensive electric traction system so badly. They are inexpensive, fast and enjoyable to ride, you would never want to buy a car in the first place.
*sigh* They didn't care, they bought up a number of BUS lines that had a couple of dilapidated trains left clinging on. There was no conspiracy. GM has done plenty wrong to hang them with without trying to accuse them of something that they have been shown quite conclusively not to ever have done. The Bradford-Snell theory is just a fantasy that people use to try to pass the blame for past decisions off onto a comforting scapegoat.
Light rail can be great or it can be a boondoggle; the important part is that it is a part of a coherent and functional network of transit that lets you reliably get from anywhere to anywhere, whenever you need. Vancouver has it. Portland has it. Seattle mostly has it. Most places wouldn't know it if it bit them.

What a cheerleader post from someone who has never been anywhere near the ****.

It's slow, it has to compete with regular street traffic, it goes a very short distance, and it was a massive giveaway using taxpayer money effectively as a gift to the billionaire Paul Allen, who has bankrolled the development of all the things you mention. The condos aren't selling, btw.

did they seriously build a tram line of just 1.3 miles long?

According to what I read here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy), it was much more than "a couple of dilapidated trains":

Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines bought out more than 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities,[2] including Detroit, New York City, Oakland, Philadelphia, Phoenix, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles,[3] and replaced them with GM buses.

http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/ride-the-seattle-streetcar/

This StreetFilm presentation on the Seattle Street car is your car free solution. I could not believe how this 1.3 mile line is creating so much development in just such a short period of time. Luxury condos, quality businesses and restaurants relocating or opening all around this line. The whole line is going to be 30 miles long when completed and you can just imagine how many billions this is going to attract. Incredible.

Looking at how attractive those cars are, who wouldn’t want to start building new businesses, hotels and restaurants? You run those electric cars through blight and in five or 10 years, all that land is bought up and developed. There’s no question in my mind that light rail is a jobs creator.

Watching this film reminded me of the light rail line in my neck of the woods. You would never suspect that life by the light rail line was in the middle of a recession because luxury condos are STILL going up this very moment. I think the president should be dedicating billions in light rail because this type of urban construction attracts hundreds of millions in private development.

A lot of people think you’re going to need a lot of money to take advantage of this line. Not true. I live rather cheaply choosing to ride my bike to the line because many affordable homes and apartments can be found less than two miles from many stops. In my case, the light rail (with my bicycle) gives me access to four malls, six shopping centers, two business centers, ferry and commuter rail service and New York City!

There’s another thread on this forum discussing on the sorry state of transit! LOL! I would never know this because my 2 billion dollar electric cars arrive every 15 minutes. In fact, the Seattle Street car with only 3 cars, (2 operational at a time) still provide a 15 minute headway. Impressive! I remember reading how local trolley companies in my town were providing 10 minute headways in 1904! It’s good to know we are not that far behind!

Public transportation works today for millions of people. It’s cheap, fast, efficient and you can take advantage of it today. If you don’t have anything like this light rail line in your neighborhood, it may be time to pack up your bags. Unfortunately, only 12 states have light rail but more systems have been proposed or approved. It is what it is. If I wanted to move, Seattle might be one of the few places I’d choose to relocate to take advantage of those cars. I can no longer live in a town without light rail and to be honest, I wouldn’t want to. Life without light rail is too much of a sacrifice.

I can see why General Motors wanted to get rid of our extensive electric traction system so badly. They are inexpensive, fast and enjoyable to ride, you would never want to buy a car in the first place.

I agree, Steve. We definitely need to build more light rail lines--a lot more.

What a cheerleader post from someone who has never been anywhere near the ****.

It's slow, it has to compete with regular street traffic, it goes a very short distance, and it was a massive giveaway using taxpayer money effectively as a gift to the billionaire Paul Allen, who has bankrolled the development of all the things you mention. The condos aren't selling, btw.

Massive giveaway? LOL!

