An interesting article from Roll Call (subscription required). Interviews with Anwar Saleem (expressing doubt about streetcars and musing about a Circulator style bus) and Joseph Fengler (a strong advocate of streetcars who lobbied DDOT to combine laying down the tracks with the streetscape project). Points of interest:
1. 3 phases of construction (3rd-7th, 7th-11th, 11-14th [story says last section covers 7th-14th, but I think that's a typo])
2. 2.5 yrs projected total construction
3. streetcars up and running within 5 years
*Either way we better settle in for a longterm relationship with street construction.
16 comments:
Instead of sowing doubt/competing with the streetcar, why not do a straight Metrobus or Circulator-style route that connects the U St. and H St. corridors? U St. and Adams Morgan have the special U-link Shuttle (bus 98). http://wmata.com/timetables/dc/98.pdf
It connects these neighborhoods with the red and green metros for 25 cents a ride. An H St Shuttle would go from somewhere on H, along H, up Florida, hit the NY Ave metro, then continue on to around 13th & U at the U St./Cardozo metro. It would be a perfect complement to the U St. shuttle and would connect the H St. corridor to the metro as well as U St. & Adams Morgan.
Can explain the technical advantages of streetcars over buses with dedicated or priority lanes?
Sorry, that should have been: Can anyone explain the technical advantages of streetcars over buses with dedicated or priority lanes?
npm -
clearly you know how to use the web, so i would suggest you do a search on the topic, and look at some past links/discussions from this blog.
a) they're cheaper to run and maintain
b) people that don't normally ride mass transit WILL ride a streetcar.
c) they have character
some things are not as simple as "what are the advantages..."
do you ask yourself that question when you go out to eat? if so, you probably dine at mcdonalds on a rather constant basis.
that's kinda what we're trying to avoid here.....
i'm curious. do you come from a midwestern city?
The burning question is, would a street car have gotten though the nasty mess yesterday? Someone is quoted from the Trinidad area as saying the roads were plowed. I wonder where is Trinidad does this dude live.Maybe he lives on Florida ave,or Bladensburg road. The roads on Capitol Hill are terrible and water pools around the curbs and intersections are fierce. Who checks on WASA to clean out the storm drains?
does everyone get tired of these anonymous losers that sit around and complain?
i suggest you take some USDA night courses on how to search the internet.
then you'd figure out how to get here: http://snowavl.ddot.dc.gov/index.asp
and then you'd figure out what you might actually be able to do, before whining like a six year old.
Yeah, really. Hey NPM, not everyone who reads this blog hides behind an anonymous posting and snipes at other people. The "We" in Anonymous 5:30AM doesn't actually exist.
What's up with the really nasty and inappropriate comments today?
Personally, I have serious concerns about streetcars on H Street, NE. Without dedicated lanes they will get stuck in traffic just like buses. (That’s based on my experience with the Green Line in Boston.)
Decreasing congestion with a trolley system will require, at a minimum: 1. extremely aggressive enforcement of parking laws to stop double parking, 2. timers on stoplights so trolley drivers can keep them green to get through an intersection, 3. a decrease in traffic along Benning Road/H Street. It’s #3 that I have my doubts about actually achieving. People just love their cars. To get them out of them will require a very serious change in commuting habits. What specific plans does the city have to get commuters onto the trolleys? Presumably many commuters are who use the corridor are from eastern DC and P.G. County. Where are they going to park their cars? Will the Minnesota Ave. expansion actually suffice? Other commuters use the BW Parkway/NY Ave./Bladensburg Road route. Where are they going to catch the Metro and park their cars? What’s the plan?
There are also normally unspoken issues about whether DHS would approve of this trolley line if they get wind of the plans. H Street and Benning Road are among DC’s escape routes, according to DHS. The federal bureaucracy isn’t known for being sympathetic to mass transit plans. (For example, consider the Ft. Belvoir expansion caused by BRAC.)
I believe passionately in smart growth and good transit planning. However, the potential H Street has some serious problems that the current designs don’t really solve.
