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The Bay Area's lost streetcars

sfstreetcars.co

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Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#31

Post by IshKebab »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #20
washbrain wrote: post #14

Many cities had "streetcar suburbs", developments on the fringes of town serviced by street cars that took people to work. Sadly, they were largely decommissioned and replaced with buses or nothing. We badly need to get more trains moving through American cities. I'd prefer grade separated, but honestly even if we had streetcars running in from all the suburbs that'd be pretty great. It's also worth mentioning the Ge…

My town is famous for being a city that feels like a bunch of neighborhoods. Nearly all of those iconic neighborhoods are along the historic street car routes, that were dismantled in the 30s and 40s. I won't claim the street cars were perfect, but there is a lot of merit to the idea that they were replaced by an inferior solution due to the prevailing winds of the moment. What I find more interesting is the street c…

> My town is famous for being a city that feels like a bunch of neighborhoods.

Ha, I think everywhere I've lived has described itself like this.

Maybe it's less common in the US because you don't have cities swallowing up villages.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#32

Post by gregoriol »

bregma wrote: post #27
gregoriol wrote: post #16

It may be controversial, but I think all transportation that requires fixed infrastructure is designed to fail. The future is to light and flexible, composable and fast.

No one is going to build high density development that is not near reliable, dependable, fast, frequent, comfortable, and appropriately scalable transportation infrastructure. Buses and Ubers are not scalable to the target density.

Small electric 1/2 person transport devices (bikes, motorbikes, scooters, micro-cars, ...) are the future for high density. Everyone needs to go to a different place. Then for longer rides, regrouping those small rides in "trains", as I was saying "composition", should be the way to go.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#33

Post by m0llusk »

washbrain wrote: post #14

Many cities had "streetcar suburbs", developments on the fringes of town serviced by street cars that took people to work. Sadly, they were largely decommissioned and replaced with buses or nothing. We badly need to get more trains moving through American cities. I'd prefer grade separated, but honestly even if we had streetcars running in from all the suburbs that'd be pretty great. It's also worth mentioning the Ge…

This always comes up, but is not accurate. Streetcars were never greatly loved. They were boiling hot in the summer, freezing in winter, the ride was jarring, and they were crowded with all manner of people. During the war maintenance was deferred to the point that at the end of the war most such lines needed to be rebuilt in order to stay in operation. Ripping them out to build roads for cars was not a conspiracy but a popular transition which at that time had few visible downsides.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#34

Post by quesera »

Symbiote wrote: post #23
deepdriver wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even need to be a wealthy country. Tram service is excellent in Zagreb, capital of Croatia, where they've had electrics trams for more than a century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Zagreb To someone from a place with modern, well-maintained light rail, I imagine Bay Area streetcars seem as quaint and outdated as old Ford cars in Cuba look to Americans.

> To someone from a place with modern, well-maintained light rail, I imagine Bay Area streetcars seem as quaint and outdated as old Ford cars in Cuba look to Americans. This is why San Francisco's streetcars are a tourist attraction. Few people go to Edinburgh just to ride on a modern tram, but some people visit Scotland and take a trip on a steam train (with or without the Harry Potter theme).

> This is why San Francisco's streetcars are a tourist attraction

San Francisco's Cable Cars are a tourist transaction. They do also move thousands of officeworkers to downtown daily, though.

But the streetcar system is much larger than the cable car system, and it is definitely not a tourist attraction.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#35

Post by mc32 »

hadlock wrote: post #2

What a lot of pro-transit (full disclosure, I am full transit) folks fail to mention, is that most streetcars were initially built, in particular, those out towards the sunset, big chunks of LA, were actually built by property developers, as an incentive, "look! see! don't need a car! just like urban living, but look at all this extra space you get! just take the street car into town". Street cars were run at break e…

It’s a classical conspiracy theory. There are truths interspersed with assumptions and fabrications sustained by a fantastical desire -in this case halcyon of dependable public transit everywhere which was razed by greedy bus manufacturing companies in cahoots with petrochemical companies.

When in reality it’s closer to the story of the ferries that ferried cars across the bay before the bridges were built. Or the story of railroads before the interstate system displaced nearly all interstate passenger rail.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#36

Post by beowulfey »

gregoriol wrote: post #32
bregma wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is going to build high density development that is not near reliable, dependable, fast, frequent, comfortable, and appropriately scalable transportation infrastructure. Buses and Ubers are not scalable to the target density.

Small electric 1/2 person transport devices (bikes, motorbikes, scooters, micro-cars, ...) are the future for high density. Everyone needs to go to a different place. Then for longer rides, regrouping those small rides in "trains", as I was saying "composition", should be the way to go.

I agree, proper bike infrastructure is painfully undervalued, even amongst transit stans

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#37

Post by beowulfey »

Really great site! Would love to see something like this for other cities. LA is an obvious one, but recently I was thinking about how many lesser known street car networks were built and destroyed. For example, most medium to large towns in CT were once serviced by extensive interconnected streetcar networks, but few maps of those networks still exist.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#38

Post by ZeroGravitas »

gregoriol wrote: post #16

It may be controversial, but I think all transportation that requires fixed infrastructure is designed to fail. The future is to light and flexible, composable and fast.

This is a weird definition of 'fixed infrastructure' that includes rails, but not roads, gas stations etc.?

There's definately shades of gray, but any time you get high density or high throughput you're going to want infrastructure that leans more towards the "fixed" end of things. But with battery vehicles (from skateboards up) and automonous driving coming in, it'll make less sense in the middle areas.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#39

Post by jltsiren »

gregoriol wrote: post #32
bregma wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is going to build high density development that is not near reliable, dependable, fast, frequent, comfortable, and appropriately scalable transportation infrastructure. Buses and Ubers are not scalable to the target density.

Small electric 1/2 person transport devices (bikes, motorbikes, scooters, micro-cars, ...) are the future for high density. Everyone needs to go to a different place. Then for longer rides, regrouping those small rides in "trains", as I was saying "composition", should be the way to go.

They are a major part of the future in medium-density areas. Less so in high-density areas, where individual vehicles of any kind create too much traffic to be a majority solution. Just look at pictures from Chinese cities in the 1980s to see how dystopian the combination of bikes and high density can be.

Re: The Bay Area's lost streetcars

#40

Post by woweoe »

gregoriol wrote: post #30
goodpoint wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe, Japan and China and many other countries beg to differ and are running and/or building plenty of railways.

Railways are practical to go fast from a transportation hub to another transportation hub, without much stops in the middle. Local railways are fading away because last miles transportation needs to be more flexible that what railways can offer.

This assumes that the people are living far away from the railway, which is obviously the opposite situation in much of Europe and Asia.
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