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Trams 57% the cost of Urban Highways
(and with higher capacity and without oil too :-)
This is the amount needed for building the 19.7 km of the TramTrain urban network, i.e. 17.2 million Euros per kilometre. (One kilometre of urban highway costs 30 million Euros.) This investment covers rolling stock, trackbed, depot and control centre, road surfacing, upgrading of public space, urban furniture, road signage, etc.
http://www.tram-train.org/FR/rubrique_index.php?PAGEID=148&lang=FR
Best Hopes for Americans Learning to Work with the Speed & Efficiency of French Bureaucrats,
Alan
In a world of trains, planes and automobiles, trains have taken a back seat. The day may not be too far away when trains will find their place again in the front and in the driver's seat.
Not b/c of any burning nostalgia or changing consumer preferences, but b/c of good old fashioned cost benefit factors in supply and demand.
Mr. Kunstler may have his vision of future rail fulfilled after all.
Thanks Alan for figures. Makes comparisons so much easier to see.
The recent announcement in France of building 1,500 km of trams in a decade had an estimated cost of 21 billion euros, or 14 million euros/km (vs. the 17.2 million euros/km in Mulhouse).
With some adjustment factors (2nd and 3rd lines cost less than 1st lines, mass production of standardized trams, tram-train lines are cheaper/km) the goal is possible, if a bit low for my taste.
Best Hopes for cost-effective Urban Rail,
Alan
That's not efficiency, it's dirigisme, statism infused with a dose of arrogance. It does have the strong advantage that they don't always bow down to every two-bit nebbich NIMBY, but extrapolating French conditions to the USA may still be a bit of a political stretch. Imagine Joe Sixpack screaming and yelling and railing to highest heaven about the elitist impositions of vexatious énarques; it's just not on.
The good news is that building stuff like that might promote long-term social and real-estate investment that would never occur based on here-today, probably-gone-tomorrow bus lines.
But the bad news is that France is only the size of three or four typical US states, yet packed full of 60 million people, most crammed like sardines into lower-altitude metropolitan regions. With that magnitude of overcrowding, a tram line even in a small city may add connectivity, for example to the national rail network. And it need not go very far, so it provides many rides per km (the heavy lines of the Paris Metro are very short; on the whole, even the suburban RER trains don't really go very far.) In most of the far less crowded U.S., only the highway would benefit society by adding network connectivity. The tram line would stand apart in splendid uneconomic isolation, connecting to nothing much, traveling a far greater distance (more capital, more wear and tear) to provide the same number of rides, serving mostly the very few who just happen to live and work along the line, and costing everyone else huge subsidies for no benefit.
The other bad news is that highways have the advantage of not forcing constant public contact with hideously expensive, shiftless, surly, schedule-disregarding, strike-prone vehicle operators. One really wants to have a car or something to use when they're on strike, when they simply don't feel like showing up, when the wrong kind of leaves have fallen on the line, when an inch or two of snow have effectively shut them down, or when one simply needs or wants to escape the cloistered confines of town. And once one has that vehicle, well, then except in Manhattan and the Chicago Loop, what use is the tram? IOW when one has two competing capital-intensive technologies, one eventually wins out. Since most of the USA utterly lacks "masses", at least compared to Europe or Japan, it should be no surprise that "mass" transport was the loser here.
So this might all be tilting at windmills. Stay tuned, eventually we shall see...
Yeah, when someone mentions 'public transport' I can literally feel my heart sink.
Somehow in the UK you just know that is never going to mean a fast, smooth and efficient service, but waiting in the cold for a bus that does not turn up for no obvious reason, or being crammed on to a commuter train when the staff happen to have nothing better to do and turn up.
Looks like we will be lucky to still have that though, never mind a car.
From your comments it is obvious that you don't ride rail transit systems, nor have you travelled much in major US population centers. I have worked for short periods of time in over twenty five major metropolitan areas of the US and the traffic in many of them is congested enough to warrent the development of light rail systems. Just because most states don't have the population density of France does not mean that many major metro areas can't support rail transit.
Look at California with over 40 million people (including illegals) and condsider their traffic congestion problems. California needs dozens of rail transit lines beyond the few systems that are now running and well patronized.
And about those transit drivers being surly and strike prone: please elaborate on that regarding US rail transit sytems. All the US rail transit systems I have ridden (over 20) don't have direct rider to operator contact.
Let's see some facts or real life experiences, PaulS, to back up your arguement.
don't have direct rider to operator contact.
I like the operator contact on the New Orleans streetcars. 80+% of them are friendly and helpful.
Most touching are examples like a streetcar operator getting out and helping a blind person across the street when it was messed up by construction.
Best Hopes for People,
Alan
You are right about US density. One can see vineyards and cows grazing from some French tram lines. These are NOT super dense cities, but smaller towns (112,000 is not big) surrounded by villages, connected by trams.
This is a map of the 2011 Mulhouse tram system (pdf)
Google some of the village names and they are 1,000 or so people.
http://www.tram-train.org/sysmodules/RBS_fichier/admin/download.php?file...
