Could anyone estimate a deadline date where we are positive that the streetcar WILL be constructed by 2012? Is there a funding date that we are watching out for?

 

I don't think its possible for anyone to give an accurate estimate on that. However, if we land enough TIGER funds this year in addition to the TRAC funding and any other sources we've applied for, its definitely going to happen. By 2012? That's a good question, but I doubt it will be done by then. I would guess it would at least get started by early 2011 as long as we secure funding by the end of the summer/early fall.

 

 

Does anyone know if they plan to open streetcar in mini-phases? For example, if they start construction at The Banks and move north, they could open the Downtown portion of the loop, then OTR, then Clifton. Or will they build all of the track first, and then open all of Phase I at once?

 

Keep in mind the minimum operable segment has to connect to the maintenance facility.

So far nothing I've seen suggests that this project is intended to be car-competitive.  Bus-competitive maybe, but the main point of the project is as a development tool. 

Reflect upon the irony of those two sentences for a while.

 

Being car-competitive means providing fast service to a broad geographic area.  Streetcars and buses don't do that.  Driving is all about mobility, being able to go fast and far.  Streetcars and buses are about access, giving people the ability to go places they might not otherwise be able to because of the difficulty of parking, personal preference, or not having another means of getting around.  The streetcar plan improves access between and within Uptown, Downtown, and OTR, but it is not going to be faster (and because of the circuitous route I suspect it will be slower) than bus lines, which are already slower than driving. 

Vine Street hill is pretty ugly, and seems to have little development potential, but really it only has one strong curve (at Mulberry. 

 

It feels like your are entering OTR through a gutter when travelling down Vine Street.  Other routes may be impractical, but how much cooler would it be to take any of the other straight hills with a view down into the city?

So far nothing I've seen suggests that this project is intended to be car-competitive.  Bus-competitive maybe, but the main point of the project is as a development tool.

Reflect upon the irony of those two sentences for a while.

 

Being car-competitive means providing fast service to a broad geographic area.  Streetcars and buses don't do that.  Driving is all about mobility, being able to go fast and far.  Streetcars and buses are about access, giving people the ability to go places they might not otherwise be able to because of the difficulty of parking, personal preference, or not having another means of getting around.  The streetcar plan improves access between and within Uptown, Downtown, and OTR, but it is not going to be faster (and because of the circuitous route I suspect it will be slower) than bus lines, which are already slower than driving.

 

The Streetcar is not intended to be car-competitive.  It is the result of a new recognition of the way to best take advantage of our current Downtown/OTR/Uptown infrastructure, and a conscious political decision to favor a certain mode of transportation for a certain area in order to give rise to a certain type of development, all of which are pretty much the opposite of the political decisions of the previous fifty years some odd years.

 

Jeff's sentence expressed it best, "Streetcars and buses are about access, giving people the ability to go places they might not otherwise be able to because of the difficulty of parking, personal preference, or not having another means of getting around."

 

It's a mistake to view the streetcar as being car competitive because if we do so we run the risk of ignoring the importance of pricing parking in the streetcar area in such a way that drives more traffic to the streetcar.  Both the car culture and the non-car culture require attendant activity and regulations to make them both viable, and they work best when people aren't  switching back and forth between them.

 

It's less relevant if the streetcar goes up Vine or Gilbert than it is that parking in the dense zone is placed and priced correctly and density is allowed and encouraged.

Could anyone estimate a deadline date where we are positive that the streetcar WILL be constructed by 2012? Is there a funding date that we are watching out for?

 

I don't think its possible for anyone to give an accurate estimate on that.  However, if we land enough TIGER funds this year in addition to the TRAC funding and any other sources we've applied for, its definitely going to happen.  By 2012?  That's a good question, but I doubt it will be done by then.  I would guess it would at least get started by early 2011 as long as we secure funding by the end of the summer/early fall.

 

 

Does anyone know if they plan to open streetcar in mini-phases?  For example, if they start construction at The Banks and move north, they could open the Downtown portion of the loop, then OTR, then Clifton.  Or will they build all of the track first, and then open all of Phase I at once?

 

Keep in mind the minimum operable segment has to connect to the maintenance facility.

 

Of course.  I have no idea where they will begin building.  OTR, Downtown, Clifton then.  The question still stands.

About the streetcar's being car-competitive:

 

* Its frequent service means that its performance approaches the car's "on-demand" characteristic. It's there when you need it, with minimum wait times.

