Artkansas 

An interesting if slightly dated video. Automatic cars didn't begin with Google.

tandempower

Amazing how all these transportation planners have been saying the same things about diversity for as long as automotivism has been pushing its agenda by means of large government subsidies. One thing the documentary doesn't really concede, however, is that the rail systems do seem to have been quite expensive compared with buses. It's too bad rail engineers and planners couldn't figure out a way to make cheap rail systems considering that they are so much more fuel/energy efficient than vehicles with tires.

As for automatic car plans, I don't think the old plans were as realistic as current ones are today. Someone in the documentary mentions combining GPS with CDROM. He's basically talking about onboard navigation. Who knows how they were planning to implement those long chains of cars that would work in tandem to use highways more efficiently. Maybe with synchronized braking systems?

Artkansas 

Back in the '80s they were dreaming about self-driving cars. Just dreaming. But they were thinking about it. I remember that in the '90s San Diego planners were doing some experiments with roads that would drive the cars. I don't think they got very far.

I'm not sure that rail systems are that much more expensive, but the expenses of adding buses seem to be better because the bus purchaser does not have to buy roads at the same time, while a trolley operator better know that he has tracks to run his cars on.

catgita

The streetcar companies not only had to pay for the land and tracks, they also were required to pave and maintain the entire street, including the tracks so that cars could drive on them. It was the perfect spiral to force them out of business. With buses they never maintained any private right of way, so it had all the disadvantages of both modes. Bus rapid transit changes that formula entirely, but is like a lighter mode than light rail.

If we required cars and supporting infrastructure to be financially self supporting, then that system would collapse even faster than rail.

Roody

I heard a lecturer say that the main reason streetcars went bust was because they couldn't raise fares above a nickel. The streetcar companies had deals with the cities. They got right of way for their tracks, but they had to agree to keep fares at five cents. This became unfeasible starting in the 1930s, so streetcar companies became unprofitable.

Dahon.Steve

It was amazing how long the 5 cent fare lasted. It started in the 1880's forcing the streetcars into bankruptcy by the 1940's and 1950's! The fare box was still 5 cents in New Jersey for nearly 70 years!

All they had to do was allow the streetcar companies to raise the fare box to 8 cents which would have been used to pay back the bonds needed for new cars and infrastructure improvements. This is what is done for today’s bus companies because fare box doesn’t pay for replacement costs of the cars.

By the way, has anyone seen the price of a new bus? Those large articulated buses are 1.2 million dollars and they have to go to the crusher every 16-18 years. Bus tranportation is expensive and is often subsidized.

Roody

Yes, buses are expensive. But I think not as expensive as cars, when all costs are considered. Nor as heavily subsidized by the government.

1.2 million dollars divided by the capacity of 60 passengers equals $20,000 per passenger. Compare to more than $30,000 for an average new car. That's a very rough equivalence, but it does say something. There's a point where if enough people got rid of their cars and started riding buses, it would be cheaper for both the government and for us individuals.

(And when comparing, let's remember that adding driverles gizmos to cars will dramatically increase their costs.)

zephyr

It's too bad more cities did not keep their electric trolley bus lines. There's only a few left in the US, such as San Francisco, Seattle, Dayton, Philadelphia. Electric trolley buses can outlast diesel powered buses by more than 2:1, and produce no air pollution. They are much quieter too. In Sao Paulo, Brazil they have some dedicated lane trolley bus lines (alternative to a streetcar or light rail line on tracks). They function the same as a light rail line on its own travel space, but no up front cost to lay the rails.

cooker

They may be better than diesel, but they do produce air pollution, since the electric power is partly generated by gas or coal.

Roody

Here in Michigan, the interurban trolley companies produced their own electricity. Usually they used hydroelectric power (dams) from rivers in the northern part of the state, so they truly did produce no air pollution. Today, we get almost no electricity from dams.

Walter S

Atlanta recently built a new electric trolley. It covers limited portions of the city. I think it's mostly a tourist attraction. But it is a good way to get around downtown.

Atlanta Streetcar

Dahon.Steve

Nice. It’s only 2.7 miles, $1.00 dollar one way and children are free! Enjoy it while it lasts. Tram arrives every 10 to 15 minutes so you don’t have to carry a schedule.

It appears they are going to expand the line but Atlanta really needs more of them as the city continues to sprawl and they need more people and business to locate downtown. A good investment would be to buy a condo next to that line. In about 25 years, the price of your home will double.

gerv 

Comparing this to new autos... doesn't seem that expensive. You can get a monthly pass for $50 in Des Moines and often you can get that same pass for half price. That is an extraordinary deal and I wonder how long that level of subsidy can last.

Dahon.Steve

I often wonder how long cities are going to continue to subsidize transit but those that do enable many more to become carfree.