What's the timing supposed to be for the phases? I.e. should we expect Phase I to be done by this time next year? The next phase the next year? Or something more accelerated (or slower)?
i don't want commuters from the burbs taking up space on our streets anyway.
it's one of the most annoying things to me, as i'm the one paying DC taxes to keep up the roads (and related services) for them. screw 'em.
as far as the other concerns, you can look those up in successful dedicated light rail systems in this country and abroad.
it would be a definite attraction for folks who don't normally ride public transit, and it would solve a ton of problems.
try a search on it. i bet you can't find a single example of a dedicated light rail/trolley system that has failed. go ahead....
you won't find it.
it works on MANY fronts.
i meant, find a "modern day trolley system that has been implemented".
those just don't fail.
I haven’t read the article as I don’t have an online subscription. But I would like to make a few points:
1. The street car expansion on H Street is part of a larger above ground transportation project from DDOT. The track that will be installed on H Street NE is part of a larger Corridor 4 plan that is to link Georgetown to Minnesota Ave – essentially a cross town street car. For more information, visit: http://www.dctransitfuture.com/corridors.
2. The H Street Corridor Revitalization plan developed by the DC Office of Planning included a section on corridor-wide transportation improvements. If you go to the following link and look at chapter 8, section 3 (8.3) you will find the initial discussion and justification for the streetcar:
http://planning.dc.gov/planning/frames.asp?doc=/planning/LIB/planning/project/NE_Corridor/pdf/final/Chap8.pdf
I also will add that this plan was developed over a two year period with hundreds of residents participating. Also, Appendix C lists all the NON-Preferred alternatives: http://planning.dc.gov/planning/frames.asp?doc=/planning/LIB/planning/project/NE_Corridor/pdf/final/appendix_c.pdf
In this appendix, you can see all the light rail versions that are not supported as well as the concept for a rapid bus line. The preferred solution from this plan is two street car tracks on each side of the street. Essentially, there will be six lanes with the two lanes adjacent of the sidewalk dedicated parking lanes. There will be “bulb outs” at each street light to force traffic down to four lanes and protect pedestrians. The next two lanes on either side of the street is where the tracks will be installed. That lane will be a shared lane with vehicular traffic. Here is the link to see the initially proposed streetcar plan: http://www.anc6a.org/HstStreetCars.html
3. DDOT conducted a transportation study of H Street shortly after the release of the H Street Corridor Revitalization Plan. This included street cars / light rail as part of the long range plan (10 years) for H Street. In section 6.3.2, the report states: “A streetcar system which runs the entire length of the Corridor is crucial for future economic growth of H Street.”
The link to that study:
http://www.bakerprojects.com/hstreetne/rpt_final.asp?pdf=1_H_St_6LongTermReco_lr.pdf#pdf
ANC 6A Support for the DDOT study: http://www.anc6a.org/SupportHStStudy.pdfs
4. The five surrounding ANC’s all supported the installation of the streetcar tracks http://www.anc6a.org/ANCsSuprtTracksHst.pdf. In this letter we outline all the advantages of including the streetcar track installation with the H Street NE Streetscape Project.
The streetcar discussion has taken place in literally dozens of community meetings over the past four years. In every report created, including streetcars on H Street is listed as a critical improvement.
It is true that we are funding the streetcar project in increments. First, fund and install the tracks (planned for this year). Second, order the streetcars (Fenty and Wells promise support in the FY 08 budget). Once the cars are ordered it will take between 24 to 30 months for delivery. Third, identify and fund the infrastructure to maintain and house the streetcars. In a perfect world, all of this would be funded upfront. In reality, we are getting the city to fund the projects in phases.
In San Francisco, street cars have the right of way in the middle lane. Cars may use the lanes but must always promptly yeild to a street car. Hopefully that will be case here, and it is enforced, unlike the current situation with bus only lanes on 7th st NW. The SF street cars do stop for red lights. There is a very popular route (the F line) that uses vintage street cars.
It's that way in some European cities as well...God help the driver who is blocking a tram...the driver leans on the bell and the driver will get out of the way just to make the bell stop.
As a resident of H ST (on the east side of where the Safeway is), I would love better public transportation than what is in the area now. I'm going to check out the plans on this since it's hard for me to visualize both trolleys and buses sharing the road, AND still have room for all the car traffic that goes down H ST, especially during rush hour.
-PHS
You'll be pleasantly surprised!
It's actually kind of hard to 'visuallize' a functioning "trolley" system on H, I know.
If you get a chance to travel to a city that has trolleys, you get a much better feel for how they really do work.
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