 

* It's reliable in winter when cars sometimes aren't -- if you pick a reliable route.

 

* The streetcar's super-smooth ride comes closer to emulating the creature-comforts of automobiles. It you're selling $200,000 condos with less or no parking, that's going to be an important consideration.

 

* It attracts riders in ways buses don't. In the words of Chris Bortz, streetcars attract "choice riders" -- people who would otherwise drive, but who prefer the frequency and comfort of the streetcar, even if they happen to have a car.

 

The irony I tried to draw out is that if all we're trying to do is match the performance and access provided by our bus system, such as it is, then why do all of us reject the opponents' notion of simply running fake trolley-buses on the streetcar route?

 

And, LK's right, I think pricing parking at the margin will especially make streetcars more car-competitive.

 

What I see with Vine Street is a tortured route, without frequent stops, or maybe without even one stop, and virtually no chance that, as LK says, "a certain mode of transportation [the streetcar] for a certain area [the Vine Street Gulch] [will] give rise to a certain type of development [or any development]."

 

And it's very relevant whether the streetcar goes up Vine or Gilbert to get to University Plaza and beyond. The latter is mostly straight, has a lesser grade, touches two or three more neighborhoods in Phase I, and has an abundance of scalable development sites on Gilbert and a great pair of streetcar-friendly streets on McMillan and Taft/Calhoun.

 

Let's be honest: were it not for our limited funds, does anyone seriously doubt we'd be looking at Gilbert instead of Vine to get to Uptown?

 

 

Except that Gilbert Avenue doesn't GO to University Plaza.  Gilbert is the start of a route to XU, but not to UC or Uptown.  It's like suggesting someone take the Brent Spence Bridge to get from Cincinnati to Newport instead of the Big Mac Bridge, or use Hopple to get from Northside to Clifton instead of Ludlow. 

^ You would turn left from Gilbert to Taft to University Plaza and beyond -- say to Ohio or Clifton Avenue -- and return via McMillan.

 

It's actually shorter (13 minutes vs. 16 minutes) going from Fountain Sqaure to University Plaza -- not a particularly great destination, by the way -- via Gilbert than the circuitous route up to Henry Street and doubling back south to eventually get to Vine and then reversing direction again. Drive it and see for yourself. It's an eye-opener. I know many people who travel from Uptown to Downtown this way.

If the intent is to go from Uptown to Downtown, the route using Gilbert is the fastest.  This could be a good choice because it provides reliable transit to downtown for University students.  Although it would take longer to go from Findlay Market to UC.  I guess in the end it comes down to funding and connectivity issues.  But I believe the intent of the uptown connector is a connection to downtown more so than a connection OTR north of liberty.

And once Taft/Calhoun & McMillan are returned to both being two-way streets, it would be even better for streetcars IMO.

I agree that the loopy route to Henry Street is silly from the point of view of getting to Uptown, but that doesn't make Vine Street itself worse.  Any route up Reading or Gilbert would by necessity be a completely separate line.  But how do you get a streetcar to Gilbert in the first place?  You have to run it directly off of the downtown street grid around 7th or 8th Street along the highway side of Broadway Commons, and you don't get any development benefit out of it until you're north of Eden Park Drive and the old Cable House. But oops, that leaves the entire OTR loop completely out of it, so like I said it would be a completely separate route. 

 

To include OTR at all, you'd have to run a line further up Main then east on Liberty to Reading to Elsinore, through more development-unfriendly land with much more traffic to fight.  Neither of those solutions are going to be faster than going up Vine, because even by the time you get off the Henry/Race/Elder insanity to start climbing Vine, you're barely to Peeble's Corner on the alternate.  It may be faster to DRIVE Gilbert or Reading, but I don't buy for a second that a streetcar line route that's a mile longer from Fountain Square is going to be faster, let alone more beneficial.   

 

Seriously, this is the current route from Fountain Square to Uptown.  It's far from perfect, but at least its detours are short and it generally looks to be going in the direction you want to go.

 

 

There's no way these are better, or much faster, especially with all the stops that would be warranted in Walnut Hills.  Much of the extra trackage is simply wasted negotiating I-71.  The huge leg along McMillan is the kind of thing anyone at UC would see and think, "why do I want to detour way to the east when I want to go south?"  Either of these routes might be ok on their own, in addition to the Vine Street hill, but not as a substitute for it. 

