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Everyone wants light rail, but is it really a game changer, or just another option? Older cities like Cleveland arguably have some form of it. Don't forget Detroit's "People Mover", but it seems like only cities with subways have true options. If that is true, reasons could be varied.
Everyone wants light rail, but is it really a game changer, or just another option? Older cities like Cleveland arguably have some form of it. Don't forget Detroit's "People Mover", but it seems like only cities with subways have true options. If that is true, reasons could be varied.
It's faster and more reliable for longer distances than bus, but unless the city is dense enough it can't cover all but a few corridors. If there are specific busy corridors that helps a lot. As for "true options", most American cities with only light rail don't get all that high ridership, but outside the US light rail only system transport relatively high volumes. Calgary has only light rail with a weekday ridership of 250,000 / day and a metro population of 1.1 million. Nantes, France has an urban area population of 580,000 and 266,000 daily riders on its light rail system, with no subways.
I think in the U.S it is. A lot of people want it just so they can boast about their city having a great public transit system, even if the bus network is not that great. It's comparatively very expensive, and should only really be used on a few high density corridors. It confuses me why Houston insists on building new lines into low density areas when a bus would do just as well, and operate at a much lower cost. At the end of the day most people don't care if their riding a train or a bus, as long as it gets from A to B in a timely manner.
I think in the U.S it is. A lot of people want it just so they can boast about their city having a great public transit system, even if the bus network is not that great. It's comparatively very expensive, and should only really be used on a few high density corridors. It confuses me why Houston insists on building new lines into low density areas when a bus would do just as well, and operate at a much lower cost. At the end of the day most people don't care if their riding a train or a bus, as long as it gets from A to B in a timely manner.
Yes. The southeast line also runs through low density areas but it does pass UH, so there might be a lot of college kids using it, especially because of the parking situation at UH.
Like anything else, it needs to be done well and in the right places. I used Seattle's between the airport and downtown a couple of years back and it was great. It would make no sense anywhere in my hometown though.
I think light rail is one of these things our children's children are going to look back at and laugh, just like we look at the old urban renewal projects and say "what were they thinking?" It seems virtually every city, even small cities like Salt Lake City, are building light rail and "TOD" at the end of the lines which is anything but actual TOD. I have documented Denver's problems before. Our transit agency ran out of money, even after we voted to increase taxes to complete the damn project. Now they are saying instead of extending LR to the northwest, they will build only so far, and then institute BRT for the rest. This has angered some of the suburban governments in the NW corridor, to the extent that one community is talking about witholding the tax receipts from the new tax until RTD can get its act together and complete the project.
Billions and billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent on these systems.
Lightrail is different because whitey don't ride the bus. And I say that jokingly, but its also true. I'm sure some sociologist could come up with a reasons for this, I leave that to others. But if you want to get folks to give up cars and take public transit, buses aren't going to do the trick.
I think in the U.S it is. A lot of people want it just so they can boast about their city having a great public transit system, even if the bus network is not that great. It's comparatively very expensive, and should only really be used on a few high density corridors. It confuses me why Houston insists on building new lines into low density areas when a bus would do just as well, and operate at a much lower cost. At the end of the day most people don't care if their riding a train or a bus, as long as it gets from A to B in a timely manner.
Building rail into low density areas would make sense only if the city is trying to direct growth into that area AND is willing to couple that with high density zoning w/n 1/2 mile of each train stops.
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