slumcat

Somebody recently posted that all the streetcars now have the required non-revenue test hours completed? So if this is the case does this mean we have to wait until simulated service running starts in Aug to see streetcars, or are they still running in some kind of training/testing mode that may be needed but not necessarily federally required?

Agree, as I understand it's mostly just getting the required non revenue hours in on each of the units, right? Is there another unit just new or to-be-delivered soon? Are there more operators that need to be hired and trained?

^Exactly my point. One of the main purposes of a streetcar is to move large crowds of people in and out dense activity areas safely and efficiently. To say 'let's not run the streetcar when downtown is too crowded' is like saying...well, 'the flood gates are great but let's not use them when the river stage is high'?Lol! My point in posting about Toronto^^ I remember riding to the Exhibition on streetcars that were navigating thru large meandering crowds just fine. Study what other cities do to interface crowds with streetcars and copy!

Sometimes I think Ohio exists in a whole different world. Here's how other places do things.

I live way north of Cincinnati so I don't get downtown or to OTR very often, so can anybody tell me when/where (days of week-time) can I see a streetcar on a test run? I would think there's probably a pattern of times/days of the week. I know they gotta get a lot of non revenue hours in before they can carry passengers so they gotta be on the street now somewhere sometime.

First of all, I anticipate when the uniform traffic codes of states are amended for driverless technologies it will probably come down to driverless cars are well and good, but a licensed attentive driver must still be present in the drivers seat, albeit he's not doing much, but he is providing a manual override in the event of system failure. We kind of almost have this situation now with positive train control, smart locomotives, and 'automatic pilot' manned aircraft. Having said that...let's back off from the engineering and safety bugs for a moment and look at impact on cities. I really have never heard anybody address some of the larger issues involved. Somebody needs to look at: 1)what will 'driverless' automation add to the cost of a car; 2) will auto manufacturers pro rate their R+D costs across every product they sell, driverless or not? 3) we can do a great job of testing one driverless car now, but one car is not a system. What traffic engineering changes will cities have to make in things like signalization and what will be the cost? 4) If I want to keep driving an older car without driverless technology, will I be required to retrofit my old car so it can function on a highway full of driverless cars (ie transponder to tell other cars of my location, speed, and turn signal intentions). This technology is unlikely to make auto ownership any cheaper, and we already have a situation where about a third of households in many of our metro areas can't afford access to a car. Often the law of unintended consequences takes over and the counter intuitive prevails...so maybe/ just maybe driverless technologies will drive down the proportion auto owners, thereby increasing the demand for public transportation and walkable cities. But wait...in the old days the horse knew the way home from the saloon even if the rider didn't. :drunk: So by automating the driver function you are largely reducing the potential for human error...so insurance rates may go down. So could driving get cheaper?? Again, sometimes the counter-intuitive wins out. So the bottom line is: we just don't have enough information yet to say what the impact on cities will be.

And do you know what? I'm at risk of revealing my advanced age here, but I remember my parents saying "thank god they did away with rotary turns". "Rotary turns" you say? At many intersections it used to be illegal to turn left, even more commonly than today. But it was perfectly OK to make a right turn and then...believe it or not...an immediate 'U'-turn, the overall effect being of course a very circuitous left turn. I always wondered what kind of an idiot would design traffic patterns to encourage this maneuver, but your post above makes me think--this might have been partly to keep autos to the right thereby clearing the left lane/center lanes for streetcars.

Anecdotal only of course, but in my travels north of the border I rarely heard natives criticize streetcars as "slow", probably because so many Toronto streetcar trips are just short subway transfers. By far the biggest problem with the Toronto mixed traffic configuration is this: non-natives don't realize that a streetcar is just like a school bus--when the doors open all traffic has to stop, its the law. Otherwise you'll nail a passenger getting on or off. I gotta think this is a problem in Philly too except where they have the concrete safety islands. Cincinnati and most other modern streetcar cities wisely avoided this problem with side-of-the street rails, so what you sacrifice from on street parking you gain in passenger safety. And the side of the street running you can speed up with signal pre-emption or marking the rails as HOV lanes if you can enforce it.

^The thing behind this stuff about streetcars lately is some "expert" saying that a reserved right of way is necessary for project success. Well, reserved lanes help but they aren't essential. A bunch of other local factors are involved, like connectivity to other parts of the regional transit system and population density. Toronto is the most successful streetcar city in the western hemisphere and the only reserved right of way lines they have are St. Clair, Spadina, Harbourfront, and part of Queen. About 70% of the system is mixed traffic. (The Streetcar in the photo appears nearly empty because its at the end of the Bathurst line...believe me it will be packed by the time it gets near the Bloor subway connection.) Just to keep on topic, what the Cincinnati Streetcar has going for it at this point is population density. Now we need to focus on establishing better connectivity within the region by expanding the reach and focusing on extensions...go NKY, Uptown or Northside!