 

 

"It's actually shorter (13 minutes vs. 16 minutes) going from Fountain Sqaure to University Plaza"

 

There hasn't been much talk of signaling, but I hope that the streetcar will not have to stop for traffic signals, or at least not very many.

 

Do these times include some waiting at signals? What would the free-running times be with no signals?

That's one area where I think the route through OTR has an advantage.  The streets are relatively narrow, don't carry a whole lot of through traffic, and so signal timing/preemption is less necessary than it would be on a major arterial.  It does get a bit more complicated downtown though, and some sort of signal control scheme would probably be warranted.  I suspect it wouldn't take a great deal of work, since all of downtown already has a signal preemption system set up for emergency vehicles (though whether it works or not is up for debate). 

 

A factor that's important in this is just how the stops/stations are handled when they're in mixed traffic.  Short stop platforms or bump-outs can be a problem if they're on the near side of an intersection, since an automobile could be stopped at a red light in front of the streetcar, causing the streetcar to wait for the light to turn green before pulling up far enough to open the doors, then having to wait through another cycle of the light.  Mid-block stops are less convenient for anyone whose destination is on another street, and it exacerbates jaywalking and pedestrian crossing difficulties.  Stops just after an intersection can cause vehicles behind them to get stuck in the intersection, and it makes it more difficult to add longer or multiple-unit streetcars. 

 

However it ultimately gets done though, I think the sort of roads and infrastructure all along the route are very conducive to streetcar operation without having to complicate things too much.  Some intersection on the northern fringes of downtown, like along 9th and Court Streets, and many intersections in OTR still have traffic signals from the 1940s and 50s, showing just how little things have changed since the city's original streetcar system was in place. 

  "You would turn left from Gilbert to Taft..."

 

  Left turns scare me. They are problematic, and should be avoided if possible. Adding more green time to the left turn, or signal preemption for the streetcar, will slow down other traffic passing through those intersections, including Metro buses.

 

  Again, here is my favorite route. There are no turns, except for the turn-arounds at the ends! It's a whole 12 blocks shorter, and has 10 fewer 90-degree turns than the OTR loop, yet still covers about the same amount of development area. The only disadvantage seems to be that it doesn't pass in front of Music Hall for a photo op, and is a little farther from Findley Market. From an operations standpoint, this route is as simple as it gets.

 

    Drawing modified from one by David Cole

 

 

 

    Saving all those turns will significantly decrease operation cost because an excessive amount of wear on the wheels, track, and catenary occurs at turns. Saving all those turns will also increase the speed a little bit, and make the passengers more comfortable.

 

    Saving all that distance will save on construction cost and operations cost. It might save the cost of an additional vehicle.

 

    Reducing the distance will result in a faster ride, which will in turn attract more passengers.

 

    Like Jjakucyk said, the Gilbert Avenue route has it's merits but it's an altogether different route.

 

  I just spot-checked what appeared to be the steepest part of Vine Street using CAGIS and got a slope of 6.8%.

 

  Vine street has a very consistent slope.

Reducing sharp turns also saves construction costs too, since sharp turning tracks generally need to be pre-made.  Even if they aren't they're much more difficult to construct. 

 

I like your route a lot.  The only thing that bugs me about it is the split route in Corryville.  I suspect that probably grew out of some maneuvering issues at the Vine/Jefferson/MLK intersection more than anything else, since Short Vine is a perfect street for a two-way streetcar route otherwise.  It bugs me that so much time and effort, not to mention concrete, was spent on rebuilding that intersection while virtually nothing about it was changed.  When it was built, Jefferson still connected through at the present entrance to the EPA building, but with that connection gone, and new EPA entrances farther to the west, they missed a great opportunity to clean that mess up, build a better pedestrian connection between the two campuses, and accommodate future transit plans. 

 

 

Of course, even 10 years before that it was much different.

 

 

    I'm sort of indifferent about the Corryville split. The advantage is that it opens up a little more development area. The disadvantage is that it is slightly more confusing.

 

    In a single-line, two way operation, it's pretty clear that if get off the streetcar, you can go back by getting back on the streetcar on the other side of the street. With the split, you have your choice of riding all the way around the loop, or walking a few blocks.

 

    The split is also contingent on redeveloping the Kroger shopping center, which is awful anyway.