I did notice the Seattle street line did not run on it's right of way. However, it's not the end of the world and this can be fixed but at a price. However, give this train some time and take pictures of the streets because in 10 years, it will look totally different. Those initial condos will be sold even at 500K for single bedrooms! I've seen this happen in my town.

Maybe Paul Allen wants to relocate Microsoft next to the lightrail line.

did they seriously build a tram line of just 1.3 miles long?

They did build a tram line only 1.3 miles long but they intend to extend to 30 miles in the future. It's a good start but it will take years to build the whole line. However, did you see all the new developement started in two years? I'm impressed because it took about 5 years before the Hudson Bergen light rail attracted that much private investment. I suspect in 20 years, that 30 mile investment will attract Billions just like the Hudson Bergen Lightrail did to Jersey City.

I agree, Steve. We definitely need to build more light rail lines--a lot more.

I think once the economy recovers again, the price of fuel will start to go up past $4.00 dollars and we'll see interest in LightRail and public transportation in general.

Even though I'm not a big Microsoft fan, Paul Allen has done far more good than harm for Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.

If nothing else, he kept the Seahawks from leaving town a decade ago.

The Privately-owned street railways were destroyed in 3 waves:

1. Regulated fair structure made it very difficult to make more than 1-2% annual return-on-investment, even in prosperous years (fault of both local city and state governments)

2. Federal government building competing freeway system and urban renewal program of 1950's-1960's effectively destroyed the urban core that constituted most of the ridership of the private streetcar systems. (fault of federal, state, and local governments)

3. Having been weakened by the above, GM could now afford to buy what was left and shut it down. Without government intervention, GM could not be in a position to offer anything more than traffic jam transportation and could not afford to purchase these street railways.

I'm kind of curious why a 1.3 mile line gets built, when a significant portion of startup cost for the line is construction of a maintenance facility, particularly if it gets built to accommodate whatever future system is in the works.

A toy train for yuppies, with their overpriced shoeboxes in glass towers (many of which aren't selling and are rapidly being converted into apartments -- it is beyond me why developers thought that there was such a large demand for these things).

I have defeated Portland's streetcar in a self-declared foot race from the waterfront to the Park Blocks.

If you want rail, invest it in something fast that serves commuters throughout the area (possibly your light-rail, which seems blessed to not have the same slow at-grade downtown segment that Portland's light rail does), not a slow-moving tourist vehicle that covers an easily walkable distance for those too lazy to actually walk it.

Now DC is getting in on the streetcar act. I never noticed any old tracks over
there in Anacostia but on the other side of the city the old car barn is still there
and some streets in Georgetown still have exposed tracks. Georgetown also
had the hydro power station to supply the electricity. I think the power station
is condos now. If the hydro station could be re-built and if enough water could flow through the feeder canal, DC could have a carbon-neutral streetcar system. Besides the traction company there used to be flour mills in Georgetown that used the canal water for power.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/01/AR2009040103937.html

For those who don't live here, the subway is like a hub and spokes so these streetcar projects are filling in the gaps away from the city center.

The Privately-owned street railways were destroyed in 3 waves:

1. Regulated fair structure made it very difficult to make more than 1-2% annual return-on-investment, even in prosperous years (fault of both local city and state governments)



Good post.

The regulated fair structure continues even today and this is the reason public transit cannot make money. The 5 cent fare was in existance for more than 30 years making it impossible for the trolley companies to make capital investments.

However, when you look at public transit companies today, they are barely making more than 5 cents in today's dollars! According to the inflation calculator, 5 cents in 1905 is $1.14 in 2007 dollars. Most of the city buses in my town traveling less than five miles are less than $1.60 which was equal to 7 cents in 1905!

We often complain about how costly the fare box is but we are actually paying about the same amount our grand fathers did at the turn of the century! A New York City bus is $2.00 dollars today but in 1905 dollars is a whopping 9 cents!


http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi

This is the reason public transit cannot make money.