There was a time when Iowa had a network of self powered passenger rail cars which connected the many small towns and villages with nearby cities. The last one shut down in the early 1960s as better roads and more reliable autos became affordable.
AlanfromBigEasy -
Dumb question: I know there is a Desire St. in New Orleans, but is there now, or has there even been an actual streetcare with that name on its route indicator?
As ask because I have always been a big fan of Tennessee Williams.
ABSOLUTELY !!
The original Desire Line ran up Royal Street and down Bourbon Street in the French Quarter (one representing fine antiques, art, jewelers, etc and the other more carnal desires).
A city civil engineer and I came up with a plan for the new Desire Streetcar line (on Rampart Street) that everyone liked and Mayor Nagin was going to announce in October, 2005 (as part of his re-election bid). Then Katrina hit and the federal levees failed.
Widen the neutral ground from 20' to 36', put a streetcar between two rows of lamps (like CBD section of Canal Line, but grass running), go from two to one traffic lanes on either side, bicycle lanes on either side. To preserve parking (and make everything fit), encroach on sidewalk about 10" where there is not an overhanging balcony. Where there is an balcony create a 6' wide mini-garden in what would had been parking and require bicycle parking to replace lost auto parking.
AlanfromBigEasy -
Thanks much for the info re Desire Street street car.
I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
and I suppose it's been noted many times, but "A Desire Named Streetcar" would make a good website name...
Well patronized or not, San Diego has cut back service on their trolley system recently due to lack of funds and, for the line in question, lack of riders at night (which was the service that was cut.)
California is right now in a state funds crises, which will find its way into the local mass transportation budgets.
LA is of course the poster child for automobile inspired development, yet gasoline @$3.5/gal is not such a big deal when a dumpy old house costs $500,000. Will an effective rail system ever be built in the greater LA area, as a peak-oil adaptation strategy? I doubt it.
Well, yes, point taken - technically, on the heavy lines as opposed to small trams, one might have contact with a surly strike-prone conductor rather than driver. But the lingering memories are still of the New York subway strikes, and WNEW-TV running hidden camera footage of nothing much besides card games going on at the maintenance shops, and seeing subway cars traveling the NY Thruway on truck trailers to go elsewhere get fixed because nothing went on at the shops, and seeing - just recently - a New York City bus on the Indiana Toll Road for the same reason, and after everybody walked to work for days on end, New York mayors caving in and giving 'em everything they wanted and more, and bonuses on top of that. And don't get me started on the antics of William Ronan, or the infamous 7:55 from Babylon, Long Island, that made the news as canceled, most days. In other words, a veritable cesspit of cronyism, incompetence, shiftlessness, sloth, stupidity and corruption.
Oh, and the moronic excuses on the Washington DC Metro over hard-to-get electrical relays, as if the lazy, slothful, dozing supply bureaucracy shouldn't have seen that one coming years in advance. And the perpetual construction and bus bypasses on the Chicago CTA - no project in Chicago ever gets finished, not rail, not highway. And lest one think that fecklessness and utter indiscipline on the part of public agencies and their jobsworth staffs are limited to the USA, consider the fantastic excuses for execrable service from London out to the Cotswolds (British example: "the leaves on the line are 'bigger and juicier' than last year)". So you're right, I'm happy not to be obliged these days to rely every day on these unreliable contraptions; that the problems are entirely sociological rather than technical makes them essentially impossible to fix once they have set in.
And yes, Manhattan and the Chicago Loop are among the few places in the USA that can support rail transit. Perhaps, also, downtown Washington DC and San Francisco. And yet, oddly enough, the Dulles extension has apparently just gone down in flames, although, if I recall correctly, that's where the local highway is so congested that the lights only allow it to be crossed briefly once every twelve minutes (sorry, didn't find a link.) Likewise, Chicago is a solid clot of traffic most rush hours, and yet they have a big project also apparently going down in flames. OTOH, maybe people figure that with a highway they'd at least get an additional connection, something they might actually use.
I think I'll leave the last word to The Onion: Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others, which we might as well treat as if it were a real news report, since the intractable administrative, social and political realities are almost beyond even Onion satire.
GOOD REPORTING OF A FEW VERY SELECTIVE NEWS "STORIES" TO SUPPORT YOUR CASE.
How about a the fact that transit ridership has climbed to the highest level in 49 years, and many cities that would like to initiate rail transit programs can't becaus their is no federal matching funds available.
And How about the fact that over 90% of federal funding for surface transportation has gone for highways over the last 50 years. (visit www.narprail.org for the facts on transportation spending). No wonder 98% of US commuters have chosen to drive to work, because fast & convenient transit does not exist for most. And how about the article you cited that over 40% of those surveyed think investment in transit is a good idea to help get cars off the road.
Your whining about misinvestment would be better spent on wasteful defense spending, not transit spending.
I love it when wingnuts confuse their political lunacy with physics.
