"when are you going to grow up and get a car?"

 

Along with that "when are you going to move out of Clifton?".  Among Cincinnati suburbanites, living in the city is seen as a tempory phase.   

I would think Jackson Street between 12 and Central would be a good spot for Zipcars.  Located centrally in the basin, plenty of residential uses nearby (including the Art Academy) and located in the almost exact middle of the Phase 1 streetcar route.

 

I would say they could Find some agreement with the 3CDC lot at 12/v and park the cars there.

^ It's sort of chicken-and-egg, right?  Until the average resident sees the basin as walkable, they will demand parking.  But if it's easy to keep a car there's little incentive to walk more than a couple of blocks.

 

It IS a chicken and egg thing. An area tends to be either walkable or not, without much middle ground, because it is impossible to design an area to be both walkable AND driveable.

 

In my humble opinion, this is what makes new rail transit in auto-oriented areas such a challenge. To achieve enough pedestrian density to support the transit, cars have to be limited. If the area around the stops is redeveloped complete with parking, there will not be enough density to support the transit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

^ It's sort of chicken-and-egg, right?  Until the average resident sees the basin as walkable, they will demand parking.  But if it's easy to keep a car there's little incentive to walk more than a couple of blocks.

 

It IS a chicken and egg thing. An area tends to be either walkable or not, without much middle ground, because it is impossible to design an area to be both walkable AND driveable.

 

In my humble opinion, this is what makes new rail transit in auto-oriented areas such a challenge. To achieve enough pedestrian density to support the transit, cars have to be limited. If the area around the stops is redeveloped complete with parking, there will not be enough density to support the transit.

 

Of course you can design an area to be walkable and driveable! I used to do it every day. In fact this is really the only way forward for American cities if energy scarcity pushes us to transit. The process will be iterative, and there is PLENTY of precedent on how to do it.

Cincy really needs to get Zipcar in the basin.  I live in Center City Philly and still here 44% of people have a car.  But more and more I hear people ditching their car for Zipcar or Philly Car Share.  The cost to have a car down here is just so cost prohibitive.  Plus, it is completely socially acceptable and even celebrated to have a Zipcar account.  When I lived in Indy and was car free, it was seen as such a socially unacceptable thing to not have a car.  There seemed to still be such a social significance to what you drove.  People regularly said things to me like: "when are you going to grow up and get a car?"  In Indy, I think people assumed I was broke because I didn't have a car.  In Philly, many people would assume I am stupid if I had a car in CC.   

 

I don't see the basin as being populated enough yet to support this. Mainly because we don't have fixed transit yet with a lot of car-free housing units.

A newcomer to any city is much more likely to be able to go car-free because they don't yet have relatives and friends who live off the bus line.  The family pressure to own a car is immense, since without a car you can't drive grandma from her suburban condo to the suburban hospital she is convinced is more convenient than the city ones. 

My folks are in their 70s and have a lot of doctor's appointments. I'm an only child and we don't have much in the way of an extended family left in the area. My folks have their friends take them to that stuff since I can't do it because of my work hours. Worst comes to worst, they can pay someone around town (they live on a farm outside of a small town) that needs work to take them places. If they lived in a suburb where nobody knows anyone else, they'd be in trouble. Score one for small towns, I guess.

Of course you can design an area to be walkable and driveable!

 

I disagree. Walkable, urban areas will tolerate a few cars, but not many. 

 

 

 

 

 

Is that Harry Potter World?

 

On a serious note, that picture doesn't even show a sidewalk.  How about a picture of Greenwich Village or Dupont Circle or, idk, OTR to show a neighborhood that is both walkable and drivable.

^^ That example might not be auto-friendly, but it's not very ped-friendly, either. A poor illustration of whatever point you were trying to make.

Actually... That looks like a typical european village street. That is considered highly walkable and standard there.

Agreed. Technically that whole street is the sidewalk and cars have to maneuver so slowly that there is very rarely any incidents. This reminds me that a few European towns were in the news for eliminating all traffic markings and signage. The result ended up being safer streets.

 

http://dc.streetsblog.org/2007/09/14/german-town-chooses-human-interaction-over-traffic-signals/

http://thecityfix.com/blog/naked-streets-without-traffic-lights-improve-flow-and-safety/

You can't really convert an American city into a European village.  However, for an example of what I've found to be an excellent place to live that is walkable and drivable is Astoria in Queens, NY.  I lived there and walked/took the subway to work, and drove to other parts of Queens in the evenings, weekends, etc.

