Streetcars make safer streets

Barcelona

  
Modern streetcars are long, light-rail trains operating at safe speeds on neighborhood streets. They can travel as fast as commuter trains through open countryside to connect outlying suburbs with the city. But in town they slow to 20 or 30 mph—like cars and buses except they’re not stuck in traffic. Because they move predictably along a path clearly marked before them by the rails in the street, a streetcar moving 30 mph is much less dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists than a bus moving 30 mph—not to mention a taxi or an SUV with a mom on the phone and kids in the back. At slower speeds streetcars can mix safely with crowds of people on pedestrian shopping streets.

Dusseldorf

No need to climb stairs to a platform: you can shop while you wait for the train, and board right from the sidewalk. People roll on and off the low-floor vehicles quickly and easily through multiple doors. With electric power they accelerate and brake smoothly, and they don’t pollute the air with diesel fumes. They reduce traffic congestion, boost local business, increase property values, and they’re cheaper to operate than buses. Plus they’re cool.

Orleans

BRT or streetcar? The choice is about more than just the transit system

There's a lot of debate in transit circles about whether to invest in Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) or modern streetcars. For high-capacity systems in big cities, BRT costs less to install, but streetcars cost less to operate (the longer trains carry more people per driver and the drivers are 75% of the operating cost). As a result, so far BRT has been more popular in the developing world, where capital is scarce and labor is cheap; wealthier industrialized countries with union wages have preferred the higher up-front costs of a rail system that saves money over the long run.

Bus Rapid Transit in Bogotá, Colombia and modern streetcar in Strasbourg, France.

  
But the choice is not just between two different transit systems.


Buses and streetcars have very different impacts on the streets in which they operate. Our choice has profound implications for the character of the street--for how attractive it is to people to shop or go out to dinner there, to invest in property or start a business or raise a family there. 


There's a big difference between a line of diesel buses and a long electric streetcar. 


I'm excited that the city of Chicago is investing in upgrading to faster bus service on Western and Ashland: buses that are now stuck in car traffic are going to get a lane of their own. Someday maybe they’ll upgrade further to the "gold standard" of Bus Rapid Transit by investing (a lot) in special buses with multiple doors, raised curbs for level boarding, and big stations for pre-payment. Maybe someday they’ll even spring for hybrid electric buses, which cost three times as much but don’t foul the air as badly as the old-fashioned diesel buses we’ve got today.

The Bus Rapid Transit "gold standard," and what it looks like when it really works.

I hope this really works and a lot of people switch from driving and taxis to riding the bus. If it does really work, this could evolve into a pretty high capacity transit system. If it really works, those buses will be lined up end to end like in Curitiba or Bogotá or Brisbane. That’s fine with me, because I’m not planning on strolling around to shop on Western Avenue, or riding my bike there, or having dinner there at a sidewalk café.

I can’t imagine ever doing any of those things next to a line of buses.

When we upgrade to a high-capacity transit system on the shopping street in my neighborhood, I hope we go with electric streetcars: clean, quiet, and safe.

Good place for BRT.

Good place for streetcars.

It's Drive to Work Week!

Transit shmansit: what's the difference?

This is not the suburbs

Does this look like the suburbs?

Clark Street. From Daley Plaza at the heart of the Chicago Loop, it heads north along the Gold Coast and ambles through Lincoln Park and Lakeview on the way to Wrigley Field. 

This is not the suburbs.

The Clark Street corridor is a walkable urban neighborhood that we’ve been treating like sprawling suburbia—like a place to drive through rather than a place to live.

The largest unmet demand in American real estate is for walkable urbanism—neighborhoods close to downtown with high-quality (rail) transit service and lots of amenities within walking distance of home. There is plenty of demand for a few such neighborhoods in Chicago, too.

There are too many people living in the Clark Street corridor for it to be efficiently served by a transportation infrastructure that prioritizes through traffic and parking over transit and biking on every single street. What works in the more sprawling, auto-dependent neighborhoods to the west doesn’t work near the lakefront. There’s no reason we should continue to treat all of our 814 streets as though they were all the same, when they’re obviously not. There’s plenty of room for some variety in Chicago—for a few streets that prioritize pedestrians, or cyclists, or transit over cars. When it comes to streets, we could use a little more choice and competition.

The good news is that we have enough density in the Clark Street corridor to justify having one street that prioritizes commuter transit and shopping over driving and parking. It's the densest place in the city. We’re lucky to have enough density for world-class transit, for great neighborhood shopping in a pedestrian environment, and for car ownership to be an option rather than a necessity. We can spend less on car loans, gas, insurance, maintenance, and parking and more on real estate and restaurants. We could be wasting less time stuck in a car than anyone in Chicago—and spending more time at the beach or the bar, the zoo or the Cubs game, with our families and our friends.

Time for greatness

The density of a city and the transportation infrastructure that serves it generally evolve together. As population density changes, the infrastructure adapts to provide an appropriate, cost-effective, efficient mix of options for getting around town.

From its founding through the 1950s, the city of Chicago became increasingly dense. It was planned and developed around the largest network of streetcars that has ever existed. There was an electric streetcar line on almost every street, and there could be no development without one. 


In the 1950s automobiles and buses replaced streetcars and the city's population began to decline, sprawling out into the suburbs. Taxpayers fled, while spending to build and maintain roads ballooned as we replaced streetcars with the most expensive and least efficient transportation option on the menu: the private car. The result is some of the worst traffic congestion in America. While the suburbs have continued to grow, by 2010 the population of the city itself had declined to its lowest point since 1910. 


But things have begun to change again. For many, the dream of suburban living has evolved into a nightmare of traffic congestion, parking lots, and strip malls. It's boring. People have been moving back downtown for the convenience and the culture. Dynamic companies have begun relocating to the city center to attract a creative workforce that favors urban living. It's more fun. 

The transportation infrastructure needs to accommodate and encourage greater density and continued economic development. We need a growth-oriented strategy that brings more people and fewer cars into the Loop every year--more commerce and less congestion. The system we have today was designed for the era of suburban flight. It’s out of sync with the future of Chicago. 

It’s time for an upgrade to a modern transportation infrastructure that’s in time with the great city we are becoming. 

Greatness.

Mediocrity.

Greatness.

Reverse Option Analysis

My antidote for the status quo bias is the Reverse Option Analysis. That’s where you reverse the positions of the status quo and the proposed change. You treat the proposed change as if we had been living with it for generations; you treat the status quo as if if were a proposal for something new.
Ready?

How would we view a proposal to change from a status quo of electric streetcars in dedicated lanes to a new system of diesel buses stuck in traffic?

The Reverse Option Analysis makes the status quo bias obvious: people accept buses in traffic not because it’s a good strategy but because it’s the status quo.