See the video yet? Please be safe around the streetcar tracks! 🙂
Kind of sappy and silly, but seriously everyone needs to bear in mind the streetcar is there. The tracks aren’t coming up and they’re getting more popular again. So be safe and careful to approach the tracks safely.
So Kansas City decided yesterday that their streetcar service will be free. No fare, that’s right. This might be great in many ways, but as stated in the article.
But authority members agreed the streetcar operator will have to make sure rowdy teens, vagrants and loiterers don’t take abuse the free fare and ruin the ride.
Really? Ugh, this is so frustrating for a number of reasons. We subsidize over-utilization of about every transportation mode in America (except maybe cruise ships, maybe?). Every mode is heavily subsidized which just encourages people to abuse the systems, infrastructure and in the end, pollute more. Even transit pollutes, and encouraging over usage of it and not incurring the full price (or damage) of over-utilization means we just get more of the same. I’m glad they’re getting a streetcar and encouraging people to get out of their cars and use the downtown – which they should – but blast it if we don’t keep going down the same debt burdened, tax dependent systems we’ve been stuck with for the last 80 years with airlines, automobiles and every other transit mode. In the end, this doesn’t help out nation become more responsible or intelligent about its actions or usage of energy.
Charge a fare, at least an extreme minimum. Fifty cents, a buck, either will work!
Impressive, Phoenix isn’t my favorite city, primarily for idealogical reasons and the mere physics of a city smack in the middle of a desert. But some people there are trying to improve things and make it… Â sustainable? Not sure that’s possible, but this news is a good thing for sure.
The light rail that Phoenix had built a number of years ago has seen a surge in ridership.
Total Boardings for August: 1,166,156 vs 982,776 in July.
Avg. Weekday Boardings: 42,054 vs 34,168 in July.
Avg Saturday Boardings: 28,592 vs 27,935 in July.
Avg Sunday / Holiday Boardings: 21,138 vs 25,585 in July.
My suggestion, if you’re going to go live in the desert (at your own risk) then be sure to live along the light rail line. Better value for your money and less reliance on a single mode of transport (your car) is a good thing.
Trimet, which considering comparative performance, does a great job comparative to King County Metro on a cost basis. Crazy you say, crazy not I say. They carry less per capita in their city core (i.e. the city itself, not the metropolitan area) than Trimet does, yet Metro does so at almost 2x the price per passenger as Trimet. Even though I think there isn’t much Trimet should imitate from Metro, there are two things I absolutely think they should invest in. These two things, would be easy investments since our neighbor Seattle has so much experience with them and has done most of the research and data gathering around it already.
These two things I know have been on the table and off the table, and overall Trimet has done alright. But they really need to start looking at some of these options. Once the city has a complete north, south, east, and western build out of light rail it is time to build up those rail lines even more by interconnecting them with BRT routes. Then the BRT routes can be shifted over the years as the BRT routes are bumped up to LRT or such. But for now, let’s get some serious frequency and capacity along the core routes of the city and build out those areas even more.
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents. I’m not going to complain like some of the light rail haters do and bus lovers gushing over buses do, but overall, Trimet should put a little emphasis on the services around the light rail.
Transit Sleuth 