Why do we expect public transit to make a profit while we continue to sink billions of taxpayer dollars into the automobile infrastructure?

Why do we expect public transit to make a profit while we continue to sink billions of taxpayer dollars into the automobile infrastructure?


Actually that's not entirely true. Many new projects, especially bridges are built and maintained by private entities who toll the bejezus out of them to not only pay for maintenance, but to turn a profit. CA has done this with several new freeways.


There were better ways of providing new mass transit than the ****. Dedicated trolley buses would have been a much better option, in my opinion. You wouldn't have had to rip up the road to install rails (which are terrible for the Seattle area cyclists). You could also vary the route if there was a demographic shift. And the buses would have cost approx. 1/10 of the cost of the ****.

Why do we expect public transit to make a profit while we continue to sink billions of taxpayer dollars into the automobile infrastructure?

I think we should sink more taxpayer dollars into infrastructure that serves both cyclists and automobiles. In the suburbs, we can connect up a greater number of side streets, making it easier to cycle (and walk) without using busy arterial roads and expressways while also reducing automobile congestion.

We need more streets that connect in urban areas. However, we could stand to remove some highways - basically all "local" highways that don't serve the purpose of facilitating passage to and from other metropolitan areas.

There were better ways of providing new mass transit than the ****. Dedicated trolley buses would have been a much better option, in my opinion. You wouldn't have had to rip up the road to install rails (which are terrible for the Seattle area cyclists). You could also vary the route if there was a demographic shift. And the buses would have cost approx. 1/10 of the cost of the ****.

As long as you can do it without installing those ugly overhead wires like you see all over SF :eek:

Why do we expect public transit to make a profit while we continue to sink billions of taxpayer dollars into the automobile infrastructure?

I understand this point.

However, we want more public transit but our towns force the buses in a situation where they can't even break even! I pointed out that our buses and trams are still charging slightly more, taking into account inflation what our grand parents did 100 years ago.

Our extensive railsroads were built with Wall Street money because there was a profit built into the fare. You could raise investment capital and banks had no problem lending money to build a trolley line. Some years ago, a guy name Bob Diamond tried to build a heritage trolley in Brooklyn. The guy ran out of money but he couldn't get a dime from the banks to continue laying down rails.

Actually that's not entirely true. Many new projects, especially bridges are built and maintained by private entities who toll the bejezus out of them to not only pay for maintenance, but to turn a profit. CA has done this with several new freeways.


There were better ways of providing new mass transit than the ****. Dedicated trolley buses would have been a much better option, in my opinion. You wouldn't have had to rip up the road to install rails (which are terrible for the Seattle area cyclists). You could also vary the route if there was a demographic shift. And the buses would have cost approx. 1/10 of the cost of the ****.

Depends on the part of the country...around here ALL roads are built on the back of the taxpayers, whether via bond issues, gas taxes, property taxes or income taxes. There has been discussion of toll roads, but of course that is an infringement on people's "rights" and "freedoms" to drive where and when they want.:innocent: and so far has proven to be political suicide.

Aaron:)

Our extensive railsroads were built with Wall Street money because there was a profit built into the fare. You could raise investment capital and banks had no problem lending money to build a trolley line. Some years ago, a guy name Bob Diamond tried to build a heritage trolley in Brooklyn. The guy ran out of money but he couldn't get a dime from the banks to continue laying down rails.

The railroads in most countries were literally built by the govenment, and many countries still have nationalized railroads.

The US railroads were heavily subsidized by the federal government. The RR barons were granted rights of way along both sides of the proposed tracks. Sometimes these ROWs extended 20 miles on each side of the track, or millions of acres of free land. The RR tycoons borrowed against this land to finance development, and then sold the land after the RR was completed and the land was worth far more.

This is the American way.

The government doesn't directly own the resource, but it makes it possible for others to exploit the resource and become wildly rich at taxpayer's expense. It's just like what we're doing today with the banks and insurance companies.