 

    I would go as far as looking into two short segments of tunnel, one under Calhoun / Taft and one under MLK. Both would avoid heavy cross traffic, and both would alleviate grades. I don't know if it's possible, but it's worth looking into. The downtown portion would act more like a streetcar, and the uptown portion would act a little more like light rail, with faster running times.

 

   

 

 

I've always assumed that a Gilbert route would be a wholly second line, the second of perhaps five lines that would be built-out over the next 20 years.

 

I'm guessing it would use the Main/Walnut pair through downtown, turn east on Central Parkway travel through the casino site, go behind Staples and the Gateway Building and use the Elsinore bridge over I-71 to Gilbert. It would connect the casino with Uptown and a lot of job-seekers.

 

I see nothing wrong with a roundabout route. This is a circulator, not a corridor-level plan. It connects a lot of dots in Uptown, and my guess is a lot of Uptown residents would rather travel across Uptown than to Downtown. The Vine and Clifton buses will be considerably faster than the streetcar for getting Downtown from Uptown. Just the way it is.

    I'm sort of indifferent about the Corryville split. The advantage is that it opens up a little more development area. The disadvantage is that it is slightly more confusing.

 

I think this idea is a mistake.  If you gain control/access to the University Plaza site (and Kroger has a lease until 2017 there I believe) you're going to get a lot more out of running it both ways on Short Vine and closing off the street to cars (while letting them move freely on Corry, Charlton, Daniels, etc.)  The development potential of Jefferson on that route is tapped out in most spots.  At any rate its potential exists because it is across the street from UC, and the Streetcar isn't going to change that.

 

There are natural routes up from the Basin- Vine, Gilbert, Ludlow, Harrison.  Just because they aren't all perfectly developable in all places doesn't change the fact that they are the routes.

 

Here's the thing- it's only by changing the rules of development, encouraging higher density and building heights, and properly pricing parking that we are going to get traffic on the streetcar at all.  So whether the route splits at one point or another isn't going to drive development if all the structure that supports streetcar infrastructure isn't in place.

I'm sort of indifferent about the Corryville split. The advantage is that it opens up a little more development area. The disadvantage is that it is slightly more confusing.

 

I think this idea is a mistake. If you gain control/access to the University Plaza site (and Kroger has a lease until 2017 there I believe) you're going to get a lot more out of running it both ways on Short Vine and closing off the street to cars (while letting them move freely on Corry, Charlton, Daniels, etc.) The development potential of Jefferson on that route is tapped out in most spots. At any rate its potential exists because it is across the street from UC, and the Streetcar isn't going to change that.

 

There are natural routes up from the Basin- Vine, Gilbert, Ludlow, Harrison. Just because they aren't all perfectly developable in all places doesn't change the fact that they are the routes.

 

Here's the thing- it's only by changing the rules of development, encouraging higher density and building heights, and properly pricing parking that we are going to get traffic on the streetcar at all. So whether the route splits at one point or another isn't going to drive development if all the structure that supports streetcar infrastructure isn't in place.

 

The TOD overlay is going to help with maximizing the streetcar's potential

Just for future reference (and I apologize for getting off track a little bit from the details of the streetcars), I am keeping a tally of the Cincinnati Enquirer streetcar letters and articles from Nov 2009 to the present.  All the letters I added up include only specific references to the streetcar and do not include all the Ohio high speed rail plan letters.  So far my letter tally includes the following:

 

November 2009 - 1 positive letter going after the Enquirer for their bias on the streetcar  subject.  Letter writer from Mt Washington

 

December 2009 - 0 letters of any kind

 

January 2010 - 5 negative letters.  0 positive letters.  Letter writers from Mt Washington, Westwood, Delhi, Blue Ash, and Mt Lookout

 

February 2010 - 4 negative letters.  0 positive letters.  College Hill, Loveland, Hyde Park, Sycamore

 

March 2010 - 4 negative letters.  0 positive letters.  College Hill(2 x), Montgomery, Blue Ash

 

April 2010 - 20 negative letters.  1 positive letters.  1 neutral letter talking about how the old streetcars worked during floods.  Sycamore Township, Indian Hill, Hyde Park (2 x), California(OH), Mt Washington, White Oak (2 x), Price Hill, Sharonville, Mt Lookout, Union Township, Amelia, West Chester, Cheviot, Fairfield, Loveland, Springdale, Montgomery, Mainville, Blue Ash, Kenwood)

 

May 2010 (As of May 3) - 4 negative letters already.  0 positive letters.  Green Township, Westwood, Sharonville, Finneytown.