^Looks more walkable than most sprawl areas in Ohio but I'd still prefer to walk in the European village.

 

Just look at the difference in the street widths! Walking is a lot more sensitive to distance than you might imagine, and that includes the distance from one side of the street to the other, especially when there is the potential of being struck by a car. Would you let you 5 year old child cross that street by himself?

 

 

Regarding aspects of walkability, cars versus pedestrians, narrow streets, old versus new urbanism, etc., I highly recommend these articles:

 

http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2009/071209.html

http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2009/071909.html

http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2009/072609.html

 

http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2010/100310.html

 

http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2008/072008.html

http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2009/101109.html

 

There's a ton of articles listed in the archive at http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/ but there's not really any structure to it, plus a lot of economics stuff to wade through as well.  But if you start with those articles above and check out the links to others, then go through the archive to see what you missed, it's quite enlightening. 

 

Street width does not automatically preclude its attractiveness to pedestrians.  Broadway in Nashville is way wider than any street in Cincinnati, without a center island like Central Parkway, but is swarmed with fat tourists. 

It may not preclude it in all cases, but in most it does. 

It looks like my reading/viewing material for the next few hours is right here in your links, jjakucyk (Reply #902).  Thanks so much for this valuable information!

Oh, and all those big avenues in Paris are much wider than almost any street in the US.  The avenues in Detroit are 110ft. if my memory is correct, Central Parkway is about 130, but streets in Paris are 200+. 

A few streets in Paris are that wide, but most of them are quite small.  And Paris has quite a lot of density and large buildings.  A point that Nathan makes in those various articles is that the hypertrophic street (i.e. excessively wide) works best at its worst, when it's surrounded by equally oversized buildings.  Midtown Manhattan or the Chicago loop is a good example, with relatively wide streets of 5 lanes or so, and skyscrapers.  That works ok.  However, most cities have little more than 2-3 story buildings.  Even Over-the-Rhine is like that.  Such wide streets simply don't work well in that context.  They can't be filled by pedestrians, so they get filled with vehicles instead. 

 

You don't even have to look far around Cincinnati to find streets that were built way larger than they needed to be even in the era before automobiles.  Gilbert Avenue, Delta Avenue, Erie Avenue, and Madison Road for example are late 19th and very early 20th century projects, and they were built 60 feet from curb to curb.  Why?  Streetcars didn't need anywhere near that amount of space.  Woodward Avenue in Detroit is even worse, it positively dwarfs the streetcars in its center and the little buildings along it.  http://www.shorpy.com/Woodward-Avenue-Detroit-1942

 

Such huge streets suck the value out of adjacent properties in the automobile age, not that they were great in the horse and buggy day either (because you needed a horse and buggy in many cases, as opposed to just your own two legs).  They basically are automobile sewers that houses, pedestrians, and businesses want to flee.  The wide boulevards of Paris and some other European cities work better because they're already in intense central locations with a lot of pedestrian activity, subways, and other transit options.  They are also meticulously designed as well.  In Paris in particular, many of the boulevards are divided into three or four pieces, which breaks up their size significantly, making them more akin to parkways than highways.  Rather than 9 or 10 lanes of unbroken traffic, like Woodward Avenue, it's more like 3 or 4 separate small streets, each with parking, buses, slow traffic, and proper rows of street trees. 

 

Nevertheless, all those things merely mitigate the underlying width problem.  You don't have to mitigate anything in a "really narrow street".  Besides, just because there are some examples of wide streets that work ok doesn't invalidate the arguments against them, especially here in the US. 

Any updates from today's meeting re: the Wasson Line?

I wasn't there.  But I did dig up this map of OKI's late 1970's light rail plan, which planned to use the Wasson line:

http://www.cincinnatimonocle.blogspot.com/2012/03/okis-1970s-plan-for-wasson-rd-railroad.html

 

I don't know if anyone's out there acting like the Wasson Rd. transit line idea is a new one, because it's obviously been around for over 30 years. 

 

 

 

>Gilbert Avenue, Delta Avenue, Erie Avenue, and Madison Road for example are late 19th and very early 20th century projects, and they were built 60 feet from curb to curb.  Why?

