Another boondoggle (Providence: city hall, school, quality of life)

[neguy99]

Originally Posted by ormari

I don't fully follow what you are saying here but I agree that lots of Portland looks like the suburbs. But I think it is safe to say that if you put streetcar in, other retail/food and employment will come. Look at Davis Square in Somerville, MA for a more local example.

In the Pearl that is probably true now but wasn't when the streetcar was put in, at least to my recollection. I recall the condos and the streetcar happening together. They could put condos in the Jewelry district too...

Sure, and probably they'd have trouble selling them. The price of a near-downtown condo in Portland even before the streetcar was much higher than a near downtown condo in Providence. It's not surprising that when they built a bunch of new luxury condos, they sold. You could have built the Pearl condos w/o the streetcar and they'd still have been snapped up at huge prices.

Davis (and soon-to-be Union Sq) Somerville are about as good a story as you get for transit. Even then it took a LONG time for the benefit -- the T hit Davis in 1984 but it wasn't until Cambridge began booming after the late 1990s that Davis really started picking up. Will a PVD streetcar connect to an employment destination anything like downtown Boston and the Cambridge biotech/IT corridor?

For the converse, you can look at Portland eastside MAX stations -- they've been there 30 years and in many cases there has been essentially no development whatsoever near them. Nowhere near as simple as "If you build it, they will come".

[ormari]

Originally Posted by neguy99

Well, building them from scratch since most of the area was a rail yard. Replacing the Lovejoy viaduct with surface streets and new bridge ramps. Making the streets with train tracks embedded in them safer, lots of new traffic lights, etc.

Agree about the Lovejoy viaduct. And yeah, actually, as I think back to some of my misspent youth, some of those roads back in there were pretty lousy.

Sure, Portland grew a million people and shot up the average wage rankings due to trust fund kids and their retired parents leaving the Upper West Side for the west coast? Really? For every organic fusion food truck some entreprenurial kid opens in SE or Alberta, barely covering costs, a whole bunch of boring engineers and accountants and HVAC techs are starting good old fashioned jobs in Washington and Clark County.

We're talking Pearl here, and not metro Portland. The BYOJ types? I don't think they live in the Pearl. You think HVAC techs are occupying the condos of the Pearl? Engineers and accountants maybe, but most of the engineers I know or know of out there live in Hillsboro/Beaverton to cut down the commute. If you told me researchers at OHSU, I'd be with you. I told you the only people I know to buy in the Pearl, but that shouldn't be extrapolated to say everyone in the Pearl is like them. I've heard there's some population from Hollywood in the Pearl too...

But the reality is that our peer cities are NOT Portland and SFO and Austin. It certainly isn't Boston. By the numbers that matter PVD is a heck of a lot like New Bedford, New London, Worcester, Lowell, Lawrence, etc.

That may be where we are, though I would certainly put us at the top of your list.

Originally Posted by ormari

I think when one wants to make a place better, they look to success stories and try to emulate them, yet maintain their own unique identity. I don't think we should become Portland, nor do I think we should become Austin, or even Asheville. But I do think if we want to make this a thriving place, we should look to thriving places and borrow ideas where they make sense for adaptation to our purposes.

Whether a streetcar is an idea

I wasn't saying they were our peer group. I am saying let's look at successful, desirable places and borrow and adapt what we can to fit who we are and who we want to be.

[neguy99]

Originally Posted by ormari

Ok, that demands a cite!

2010 census data. 9% for Providence, a little bit lower for Portland.

Easy Stats

[ormari]

Originally Posted by AlfieBoy

Doubtless, studying future transportation systems is a laudable effort. But we need to work with real on-the-ground math, and your comparing two wildly dissimilar cities (and relative growth of two dissimilar cities) only leads to bad math. Build a business case based on PVD, not some other place. And if you can build that case, I would be very surprised indeed.

I agree it can lead to bad math, if one is lazy. That's where those critical eyes come in, the smarter and the sharper the criticism, the better.

I am not ready to drink the cool aid just yet.

[mp775]

Originally Posted by AlfieBoy

^ People from Pawtucket or anywhere outside of a quarter mile of the trolley's footprint will not be using it. Re: population density. It is only a relevant metric when overlayed on the trolley's path. You may assume that 7,085 people per square mile applies to the trolley's footprint, but is that the case? I don;t know and I suspect you don't either.

The trolley's route closely mimics that of several bus lines, notably the #92. I've never had to stand due to over-crowding.