 

So from November 1 2009 to May 3 2010, the enquirer has published 37 negative letters, 2 positive letters, and 1 neutral letter.  That's a 92.5% negativity rate for letters related to this issue.  5% positive letter for the streetcar.  2.5% neutral rate. 

...and all of them from outer city, suburban, and even rural areas.  Condense the data a bit and it's very easy to show the Enquirer's bias.  Of all those letters, less than half of them are city residents, the rest shouldn't even have a say in it.

^ These data would comprise a good LTE.

 

Of course, the Enquirer would probably respond with something like, "We print the letters we receive and 90% of them are against the streetcar."

You should send this to CityBeat.

Of course, the Enquirer would probably respond with something like, "We print the letters we receive and 90% of them are against the streetcar."

 

You might be giving the Enquirer too much credit.  I don't think they ever print responses to their Letters to the Editor.

This could be a moronic question but I am completely ignorant to how this works. Is it possible to take tax revenue from development along the line to ensure that the streetcar will not run a deficit? I understand how much tax revenue it will generate, but by not generating a operational deficit in the books it won't give COAST and the naysayers ammunition to attack the streetcar.

This could be a moronic question but I am completely ignorant to how this works. Is it possible to take tax revenue from development along the line to ensure that the streetcar will not run a deficit? I understand how much tax revenue it will generate, but by not generating a operational deficit in the books it won't give COAST and the naysayers ammunition to attack the streetcar.

 

That is essentially what TIF funding is.

But isn't TIF funding solely for capital expenditures? Is there a way it can be allocated to cover the operational costs for the streetcar as well so that it will always be funded by the areas and users that use it? If I'm not making sense just tell me. I'm just trying to figure out a way to keep the streetcar from becoming political ammunition for the opposition because of operational costs when it is in operation.

I forget the correct term at this point, but there is a way to do that via a Business Improvement District or some other overlay. If a majority of the businesses/residents agree to put some tax revenue generated by their properties to the streetcar, can't they?

 

  In the old days, property owners could form a corporation, sell stock, raise capital, build the railway and turn a profit on their money. In fact, that's how street railways were built all over the country.

 

  No one has done this in a hundred years. What does that tell you? It must not be profitable. That's why streetcar proponents are trying to use TIF money and other such things to get the government to build the streetcar. It's easier to spend someone else's money than your own.

 

    The trouble is that once the government becomes involved, the issue becomes politically motivated. No longer do the operation cost / revenue ratios and so on drive the project; photo ops and letters to the editor are more important.

 

  In the old days, property owners could form a corporation, sell stock, raise capital, build the railway and turn a profit on their money. In fact, that's how street railways were built all over the country.

 

  No one has done this in a hundred years. What does that tell you? It must not be profitable. That's why streetcar proponents are trying to use TIF money and other such things to get the government to build the streetcar. It's easier to spend someone else's money than your own.

 

The trouble is that once the government becomes involved, the issue becomes politically motivated. No longer do the operation cost / revenue ratios and so on drive the project; photo ops and letters to the editor are more important.

 

I can't think of a popular form of transportation in America today that is funded by private investment...

MegaBus, Grayhound. PeterPan. Bolt. Etc. These do not receive government funding, and they pay the privilege to use highways subsidized by the gasoline tax and federal appropriations.

True, what about local transit?

 

   In the old days, property owners could form a corporation, sell stock, raise capital, build the railway and turn a profit on their money. In fact, that's how street railways were built all over the country.

 

   No one has done this in a hundred years. What does that tell you? It must not be profitable. That's why streetcar proponents are trying to use TIF money and other such things to get the government to build the streetcar. It's easier to spend someone else's money than your own.

 

    The trouble is that once the government becomes involved, the issue becomes politically motivated. No longer do the operation cost / revenue ratios and so on drive the project; photo ops and letters to the editor are more important.

 

I can't think of a popular form of transportation in America today that is funded by private investment...

 

But shouldn't they be? Shouldn't the gas tax be raised by mileage or across the board to pay for itself? Shouldn't the users and beneficiaries of rail cover the operational costs in the same way? It all needs to be reformed somehow, but ideas are needed as to how to go about it. Just because we have screwed it up for so long doesn't mean that we need to continue to do so.