Generally, you'll see one of those middle-aged white guy engineers(MAWGEs), who would burn down fifty orphanages and butt-rape Mother Teresa in order to keep their beloved perks, whine and whine about those pesky public servants who dare to strike for better wages. Never mind that the oil is running out, that he may have to make other arrangements. It is far, far better that the MAWGE get to burn up the last of the oil transporting his whiny butt to and fro from his mortgage to his defense job than to use energy while it is cheap in order to do the heavy lifting of transfiguring the infrastructure towards a more sensible and egalitarian paradigm.
Can't have that. No. I can hear their nasal back country twangs right now.... "Keep those pesky streetcars away from Merkins, cause they ain't a gonna take it a no more. Why we got whatcha call a BIG cuntry fulla BIG people a drivin BIG FAT SUVs. How can you in your right mind even a consider takin away mah freedoms that state I can do whatever the hell I want and screw you. HUH? HUH? This cuntry wasn't a built on no liberal commie pansie ass sharin. WE DON'T SHARE. If you get kicked to the curb, that's a your own danged fault. You shoulda kicked me to the curb, but you didn't.
"Gosh darned buriecrats. Next thing you know they's gonna be a demanding that we keep glass outta baby food. I should have the danged right to do whatever the hell I want and screw you!
"God, I love Amerka."
I work in the defense industry, and this comment is an eerily dead-on description of many of my co-workers.
I am desperately trying NOT to turn into a MAWGE myself.
Cherenkov as usual hit the nail on the head. A blending of Joe Bageant, Kunstler, and George Carlin (Short video on Human Nature, Myth of noble Savage, and Olduvai). (Warning: Carlin clip VERY unpolitically correct & potentially offensive language.)
Anyway, best part of Cherenkov's writing is that accuracy is not sacrificed at the expense of satire.
Cherenkov,
But these middle-aged white guy engineers do you the favor of giving you higher status people who you can derisively comment on in order to assert your even higher status with your superior intellect and understanding. That's how they exist for you.
The people living "packed like sardines" in Paris have no interest in living in your shitty suburb.
for tram lovers, photos from Switzerland: ;) all in English:
http://hampage.hu/trams/TdT2/e_bern.html
http://hampage.hu/trams/TdT2/e_basel1.html
http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix/ch/trams/Geneve/Cityrunner/pix.html
I think I rode on that car in 1960. My dad was invited to a biology professors' confab at Tulane, and we spent the summer there. I captured anoles off the poinsettia bushes and kept them in a terrarium (and separated several others from their tails).
Mom would drag me down to the Quarter to nosh on begniets and chickory coffee (hot chocolate for me) and look at antiques. Seems there was this other street with a lot of interesting noises and lights that Mom never took me to...
* sigh *
Replying to myself, to Paulus, etc.
Switzerland - impressive efforts that are being made in some towns to do everything possible to augment public transport, including wild and painful territorial transformations, forcing businesses to thrash parking places, making public street parking impossible, etc.
Yet:
In Switzerland, the % of private (a difficult definition particularly over 50 years) travellers-kms in 1950, was *only* 56% by public transport: 52% by rail + 3.7% by road vs. 43% by private conveyance, which included for some small proportion, but the numbers don’t say, horse, donkey, bike. (other such as boat/plane are left off.)
In 2005, 21% by public transport: 15% by rail, plus 3% by road. (skipping 'other', again.)
78% by private vehicle. Today, a pie chart for the challenged (language free) shows:
http://www.litra.ch/Voyageurs_kilometres.html
Public transport kms. (network and use) rose regularly 1950-2000, the public transport network expanded. They came close to tripling in both terms of route kms and traveller kms. (very rough!)
However, private vehicle kms were multiplied by a bit more than 14. (my calc from the tables)
The flowering of the oil age. Rising population; rapid construction of road infrastructure; cities and small urban centers that grow, villages and small outposts, and scattered habitations that die out.
Switzerland’s history would tend to make Gvmt. planning and public transport a priority; at the same time, its libertarian spirit and laws, as well as very local Gvmt. saw to it that multiple private initiatives that became possible with the combustion engine /oil flourished. The car/truck was easier and in a way more fun to develop as multiple different actors could get a finger in the pie, and personal initiatives could be implemented. Hundreds of choices opened up - in agriculture, in territorial arrangement, in the planning of industry, housing, etc. All could be uncoupled from the set routes of the public transport, train, and branch out, literally so....Boom times...Switz went post ww2 from the poorest county in Europe to the richest in the world in the 70s and now is usually amongst the top 10, always below Ireland and the US, depending how one counts, etc.
Numbers from LITRA. http://www.litra.ch/Les_transports_en_chiffres.htm
Thanks for the great links, Noizette. I've always loved visiting the city of Berne (my father & I importing scenic Swiss calendars since 1970). Gruessen!
Here you go Alan, just for you.
http://www.bildschirmarbeiter.com/fun_12377_tram-flashmob.html
Beyond Design parameters :-)
Where was this ?
Best Hopes for abused trams,
Alan
No idea, but it sure was funny.
Another train related flash mob video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo