My vision for Sacramento (Los Angeles, San Diego: lease, hotels, tenants)

[Mr. Ozo]

Originally Posted by Jimbo15

In terms of subsidies it important to realize that 75% of the people drive alone to work another 12% carpool and roughly 3% take transit. Yet 1/3 of the measure A tax reciepts go to transit. 3% of the population is getting 33% of the funding. In terms of relative subsidies its pretty clear who is getting the large subsidies and who isn't.

People use transit for other things than just getting to work. Count me as one of the 75% who drive to work alone, but I use light rail to get around for other things. At least, I did before they cut it to stop at 9pm and switched to 30 min headways. When they do that it, I will probably use it less than I do, thus generating less revenue for RT.

So I think your 3 percent figure is misleading, because a real transit system should be more than just a trip to work and back.

[wburg]

It looks like the city of West Sacramento doesn't care much for Jimbo15's power-center/automall vision for West Sacramento either:

Sacramento Press / Sac and West Sac hope to win federal grant for streetcar

Sacramento Press / Hundreds of homes to be built at West Sac's riverfront

Sacramento Press / West Sac mayor champions major development projects

Human Transit is a great blog: here is a recent HT talking about how Los Angeles, once the poster child for auto-centric sprawl, considers public transit (including light rail, streetcars and buses) a critical part of Los Angeles' transportation picture. They don't spend a mere one-sixth of a percent on public transit--they dedicate a cent, six times the rate of Sacramento. They, like we, are facing tough transit times due to state budget cuts, but not as tough, because the city prioritizes transit through local funding.

http://www.humantransit.org/2010/03/los-angeles-the-transit-metropolis.html

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by wburg

It looks like the city of West Sacramento doesn't care much for Jimbo15's power-center/automall vision for West Sacramento either

Sacramento Press / West Sac mayor champions major development projects

Christopher Cabaldon's an arrogant jerk. I knew him and years ago my wife worked with/for him. But I have to give him credit where credit's due. He's really done well for West Sacramento.

Just keep him out of the Assembly!

[gavant]

Jimbo I thought your freight map link was really cool. Thank you!

As for the rest of this thread, I really don't really see why Jimbo's comments are at all controversial. Jimbo seems to be the person here with the most well thought out ideas and opinions. He knows his facts and he explains his positions well.

[Jimbo15]

If West Sac is getting all of this new development without a streetcar, and K street mall which has had a streetcar for the past 23 years didn't, its a no brainer. Skip the streetcar and use the proceeds for something else.

With the money you save not building the streetcar line, use that to eliminate bus fares and/or increase the frequency of the bus line on that route. With the remainder, use that to fund more redevelopment in West Sac. Moreover if you build the auto row on West Capitol, you can use the sales tax proceeds to fund even more redevelopment. But capture that sales tax revenue. One of West Sac's biggest assets is the huge levels of traffic and sales tax dollars flowing through US50/Business 80.

[wburg]

That would all be well and good if K Street had a streetcar, but K Street does not have a streetcar. In fact, the full streetcar proposal would return streetcars to K Street (by forming the eastern end of the West Sac streetcar loop) in regular service for the first time since 1947.

(light rail is not the same thing as a streetcar)

[Jimbo15]

You have been trying to make this argument that interurban trains and streetcars cause different effects and have tried to argue that light rail functions exclusively like an interurban train. But that is an analogy that is persuasive only to you.

You previously cited Human Transit as a blog you written by a transportation professional you admire.

I want to draw your attention this post in Human Transit where Jarret Walker discuss the differences between streetcars and light rail. In this post Jarret Walker specifically points out that in cities like Sacramento, between the close spacing between stops and the headway between vehicles, light rail in the grid functionally is a streetcar.

Human Transit: streetcars vs light rail ... is there a difference?

So we are stuck with the same issue. We have had a streetcar running up and down K street since 1987. During that time it has failed to revitalize the K street mall.

Why invest in a technology that has a locally demonstrated history of not causing redevelopment in this region? Especially when this technology is really expensive?

With the money you aren't spending on streetcars, you can eliminate the fare and/or increase the frequency of the buses in the area. You also have more money to spend on actually subsidizing redevelopment.

But the downtown grid has had streetcars since 1987 and in that time it has failed to turn around the K Street Mall, despite being placed down the K street mall for all of the reasons you claimed that streetcars would turn around West Sac.

How many times does this region need to repeat the same expensive mistake?

[wburg]

It sounds like you didn't actually read that blog post, perhaps for fear of catching some horrible transit disease, but it sounds like you totally misinterpreted what Jarrett had to say:

Finally, when I suggest that stop spacing is the best way to distinguish light rail and streetcar -- and is already functioning this way in a great deal of existing usage -- I'm not implying that everything is one or the other. There are, as noted, streetcars that have short light-rail-like segments and light rail lines that have streetcar-like segments. These terms define ends of a spectrum, in which a large share of examples are pure one or the other but there are many (especially in Europe) at various points or mixtures in between the extremes.

Light rail can function like a streetcar, but that doesn't make it a streetcar. In the case of K Street, LRVs are large and take up a lot of room, so they don't interact well with pedestrians. Streetcars are smaller, closer to the size of a bus, and work better as pedestrian accelerators within a neighborhood. Higher stop frequencies and lower fares (the planned fare for the streetcar is a buck or two) also mean it is a more convenient way to get around within a neighborhood. Their small size also means they are quieter than LRVs, which means they function better around places like sidewalk cafes and other pedestrian/outdoor public environments. They also cost about one-third what LRVs cost: construction is faster and easier because it doesn't require heavy trenching or utility rerouting. Light rail and streetcars have similarities, but they are two very different stops on a common continuum. It's kind of like the difference between a 15-seat van and a subcompact: the fact that they're both technically "cars" doesn't mean they are completely identical.

In many ways, having light rail has done a lot of good for the central city in general, if not K Street in particular. I think you're also assuming that K Street is the entire central city of Sacramento, which is not the case--most of Sacramento's central city does not look like K Street, and in many ways light rail has helped to contribute to the overall revitalization of the central city over the past 23 years. In the late 1980s, the central city was not someplace you moved to unless you were a college student (or college drop-out) seeking cheap rent or one of a handful of very forward-thinking folks who wanted a cheap, beautiful Victorian home to fix up more than they worried about living next door to drug dens. If you actually look at the long term, the era since Light Rail was introduced has been one of a gradual but undeniable rise for the central city. Considering that there hasn't been any appreciable highway construction during the same period, and surface streets have been made less car-centric due to traffic calming, what transit modes can we credit with much of this revitalization? Answer: Bikes and light rail.

As to K Street itself, there are a multitude of other factors at work: the loss of most of the low-income housing downtown meant an increase in homelessness, landlords who sat on their decaying properties waiting for the Skyscraper Fairy, and the assumption that K Street could continue to function like a suburban mall all played a part in K Street's downfall. The presence of light rail amounts to a nuisance but it certainly isn't responsible for the current state of K Street. It also discounts the fact that there are parts of K Street that actually work pretty well--such as the segment from 10th to 13th.

People who assume that K Street was fabulous before light rail are just as blindingly wrong as those who assumed it was fabulous before the pedestrian mall. Both were desperation moves that failed from improper execution--in the case of the mall, the assumption that turning downtown into a suburban-style mall would draw suburban residents, in the case of Light Rail, the assumption that light rail and streetcars are functionally identical. Both ideas are wrong...and so are you, Jimbo. In fact, the last time that K Street really worked was the 1940s...when streetcars ran down K Street, and light rail ran on 8th.

[Majin]

[Jimbo15]

First you are quoting Jarret Walker out of context to completely distort what the point his blog entry. Here is the rest of his thought. I underlined the pertinent part.

I suggest that the most useful categories are those that refer to different kinds of usefulness to the customer. Stop spacing -- wide stops for rapid operation -- makes light rail useful for longer trips, and that's the most critical usefulness distinction. This is why you rarely hear about "light rail" vs "streetcar" debates for a specific designated corridor. The two terms refer to broadly the same technology, but the length of the corridor, and the speed it requires, usually determine whether we're talking about rapid transit, in which case this technology's offering is called light rail, or more local-stop service, in which case this technology's offering is called a "streetcar."

The length of corridor I am talking about is the grid. Its inside the grid where RT is providing the local-stop service. Inside the grid its a streetcar.

You're right, the K Street Mall isn't the entire central city. If we are talking about the parts of the central city that have turned around, they were the parts of the central city that were referred to as Lavender Heights well before rail transit ever came to the grid. Is there a gay neighborhood anywhere in the country that hasn't gentrified?

But the more pertinent issue is what has happened in the areas immediately around the rail stations where the effects of rail should be strongest. So again, I ask you why has this streetcar level of service hasn't turned around Alkali Flat? North Sac? or K Street? In all of these areas you have had local stop service since 1987. Its been 23 years. We should see the effects by now. Yet these are some of the most blighted areas of the central city.

Most users don't know or care about the cost of construction, and are pretty oblivious to issues involved in re-routing utilities and such. As Jarret Walker noted above, the technology is basically the same. In the central city rt has provided local stop service for the past 23 years. For most of the past 23 years, RT has offered a special central city fare zone, so again if pricing was the critical distinction then the central city fare zone should have had the same effect.

Facts are difficult things. What you have failed to do is demonstrate why the limited stop service RT has provided in the central city for the past 23 years isn't functionally identical to streetcar service. Moreover you have failed to demonstrate why some new limited stop service in West Sac should function and have any different redevelopment effects than the current limited stop service that RT has been been providing for the past 23 years in the central city.

Facts are difficult things. Yet the facts don't support any of your assertions.