I'd use it. But I agree about the route. I haven't looked at the specifics in a while, but the plan originally called for terminating all the buses currently using the tunnel at Thayer Street and making everyone transfer to the streetcar. If going downtown becomes a two-seat ride I would be less inclined to take transit.

[mp775]

Originally Posted by QuilterChick

Another boondoggle is right! Streetcars belong back in the 1940's, that should have been the end of that idea!

And Providence is so much better now than it was in the 1940s!

Why not bring back the trolley cars that were in the city around early 90's. They were very nice! clean, attractive, ran on time, quiet, didn't pollute the air, didn't need tracks etc.

A trolley car that doesn't need tracks and overhead wires is called a bus, and the ones you're thinking of didn't arrive until 1999. They got old and were replaced with new buses that look like trolleys in 2010, only now they're red instead of green and are hybrid-electric instead of CNG. The routes still exist, with some improvements.

Comparing Providence to Portland? unbelievable.

How so?

[ormari]

Originally Posted by neguy99

Sure, and probably they'd have trouble selling them. The price of a near-downtown condo in Portland even before the streetcar was much higher than a near downtown condo in Providence. It's not surprising that when they built a bunch of new luxury condos, they sold. You could have built the Pearl condos w/o the streetcar and they'd still have been snapped up at huge prices.

Davis (and soon-to-be Union Sq) Somerville are about as good a story as you get for transit. Even then it took a LONG time for the benefit -- the T hit Davis in 1984 but it wasn't until Cambridge began booming after the late 1990s that Davis really started picking up. Will a PVD streetcar connect to an employment destination anything like downtown Boston and the Cambridge biotech/IT corridor?

For the converse, you can look at Portland eastside MAX stations -- they've been there 30 years and in many cases there has been essentially no development whatsoever near them. Nowhere near as simple as "If you build it, they will come".

Other than Lloyd center, which predates MAX by a long time, and the convention center, which Mayor Bud Clark championed (the area might have been further developed had Vera Katz not pivoted to the Pearl), there hasn't been a concerted city-driven effort targeting NEPDX for development.

But the Jewelry district is not NE Portland. It is downtown PVD adjacent, or rather now officially part of downtown, and they have investment from Brown and other schools. There are the makings of a concerted effort to grow the area. What it will grow into will in part be determined by our vision for it. Brown does have a vision for the area, but I'm not about to argue that it has the momentum of the combined strength of Harvard and MIT. And you're right, it took 10 years in Davis; Union Sq. is improving based on the promise of the lousy green line.

I'm not talking about overnight miracles, and to expect them is foolhardy.

[ocngypz]

Oh hell............let's just a monorail and get rid of all the ugly busses.

At least they are fun to ride..........and no traffic delays.

[Hollytree]

Originally Posted by mp775

Elorza? The streetcar plan, it its current incarnation, dates from 2006.



No, we have buses.



No, because RIPTA still gets paid for those "free" rides. DHS subsidizes low-income and elderly passes, FHWA subsidizes air quality alert days, and universities with "free" passes pay for them (passing the cost along to students via fees - whether they ride the bus or not). Paratransit is a huge money-waster, costing $27 a trip versus $4.20 for an average transit trip, but it's federally mandated.

Good points. So how did RIPTA practically go bankrupt a couple years ago- was it just that guy who managed it into the ground- oh and there was embezzlement as well as I recall? Why did the Providence to Newport water system fail( it was a great service!) but apparently RIPTA couldn't make it work. And how can we make our incredibly expensive heavily subsidized bus system better? We just never seem to get right answers.

And yes Alfie I used RIPTA, eons ago I used to take the Hope Tunnel 42 down Hope St into downtown when I worked there. It came every ten minutes (can't remember cost .25 or .50) and was quite efficient.

I suspect Elorza is just so swayed by the idea of free money that he'll consider taking it whether we need it or not just to say he did something. I envision the streets torn up for rails (further impeding downtown traffic) and ugly wires being strung all over. When the system fails to support itself, the taxpayers will then be on the hook for all the removal and the repaving and the Big E will then run for Prez of the US.

How's this idea: Why not talk to J&W about having the city work out a deal with them to expand their student shuttles and make them available to the general public? J&W is very big on public service and they would listen to a reasonable proposal. You read it here first.

[massnative71]

A better example of a city with street cars is Memphis, TN (and economically much closer to PVD). Make a visit sometime, I can assure you it won't bolster the case for Providence.


You can bet Buddy wouldn't have come up with such an asinine idea...