 

In cities with mostly narrow streets, wide streets carried prestige, and were expected to become "main" streets.  Erie is a good example, although it's important to note that when Hyde Park was platted the square was expected to extend several more blocks toward Madison.  There was an Ohio Supreme Court case back around 1925 that kept the square limited to what it is today.  Obviously, if more commercial properties were built, the value of the existing ones would decline 

 

I have seen the many interesting ways that the wide avenues are divided in Paris.  They don't do that anywhere in the US, except maybe a few blocks of Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.  As wide as Woodward is, it's still not wide enough to do those things.  Also, the excessive street widths in Detroit are an accident of history, since they were platted a century before the automobile was invented. 

 

 

Except the excessively wide streets of Detroit were not an accident of history.  The excessively wide streets of the whole USA are an accident of history.  Detroit isn't unique at all, it's just a tiny bit worse than everywhere else.  What is unique is finding those super narrow streets that were the de facto standard of the entire world before 1800 anywhere in the USA.  There's a very few in Boston and Charleston, SC, and maybe a few other random places, but they're the exception rather than the rule. 

 

The other thing is that while those major streets in Cincinnati like Gilbert, Madison, Erie, etc. are wider, nearly every other street built in the city in the 19th and early 20th century is 40 feet wide, whether it's a main thoroughfare like Reading Road, Glenway Avenue, Vine Street, or Eastern Avenue, or just some piddly side street. 

Any updates from today's meeting re: the Wasson Line?

 

I got a nice response from Councilwoman Qualls' staffer noting that even the bicycle advocates want the Wasson Line preserved for rail.

It's like both sides want to have their cake and eat it too.  I'm surprised at how much hand waving is going on with this Wasson situation, as few seem to be thinking about the real-world implications of the right-of-way width, proximity to streets and back yards, street crossings, etc.  Even if they could squeeze the tracks and trail together on the existing ROW, what about the stations?  Once you add room for the platforms that's another 20 feet or so at a minimum, and two of the logical station locations (Edwards and Paxton) are some of the tightest locations.  To suggest that the trail could be built along with tracks and stations is just not possible.  Also, has anyone addressed the trestle over Red Bank Road?  That in and of itself is a problem for both light rail and for a rec trail because of its width and its age. 

Any updates from today's meeting re: the Wasson Line?

 

I got a nice response from Councilwoman Qualls' staffer noting that even the bicycle advocates want the Wasson Line preserved for rail.

Ditto

^ Here's another problem. The trail advocates want to finance this with Federal and state grants. Those will undoubtedly mandate that the trail be kept in service for many years. Consider the issue Cincinnati is having now with trying to use money from the sale of the Blue Ash Airport for the streetcar. A long ago agreeement with the Feds now stands in the way of that.

^and the fact that it occupies an easment.  The railroad did not own the land that the trestle travels over, which must have some legal implication for its future use by a trail or transit line. 

 

I'm guessing that building this line 4-5 miles between Xavier and Fairfax is going to cost about $300 million.  Adding a tunnel in Hyde Park will bring it to $400 million.  But even though this will be a branch off the I-71 line, I see it as a trunk line to the east side, with one line staying north of the Little Maimi to Terrace Park and Milford and another turning south to Beechmont. 

 

You can design rail transit and a trail to coexist in almost any way that your imagination, funding and ADA (if federal funds are used) allows. For example, see the Panhandle Trail along the former Pennsylvania Railroad mainline (now state-owned, used by 50 mph freight trains) through Newark, OH. See: http://ohiobikeways.net/panhandle.htm

 

It seems that the most laterally constrained portion of the right of way are along Wasson Road where the trail or the rail can be moved to the street (http://onemorecyclist.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/bike-lane-and-light-rail-portland.jpg). And even then, the only "narrow" section is the half-mile between Edward and Paxton. So you put your stations beyond this section. Much of the right of way has plenty of room for a single-track, diesel LRT with modest stations like Austin's Capital MetroRail (http://www.worldchanging.com/local/austin/archives/006838.html) or the Oceanside-Escondido Sprinter (http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_83235873-15c8-5f6f-b02b-d66bf65ba9d1.html).

 

Unless the rail line was legally abandoned, it doesn't matter what funding (regardless of source) was used to build the trail. Legally, there is a big difference between "abandoned" and "railbanked." In terms of the impact on the landscape, there may not be much visible difference since the tracks are gone either way. But if the railroad company has ceased service or even ripped out tracks with approval by the Surface Transportation Board under federal Railbanking provisions, then the rights of the interim user are superseded by a prospective rail user -- even if the subsequent rail user is a different carrier than the original carrier who discontinued rail service. If the STB agrees, and it always has thus far, there is a possibility that the interim user and its funders may be responsible for removing whatever infrastructure it has installed along the rail line at its own expenses -- not the rail user's expense. So all those street crossings that were paved over or pulled out have to be put back, bridges removed have to be replaced and trails added have to be removed and the rail right of way restored to the condition it was in after the railroad ceased operations and turned over the right of way to interim user.