I watched the video again and those long distance, time consuming, bumper to bumper commutes are exhausting. You would have pay me six figures to do something like that and maybe more. Once I saved enough money, I would relocate within 10 miles from the office. I could never do that commute in a car.

Mos6502

As a fan of streetcars, I have to say there is a lot of general missunderstanding about the systems and how they worked, and why they went bust. Streetcars were in fact much cheaper to run than buses in a simple sense of cost per passenger - but building and maintaining the infrastructure was incredibly expensive. Aside from being required to maintain roads they ran on, most companies also operated their own power stations (many systems predated widespread adoption of electric lighting in homes and citywide power grids) which meant even more infrastructure to maintain.

Aside from being unable to raise fares whenever needed (it's not true that fares were never raised, but often when requesting to raise fares cities would demand a "compromise" resulting in a higher fare that wasn't yet high enough - I believe Fort Collins was the only system still operating on a nickle fare by the 1940s) several other factors played into the streetcar's demise in the U.S. The biggest issue, which is hardly ever brought up is that during WWII streetcar ridership soared to levels that hadn't been seen since the 1920s. But since materials were rationed, it was impossible to properly maintain these systems. When the war ended companies were faced with the option to basically rebuild the systems entirely and replace all the rolling stock - or scrap everything and buy some buses. The former option was often the only practical way to stay in business.

The other thing that helped killed off streetcars, unsurprisingly is cars themselves, or rather the traffic they created. Denver was one of few systems that kept streetcars in their fleet after the war. Although they had already planned to phase them out - gradually - they ended up rapidly ending service because of the city's plan to adopt one way streets to deal with traffic. To complete a gradual phase out as planned would have required tearing up lines and relaying them on streets where they wouldn't run against the flow of traffic. So instead they just tore everything out as quick as possible and forgot about it. This particular scenario played out in many other cities too.

The final straw was also just that of perception. Streetcars were seen as old fashioned, and many people just didn't want to see them on the streets.

tandempower

Why couldn't the body just be disassembled from the chassis and replaced with a new one? Does it really cost a million dollars to put a body on a bus?

Dahon.Steve

I posted below an article from the New York Times in 2008 about the city getting double deckers. At the time in 2008, they were $900,000.00 thousand dolllars! These same buses are now over a million dollars.

New Jersey will often buy refurbished New York City buses. I suspect poorer cities have to do the same but NJ Transit can't run them forever and a refurbushed bus has an even lower lifespan.

https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...rial-run/?_r=0

Dahon.Steve

+1

A law was passed in Washington forcing electric and power companies to disinvest from their street car lines. This was the case in New Jersey as PSEG (public service electric and gas) ran the system. Although they did keep the Newark City Subway (trolley) because it would have been too costly to fill in the tunnels, they ended up spending a fortune repaving the tracks because it was took expensive to remove them.

I still believe if the trolley companies were allowed to raise the fare box every 3-5 years, it might be a different story. A five cent fare box in 1913 was $1.21 today! This was incredible low and there was no reason to starve the system for money. The fare box should have been 11 cents in 1913 which is what people are paying in New York City today.

https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

Roody

Excellent post, thanks for taking the time to share this fascinating information.

What do you think is the future of streetcars? Personally, I don't think they'll make a major comeback anytime soon, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Roody

Bus fares here in Lansing are only $1.25 with two free transfers. Isn't that about comparable to a nickel fare in 1913? The fare box is heavily subsidized by a millage tax, and I don't believe the old streetcar services were subsidized quite to that extent.

tandempower

Corporate profits, union wages, administrative costs to fund bureaucratic jobs, etc. Financing helps sell cars at prices people can't afford to pay out of pocket. Similarly, public financing and subsidies push up the price of buses. There is a fixed-cost mentality where the relationship of pricing to demand isn't understood, but the reality is that if buses were needed and the money wasn't there to afford them at such high prices, they would be produced for lower prices.

Mos6502

I don't see any future resurgence in the streetcar. For all its qualities - its major faults are rooted in that it doesn't mix well with other forms of vehicles. I could imagine instances where it may be justified cost wise, but rail vehicles running on the street always have significant drawbacks in terms of convenience and safety.

However, light rail on its own right of way has made a comeback in many U.S. cities, although some systems have been better planned and executed than others. Light rail which complements bus fleets rather than replaces them can greatly improve a city's mass transit system.

Roody

We have shared videos and photos from the early 1900s where streetcars seem to be mixing nicely with throngs of pedestrians, bicyclists, and even horse drawn wagons. Did you mean to say that they don't mix well with automobiles?

cooker

Do they have those Febreze "noseblind" commercials on US television, or are they just Canadian? Sure, people notice and sometimes grumble about the subsidies that go to public transit, but really, it's just that they've gone "noseblind" to all the tax dollars pumped into automobile subsidies.

wahoonc

Tell that to the MBTA Green Line runs down the middle of the street in several areas. No plans to change it that I am aware of.

Aaron