Tarbell v. Monzel. Will have a good debate on the subject of public transportation, a prelude, maybe, to another try for rail in 2012.

^Metro Moves style rail?  Or something inbetween that won't rely on the county's vote? 

I'm guessing a countywide vote for transit, but not a regional rail plan with LRT to all parts of the county like in 2002. Focused on I-75, where rail will have to proof its worth against a cheaper but less-beneficial BRT plan. Plus completion of the Uptown streetcar network. Say. And, who knows, maybe money to bring rail into CUT.

 

A lot of wishful thinking here. I think the key would be a set of solutions aimed at well-known needs rather go with than a shotgun approach.

 

Brad Thomas has some original ideas on finance that he may or may not want to talk about. I'll leave that up to him. I think the plan needs to be done first, next the economic case for its worthiness proven, and then fit the political and finance strategies to the plan.

MegaBus, Grayhound. PeterPan. Bolt. Etc. These do not receive government funding, and they pay the privilege to use highways subsidized by the gasoline tax and federal appropriations.

 

Sherman don't insult your own intelligence. The vehicle isn't the transportation system, the road is. And it is not fully funded by fuel taxes.

Which I dually noted, so take it down a notch. The vehicle is part of the transportation system and they pay for the right to use the road as it is currently funded, and it (the bus) is a private enterprise. Should gasoline taxes rise to remove appropriations that flow into the now insolvent Federal Highway Trust Fund, then these private enterprises will raise their tickets so that they can make a profit.

 

The same cannot be said for a public bus system, like Metro. It is money losing, heavily subsidized and is a quasi-public/private entity. If they were to become private, with these diesel prices, they would not be able to compete.

 

Even the streetcar is projected to be money-losing as fares will not cover expected costs, which is why it is all but necessary to locate sustainable, long-term funding for the future. I don't think anyone here is arguing for anything different.

 

If we look into the past, and see how these other operations once existed, we can easily see that railroads rarely made profit on passenger operations. In fact, it was the freight operations that subsidized passenger runs on the C&O past the 1930s; the CL&N was subsidized way back in the 1890s; the N&W past the 1920s; etc. And then there were the streetcars; once you took away the only profit they were able to generate, and the benefit of a streetcar and interurban with the advent of the automobile, then they became insolvent, private enterprises.

^ The streetcar is only a "money-loser" because it cannot capture and monetize the benefits that accrue to its area of influence because of its presence.

 

If the streetcar could capture some of the incremental gains in real estate prices, retail sales and increased wages achieved directly because of the streetcar and dedicate those funds to its construction and operation, it would be a huge money-maker. But how could you do that in a free society?

Well, how does other streetcar systems perform, revenue wise, when you count only fares alone? If we are talking about 50 cent fares, then you would need a substantial amount of riders to generate sustainable revenue. But I don't think that, given OTR's current and projected density, that the Cincinnati system will generate a positive cash flow. If we took this and plopped it in say, Washington D.C. around the White House and Mall, it may be a different story. So this involves TIF and other creative funding, which I'm not arguing against, but I'm in agreement with Eight and State that it does introduce the political aversion.

You are missing the point, Sherman.

 

Transit in general and streetcars in particular produce what economists call "indivisible benefits." There is no practical way you can charge all the beneficiaries in full for the benefits they are receiving, especially since they may not even realize they are receiving them.

 

Transit takes (some) drivers off the roads. This benefits the drivers who remain on the roads who then have faster travel times and more parking at their destinations. Will they pay the transit agency directly for these benefits? No. In fact, a lot of them will vote against having more of them.

 

You are talking finance = "Who pays and how much?" Most thinking around transit these days deals with comparing benefits with costs. If the benefits exceed the costs -- as they clearly do with the streetcar -- then you figure out a way to have the beneficiaries pay most of the costs, and the beneficiaries aren't just the streetcar passengers. TIF districts and re-pricing parking along the route are good proxies for doing this.

You also have to factor in that most of the externalities of the streetcar are net positives that the transit system isn't credited for and most of the externalities of the automobile as net negatives that the automobile driver doesn't have to pay for. For example:

 

I don't think I've argued against that, so I'm not for sure what "point" I am "missing" here. The point that me and Eight and State have made, is that when you introduce any sort of government intervention, via tax-increment-financing or other creative funding measures, then this political aspect, whether desirable or not, pops up. In this case, it has been nothing but a political gamble for some, and a protracted debate for all involved. A wholly private enterprise (e.g. MegaBus, BoltBus, et. al.) does not have this issue, but since the streetcar is not a fully private entity, as it is receiving and requesting public monies, then those cases cannot be easily compared.