 

To show you all how serious this is, when a rail carrier seeks to use a railbanked right of way, it has to apply to the STB for approval. For reactivating an abandoned railroad line, the STB can take 1-3 years to conduct environmental assessments, look at alternatives and issue a decision. For reactivating a railbanked railroad line, the STB typically takes less than a year, and sometimes as little as two weeks to reach a decision. And the STB has NEVER refused the railroad carrier the right to take back a Railbanked railroad right of way. Not once.

 

The Railbanking laws were passed by Congress in 1983 and they give great powers to railroads and rail users, all of which had eminent domain powers to begin with. But if a rail line was abandoned, then the railroad or other rail user has given up its right to use the line. It has to start over, as if a rail line had never existed there. Even so, the STB has yet to deny the reactivation of an abandoned railroad line, although it has ordered the railroad to implement some operational restrictions and infrastructure enhancements (ie: no nighttime operations, sound walls, enhanced grade crossing safety, etc) to mitigate environmental conditions. However the case law on reactivated abandoned rail lines is far less than it is for railbanked rights of ways. The railbanking case law has become fairly extensive in just the past decade and is getting more extensive. There are many more cases due to come before the STB in the coming months and years to test what the STB will allow on rail line reactivations considering the increased energy/industrial shipping activity nationwide and the growth of rail freight traffic as well as growing interest in expanded intercity/urban passenger rail.

 

Sorry for the long-winded response. But the short answer is that if someone really wants to push rail in the Wasson Corridor, the federal case law is strongly on your side.

^ Even rail transit?

KJP, the pinch point you speak of between Edwards and Paxton is the most important part of the line.  There is actually quite a bit of automobile congestion in that area as-is, because the roads all meet in a messy fashion, with cars often cueing for more than one light cycle.  I've been thinking that all of the action at Madison and Paxton is going to discourage use of the trail, with parents preventing kids from crossing this area, which just happens to be at the more or less center of the whole planned trail. 

 

Also, with rail transit so politicized, I can see someone meddling with the railbanking process behind the scenes.

 

 

^ Even rail transit?

 

As far as I know, yes. From what I understand, it generally doesn't seem to matter what is being carried in the rail cars, or which federal agency is regulating the rail carrier (FTA vs FRA). But I cited the Austin and Escondido rail services for a reason -- because they are FRA-regulated transit service and those routes also have freight service. Each of those rail transit services have tracks over which freight carriers have access rights. So if SORTA (or whomever) wants to build a diesel light rail service over the Wasson Line, it can offer access rights to a freight rail carrier like Indiana & Ohio. In this case, SORTA acts as like a port authority or some other public sector entity intervening on behalf of a private freight rail carrier to reactivate, finance and develop railroad infrastructure.

 

I'm pretty sure about the passenger rail rights, if for no other reason that Amtrak has more legal powers to use any rail corridor it wishes and to force that railroad owner to maintain it to certain standards than any freight rail carrier does! And Amtrak does contract with commuter rail authorities to provide management services. But I am positive about the legal powers which rail carriers possess when it comes to railbanked reactivations. You would need to identify under what conditions (abandonment or railbanking) the rail carrier's certificate of convenience and necessity was discontinued.

 

Here is some light reading........

http://law.justia.com/cfr/title49/49-8.1.1.2.57.3.html

http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/1152/29

KJP, the pinch point you speak of between Edwards and Paxton is the most important part of the line.  There is actually quite a bit of automobile congestion in that area as-is, because the roads all meet in a messy fashion, with cars often cueing for more than one light cycle.  I've been thinking that all of the action at Madison and Paxton is going to discourage use of the trail, with parents preventing kids from crossing this area, which just happens to be at the more or less center of the whole planned trail. 

 

Then why not have the trail bridge over it? Here in Cleveland, the Towpath Trail bridges over two busy intersections with very attractive spans. This is one of them but the other looks exactly like it....

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tfiz/2291519463/#

 

Also, with rail transit so politicized, I can see someone meddling with the railbanking process behind the scenes.

