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The OP never answered my call to define light rail vs streetcar, as that would be useful in this type of thread.
But presumably they're not referring to the technology (which is the same) but rather the conventional wisdom regarding usage...which suggests that light rail is mostly grade separated and streetcar is mostly mixed traffic.
Light rail is mostly in its own ROW, not grade separated. The vast majority of light rail lines have street crossings.
And the New Orleans streetcar network is almost 100% in its own right of way except for the relatively small CBD portion of the St. Charles line.
Light rail is mostly in its own ROW, not grade separated. The vast majority of light rail lines have street crossings.
And the New Orleans streetcar network is almost 100% in its own right of way except for the relatively small CBD portion of the St. Charles line.
Yep you are correct. I was typing quickly and didn't think it through before I posted. And your point is correct, that the NOLA streetcar is not too dissimilar to many "light rail" systems. My underlying point, as well, was that there's not much to distinguish them without a definition from the OP.
Yep you are correct. I was typing quickly and didn't think it through before I posted. And your point is correct, that the NOLA streetcar is not too dissimilar to many "light rail" systems. My underlying point, as well, was that there's not much to distinguish them without a definition from the OP.
TBH I didn't have a strict delineation in mind. I don't think there even is one. OKC has a streetcar already and I posted about a possible larger-scale transit system, but then I posted later about a possible streetcar system in Boise. I think any level of "more train than the city has now" is appropriate for the thread lol.
How many cities have built BRT? I don't think a single one has true BRT.
Albuquerque has the nation's only Gold-rated BRT line, Albuquerque Rapid Transit. The main portion of the ART route has dedicated lanes and raised stations in the middle of Central Avenue for 8.9 miles. All buses in Albuquerque are now free to ride, but ART had off-board fare collection as well. Central Avenue is Albuquerque's main street and urban backbone, which connects most of the urban nodes in the city, from Old Town to Downtown to UNM to Nob Hill to the International District.
There are actually two separate ART lines, one which spans almost the entire length of Central Avenue from Unser Boulevard on the west to Tramway Boulevard on the east, and one which runs from the Unser Transit Center on the Westside to the Uptown Transit Center in the Northeast Heights.
Below are a couple of videos of ART on YouTube. The first is a shorter, more edited video that highlights the features, infrastructure and an external view of the operation of ART. The second is a longer, less edited video of a ride in the ART bus that shows more of the riding experience and internal operation of the line.
There's also the ARTx line, which is a BRT-lite express bus that doesn't have the same level of BRT features as the two lines that run along Central Avenue. The ARTx route runs from the UNM campus along Lomas Boulevard to Downtown Albuquerque then eventually to I-40 and Coors Boulevard on the Westside where it terminates at the Cottonwood Mall area.
Albuquerque also has commuter rail, the New Mexico Rail Runner. It connects Belen on the southern end of the metro to Downtown Albuquerque and Bernalillo on the northern end of the metro and then on to Santa Fe. The Rail Runner runs for nearly 100 miles and there are 19 total stations. It runs along the BNSF tracks in metro Albuquerque and then along I-25 on its way to Santa Fe where it runs on the Santa Fe Southern Railway spur line.
Some time ago, Durham and Orange counties in NC had some kind of agreement to build a light rail between Chapel Hill and Durham but the deal got nixed for some reason.
While this is commuter rail, this at least has a website. Whether it goes through remains to be seen, but eventually the Triangle is going to need to address the added traffic that it gets every year with new residents coming in.
Streetcars and LRT are basically the same thing. Usually the only real differences are that LRT vehicles have doors on each side of the train, can be run on either end of the train, and be coupled together to form longer trains. These are not big differences thou and they are technologically the same vehicles. Due to the non-technology differences, LRT is usually reserved for higher capacity lines with more advanced features like exclusive ROW, larger stations, signal priority, POP, and potentially some elevated/underground sections.
In short, streetcars are usually little more than a regular bus on a regular bus route but has steel wheels instead of rubber ones. LRT is more akin to a higher capacity complete BRT exclusive Transitway with large sections of exclusive transit only thruways, potentially some overpasses, true rail crossing barriers, and far fewer stations, offering faster, more reliable, and higher capacity transit. Often these LRT systems, along with BRT Transitways, act as transit exchanges to connect the local buses to the higher capacity LRT/Transitway which is why many also have Park n Rides.
Light rail is mostly in its own ROW, not grade separated. The vast majority of light rail lines have street crossings.
And the New Orleans streetcar network is almost 100% in its own right of way except for the relatively small CBD portion of the St. Charles line.
There's certainly overlap between what differentiates the two modes, but the New Orleans streetcar system is less like light rail than most modern streetcar systems. It has old technology, old slow trains, frequent stops, and no train stations.
Are pedestrians are allowed to enter and cross the medians where the streetcars run? If so, then that's not really a ROW like you would see on light rail. It looks like there are not only crossings every couple hundred feet, but nothing to stop pedestrians from crossing mid-block. And many of the designed crossings don't have any control (traffic lights, gates, etc).
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