I was in Daytons RTA garage one time and a guy showed me a sharp heavy metal thing called an ice cutter. They mount them at the top of a standard electric pick up trolley pole to cut the ice off trolleybus lines. It's copper so the device is conductive drawing in the current while its scraping ice. I gotta think the ice problem has been around for over a century and hundreds of other cities have worked on it, so I googled the ice question relative to Toronto, which btw has hundreds of streetcars in service every day. I found a story 'bout guys going around in pickup trucks knocking down ice with sticks? WTF gimmie a break! Anyway, Dayton and Toronto have electric transit based on trolley poles, not pantographs, so I'm gonna do some Google research to find out what Russian systems do (hundreds of streetcar cities and all with pantographs). Anyway, couple of things to keep the problem in perspective...ice creates havoc with any transportation system, so electric transit advocates don't own the 'ice problem' and, frozen switches and frozen air or hydraulic lines are the worst problem so I gotta think the freight railroads have some solutions.

I've always liked the idea of going south, especially if it means bringing TANK on board. For one thing there is already a proven cross-river transit ridership so nay- sayers can't say "nobody will ride it". A Ky side streetcar could render the south bank shuttle obsolete, meaning that there's a savings there that could be rolled back into the streetcar project. And TANK could look at truncating other routes on the Kentucky side at the streetcar. I know people like one seat rides, but as a transit rider I personally would rather do my last mile on a streetcar, even if it means giving up my one-seat ride. Huge savings for TANK...every TANK bus won't have to cross the river and navigate downtown. Admittedly this would involve some complex politics, but if St. Louis can do a bi-state light rail we can probably do the same with a streetcar. Any bridge we could get appraised for part of the local match?

What's going on, if anything, with the idea that was discussed on this thread maybe 2 yrs ago, of creating a special taxing district for properties in close proximity to the route?

Anybody know when is the likeliest day/time to see a non-revenue test under full power? Will there be any kind of regular test schedule?

^sounds interesting! 9-5 is a broad window of time, anybody able to narrow it down a little more time specific? Also, "dead pull"? K, probably someone has posted 'bout this before but it's gotta have some power at least for brakes. How is this accomplished...and maybe lights and turn signals too?

So what are the chances of him successfully undermining the project by monkeying with the operating hours? Lots of luck with that :wink: Employer flex-time anyone?

I'm sure this has already been the subject of posts, but I just noticed a "new" :wave: angle to the streetcar rollout as I was reading the initial delivery coverage on page 8A, Fridays Enquirer: "He (Mayor Cranley) wants the streetcar to start operating later each day and run until midnight on weekdays and 2AM on weekends. (The current proposal is from 6AM-10 PM Mon.-Thurs. & Sun. and 6AM-Midnight on Fri., Sat.)" So, it looks like Cranley is basically shifting the whole schedule block of time 2 hours later in the day, for a presumed start time of 8:00AM? Is this what he's thinking? Is this an attempt to make it more difficult for morning commuters to use the streetcar for work trips, thereby undermining the support that has been expressed by major CBD employers? :wtf:

Enquirer came out against issue 2 today in an editorial, something about vague and confusing language that could be constructed too broadly by the courts. I was for #2 but may have to re-think.

Anybody got a reliable recent poll yet, with statistical validity and likely voters only in the sample?

The Uber app is fantastic, I use it all the time. Apply the same capabilities to a transit app and you've got a winner. Which brings to mind btw people often ask me "how come you, a streetcar/transit advocate, like Uber wtf? Uber could put you out of business." To which my short answer is: " the more transport alternatives you provide the more people that will say 'screw it I don't need that car...or that second car.' Which bottom line only helps transit long-run."

Is there a consensus out there, which city with a coordinated bus-rail-streetcar system has the best (ie most user friendly) real time vehicle locator gps app that will tell me where's my bus, how long before its at my stop, and what route is it on? (I use Amtrak's train locator whenever I travel, but all it tells me is when did it leave the last station-I must interpolate the exact location.)

Here's part of the problem with buses. And I don't really think it has that much to do with the amenities provided at stops (ie shelter/ lack of shelter). When you can see the infrastructure "your" vehicle runs on it eliminates the fear of getting on the wrong line.

:wink: You mean the streetcar has the physical capability to exceed the speed limit? OMG shhhhhhh!!! Don't tell the Enquirer or WLW.

Trolley buses have batteries but nevertheless you see them getting pushed by service pickup trucks a lot .... Trucks with huge oversize wooden bumpers in the front. Cincinnati streetcars don't have batteries? Are you sure? Seems like the power out thing is a contingency that should be planned for...storm, auto hitting a pole or substation, or whatever. At least you gotta keep the lights and radio working.

If I were a first responder I would probably assume all power lines were hot and act accordingly, but having said that I'm thinking...can't they just cut the power to the impacted loop and leave the rest of the system running? Our experience with trolleys here in Dayton shows that when emergency vehicles block a street part or all of the route shuts down. In this situation sometimes supervisor vans come around and pick up people standing at stops.

^Thank you for posting! Firefighters are simply trained to avoid the power lines by working within the space between the lines and the building facade. Just don't cross the wires with an aluminum ladder or hose stream. There are feed cables along the side of the street but at least those are insulated. More problematic is the issue of rerouting wire-bound electric transit around public emergencies on streets that may not have the power lines. The Enquirer prints stuff that clearly isn't news just to keep the "s word" in a state of continual controversy so they can get more clicks and sell more papers. Think of it this way: dozens of North American cities and thousands world wide have had some form of street running electric transit for over 100 years. So all of a sudden Cincinnati's streetcar wires are some kind of a new problem? That isn't news, and the first rule of journalism is if it ain't news don't print it. C'mon give me a break!