 

If it did (not sure how) then Cincinnati would be the first instance of a railbanking reactivation failing. The STB staff issues decisions on rail line reactivations, not local politicians or even federal elected officials.

Just for reference, the track appears not to be officially abandoned, but simply closed.  http://www.stb.dot.gov/decisions/readingroom.nsf/WEBUNID/E7135DB4DA3B8B6F8525773E006D4C31?OpenDocument  This is consistent with Norfolk Southern's general practices, asthey much prefer to sit on unused lines than to abandon them.  Still, it makes me wonder what sort of agreement they came to that allowed the shopping center at Edwards to start filling over the tracks in an attempt to extend their parking lot.  I suppose it's a lease? 

 

The same goes for the tracks along the east side of Xavier's campus.  The former Cincinnati Connecting Belt Railway, which ran from Xavier north to the former B&O in central Norwood, has been out of service for a while now, though I'm not exactly sure just how long.  I'd guess it was closed in the 80s or early 90s.  NS sat on it for all that time, and appears to have only petitioned for full abandonment in 2008.  http://www.stb.dot.gov/decisions/readingroom.nsf/51d7c65c6f78e79385256541007f0580/b6b7d053de7886638525749b0065a7c3?OpenDocument  That includes the bit of track west of Montgomery Road near Dana as well.  This was probably necessary for Xavier to tear it all up and put paths and such in.  I think there's still some requirement to keep it open, but I don't know the particulars about that.  I know Sherman does though.

These are important issues to follow, and most rail carriers today prefer railbanking vs. abandonment. That option was not available to them before 1983.

 

Even so, abandonment does not preclude reactivation. The STB looks at rail and non-rail alternatives in their environmental assessments, and unless their is a better rail routing alternative, they invariably will go with what the rail carrier prefers to do. The non-rail alternatives usually incur much more vehicular traffic, emissions, noise, worsened safety, etc. and thus have been rejected in the few abandonment reactivation decisions I've read.

There are three intersections from Marburg past Madison that will be a real pain in the ass for this line (as bike or train or both) as it intersects with car traffic (Paxton, Edwards, and Madison). This same stretch has a massive potential for NIMBYism - roughly the same demographic as along the OASIS line along Riverside Drive.

^ Agreed.  A light rail line would cross Edwards right at Wasson, and Madison just west of Edwards, all three busy roads, in the space of 100 yards.  A passing light rail train would shut these intersections down for, what, at least 60-120 seconds while the barriers come down, the train passes, and the barriers go back up?  It would also impede traffic flow into Rookwood.  I don't know what the frequency of such a light rail line would be, but that intersection is a clusterfart most of the time already. 

 

And I don't even want to think about the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

 

Wasson at Paxton/Isabella is also a complicated intersection, and the rail line has poor sight lines from much of that intersection.  I wouldn't want to cycle on a path there.

 

I just can't see that stretch as being safe for MUP users without dedicated ped/bike signaling or other traffic calming measures.  I'm a cyclist and I would rather ride on the street - I think I'd be more visible.  I just can't get my head around it.

Then why not have the trail bridge over it? Here in Cleveland, the Towpath Trail bridges over two busy intersections with very attractive spans. This is one of them but the other looks exactly like it....

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tfiz/2291519463/#

 

That's a nice bridge, but such a bridge in this case would have to be around 1000' long, passing over two five-lane roads, in a dense built-up commercial area.  The cost would be astronomical.  And I think it would span two municipalities, Cincinnati and Norwood, which I'm sure would open another can of worms.  And then if rail later comes to that right-of-way as you posit above, the bridge would necessarily have to be taken down again.

 

If we can't get a streetcar without lawsuits and ballot initiatives, imagine the uproar over a million dollar bike bridge serving a wealthy neighborhood.

^ Agreed.  A light rail line would cross Edwards right at Wasson, and Madison just west of Edwards, all three busy roads, in the space of 100 yards.  A passing light rail train would shut these intersections down for, what, at least 60-120 seconds while the barriers come down, the train passes, and the barriers go back up?  It would also impede traffic flow into Rookwood.  I don't know what the frequency of such a light rail line would be, but that intersection is a clusterfart most of the time already. 

 

And I don't even want to think about the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

 

Wasson at Paxton/Isabella is also a complicated intersection, and the rail line has poor sight lines from much of that intersection.  I wouldn't want to cycle on a path there.

