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Cleveland built an excellent BRT along Euclid Ave. Winnipeg has built a great BRT and Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver are all implementing ones. These are cities that have ridership levels that all cities in the US save New York would dream about.
My home town of London Ontario is building a BRT and has only 440,000 but higher ridership than any US city of less than one million.
It's about getting bang for the buck. It is far superior to build a BRT of 40 km than an LRT of 10 serving many more people and destinations. As far as BRT not being fast enough, it all depends on how they implemented which is no different than LRT. LRT cannot be justified in any city unless the system will get a MINIMUM of 50,000 passengers a day.
The ONLY time a rail based transit lines/s can be justified in low ridership cities is commuter and/or suburban rail where nearly all the infrastructure is already in place and simply need the fleet and extra stations to bring the system on line. Even then, the bus service to the local stations must be good or the line will suffer from very poor ridership and frequency must be relatively good at least for rush hour times and must have a later night train for those who may have missed the last commuter time one so they can still get home.
Cleveland built an excellent BRT along Euclid Ave. Winnipeg has built a great BRT and Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver are all implementing ones. These are cities that have ridership levels that all cities in the US save New York would dream about.
My home town of London Ontario is building a BRT and has only 440,000 but higher ridership than any US city of less than one million.
It's about getting bang for the buck. It is far superior to build a BRT of 40 km than an LRT of 10 serving many more people and destinations. As far as BRT not being fast enough, it all depends on how they implemented which is no different than LRT. LRT cannot be justified in any city unless the system will get a MINIMUM of 50,000 passengers a day.
The ONLY time a rail based transit lines/s can be justified in low ridership cities is commuter and/or suburban rail where nearly all the infrastructure is already in place and simply need the fleet and extra stations to bring the system on line. Even then, the bus service to the local stations must be good or the line will suffer from very poor ridership and frequency must be relatively good at least for rush hour times and must have a later night train for those who may have missed the last commuter time one so they can still get home.
I don't agree with the idea that LRT costs 4x more than BRT. When Austin studied this they determined that LRT was something like 50% more, not 300% more. By far the most expensive aspect is the real estate and then tunneling, elevated paths, overpasses, etc which are needed for either approach.
I have a hard time seeing how light rail will work in Nashville. Austin has a pretty solid grid and consistent density, but Nashville is super sprawly almost immediately outside of the downtown area.
I don't see it either. Nashville urban population is just over 1 million. It has a lot of traffic that makes some people think it has a larger population than it does.
I don't agree with the idea that LRT costs 4x more than BRT. When Austin studied this they determined that LRT was something like 50% more, not 300% more. By far the most expensive aspect is the real estate and then tunneling, elevated paths, overpasses, etc which are needed for either approach.
You are correct. The issue is that all of these systems have a wide range of costs, varying based upon just how built out and effective the systems are intended to be and how many bells and whistles are added. Things like standalone stations, grade separation/exclusive ROW/signal prioritization, zero emissions and so forth, that apply to both BRT and LRT. The more you add, the higher the cost. Buses usually seem cheap, but as you get closer to true BRT, the cost looks a lot like LRT. You can also remove many of these bells and whistles from LRT, and the cost becomes much closer to regular express buses, but so does the usefulness. In an apples to apples comparison of LRT and BRT costs, they are a lot closer than one might think.
So far none of them have passed, but there have apparently been a number of proposals in Boise to build a streetcar system. In 2019, the city even released a map of a possible route through the downtown and connecting to the BSU campus.
In January 2021, the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho (COMPASS) polled metro residents on their support for a light rail system, and 92% said they would use it at least occasionally "if it met their needs" (vague, but still promising).
Median rents in Boise are almost as high as Portland and rising fast, so being able to live car-free there will become increasingly attractive.
Aren't streetcars light rail? They sure aren't heavy rail lines.
Tourist movers in downtown areas don’t count as any real form of passenger rail that gets people to important places, is useful to the locals who pay for it and alleviates traffic.
Tourist movers in downtown areas don’t count as any real form of passenger rail that gets people to important places, is useful to the locals who pay for it and alleviates traffic.
What? Streetcars aren't always "tourist movers", thousands of locals use New Orleans' streetcars to get to work daily. And rail lines don't alleviated traffic nor should that be the goal.
Aren't streetcars light rail? They sure aren't heavy rail lines.
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.
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