 

I just can't see that stretch as being safe for MUP users without dedicated ped/bike signaling or other traffic calming measures.  I'm a cyclist and I would rather ride on the street - I think I'd be more visible.  I just can't get my head around it.

 

I think you'd build a cut and cover tunnel starting on the "north" side of Madison, go under Edwards and alongside Wasson all the way through to Paxton. Then widen Wasson over the tunnel and turn it into a boulevard, at last havng an adequate street there. My guess is that doing so would reduce the Nmbyism.

The street widening is a good idea, come to think of it.  It's such a narrow street as-is, and has always been hemmed in by the railroad. 

I think the street widening in junction with a cut-and-cover tunnel would go a long way toward building consensus around this.

 

What is the possibility of this happening - the rail corridor?

I really just can't see rail being successful on this line past Paxton.  Up until there, I think it would have great usage, as it cuts through fairly dense housing, and is generally pretty walkable.  Past Paxton, however, isn't this rail like almost entirely buried in the woods?  Hell, the line even cuts through Ault Park! In a perfect world, I would convert the rail corridor from the Little Miami Bike Trail to Paxton to a bike/ped trail, and have it end there.  Rail could begin on the Wasson Line at Paxton, and would remain as such in all of the areas West and South of there.  From Paxton, I think a rail line would be better suited to turn up through Oakley, and then terminate in Madisonville, where you could have a sizable park and ride.

Hmm... interesting point. Perhaps have the subway portion turn left at Paxton to continue through Oakley on to Madisonville...

The problem with traveling to Madisonville without being on Madison Rd. is that it takes away riders from that bus line, so you can't cut the bus line without placing rail on Madison itself.  Rail on Madison to Plainfield, then south to Mariemont could make sense (except it would cost $300 million~ for those 7 miles), but if you want commuter rail to Milford and Beechmont you'd want to use the Wasson Rd. line to Fairfax. 

 

I was toying with the idea of a rail line from Xavier on the Hyde Park Branch to Erie, then along Erie to the Murray Avenue line to Mariemont. Meanwhile, the railroad from Erie to Clare could be used as a bike trail to connect to the Little Miami Bike Trail.

 

I also think that the Wasson Line could become a boulevard, or pair of one-way streets, on either side of a rail line, which may not necessarily have to be in a subway. It would be nice to grade-separate the main crossings, though.

 

 

Doing a double rail line boulevard with light rail is kind of a big deal, at least with modern precedents.

 

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=charlotte,+nc&hl=en&ll=35.190697,-80.874841&spn=0.003931,0.00457&geocode=+&hnear=Charlotte,+Mecklenburg,+North+Carolina&t=h&z=18&layer=c&cbll=35.190564,-80.875316&panoid=9XSzej_-DE1USa9FaSkytg&cbp=12,54.83,,0,3.27

^I was thinking single-track, with one lane of street in each direction. Even if it was double track, 4 lanes, it still wouldn't need to be as wide as the above photo, which is excessive.

 

 

Civvik, could you just post a link to the map. I can't see it in any of the three browsers I've tried.

Watch this video if you want to see how not to do it:

 

Again, I emphasize that placing streetcar/light rail on the major radial streets is the smartest way to do things, because bus routes can be eliminated.  They did it right in Houston, and have the highest per-mile light rail ridership, but DART did it entirely wrong because they're forced to keep running pretty much all of the buses they were running before, with people choosing rail versus bus where the two modes compete.  Situations like the Wasson line are unusual, because it does not compete with a major bus route.   

 

I've mentioned it before, but I believe the smartest way to do rail throughout Hamilton County is to build streetcar/light rail following Metro's busiest bus routes, so that the savings from eliminating those routes can be applied to more construction.  So streetcar/light rail would be built on Reading from downtown to Reading, downtown to Mt. Healthy via Clifton/Ludlow/Hamilton, and downtown to Kenwood via Montgomery. 

 

When diesel buses are replaced by streetcars or light rail, something that dies after 12~ years is replaced by a vehicle that lasts 30-40 years and isn't subject to fluctuations in fuel costs.  It also has much better ADA service and the whole project can be integrated into a street reconstruction project that sees utilities buried. 

 

 

I can't either. I think it borked out.

 

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=charlotte+nc&hl=en&ll=35.192653,-80.873896&spn=0.003931,0.00457&safe=off&hnear=Charlotte,+Mecklenburg,+North+Carolina&gl=us&t=h&z=18