 

In the old days, property owners could form a corporation, sell stock, raise capital, build the railway and turn a profit on their money. In fact, that's how street railways were built all over the country.

 

No one has done this in a hundred years. What does that tell you? It must not be profitable. That's why streetcar proponents are trying to use TIF money and other such things to get the government to build the streetcar. It's easier to spend someone else's money than your own.

 

The trouble is that once the government becomes involved, the issue becomes politically motivated. No longer do the operation cost / revenue ratios and so on drive the project; photo ops and letters to the editor are more important.

 

I can't think of a popular form of transportation in America today that is funded by private investment...

 

But shouldn't they be? Shouldn't the gas tax be raised by mileage or across the board to pay for itself? Shouldn't the users and beneficiaries of rail cover the operational costs in the same way? It all needs to be reformed somehow, but ideas are needed as to how to go about it. Just because we have screwed it up for so long doesn't mean that we need to continue to do so.

 

Let's be clear about something. This initial streetcar line is not about capturing value from transit users like the old ones were, it is about increasing land value. It is definitely a gamble by the city, hoping that fixed-route transit will be more attractive to developers and residents than bus transit. It is about the perception of value. It is simply a gamble with an apparently good record of success in other places.

 

So, with that understood, there is one main reason why a private investor isn't going to do play the game: Because the government becomes a prime beneficiary via increased property tax collections. That ROI is not capturable by a private investor. Second, some of the benefits of revitalizing the neighborhood are too diffuse -geographically and functionally- to be captured by a single entity on a balance sheet. Third, property ownership is too fragmented in the service area for one controlling interest to capture a sufficient portion of real estate development profits to justify paying for the system.

 

 

Actually, MegaBus (or perhaps it was the Chinatown Bus) has spawned political issues in Washington, DC because they are so infrastructure-less they had been picking up passengers on city streets...not that big a deal except they were sitting on busy city streets for ages waiting to depart.  So there was a plan to corral them into a centralized city bus depot, and as usual political forces were/are at work "guiding" the process. 

 

Point is that politicization seems to be unavoidable in a lot of situations. 

 

The bigger question is why do so many think that transit systems must turn a profit? 

Good points Civvik. Unless the streetcar is operated by a primary developer in OTR, say 3CDC, then any increase in land value or increase in density is not indirectly captured. While ridership is bound to increase with a similar increase in population along the route, it would not be enough to solely generate a sustainable profit.

And back when streetcar systems were privately owned, operated and financed, it was often the real estate development side and the electrical power distribution to homes and businesses along the streetcar and interurban routes that were profitable for the electric railway syndicates -- not the rail operations. But the streetcar was a necessary loss-leader to make the real estate development viable and accessible -- many rail lines were built as "promotional lines" into the farms and forests of Ohio with the high-density mixed-use to follow.

 

When the US Supreme Court, riding a national wave of trust-busting, ruled in about 1930 that streetcar/interurban operations be divorced from their electric utility operations, the rail side was doomed. Many died from competition by publicly paved roads, or from the worsening effects of the Great Depression, or from acquisition by numerous shell companies financed by General Motors et al to dismantle the rail operations and replace them with buses.

 

So if we want streetcars to be a sulf-sustaining operation, reunite them with their real estate and electric utility functions. It would be a radical concept to have Duke Energy unite with a local developer to build and operate a streetcar line. Then again it might not, as Duke is already invested in the Cincinnati Streetcar. And in Detroit, private developers are financing the construction of that city's first rail transit line in 50 years. So who knows, maybe we're rediscovering the best parts of the past in more ways than we realize!

Many interurbans also connected to revenue-generating amusement parks to prop up passenger operations. The Ashland, Ky interurban was supported through Clyffside Park; Camden Interstate Railway was supported by the still-in-operation Camden Park, and so forth. Others were propped with residential and commercial operations exterior to the core interurban or streetcar operations, and others were propped up with electrical distribution. For this to happen today, it would be effectively asking that 3CDC take on the streetcar project, which would benefit a lot of their developments, but you couldn't get away with an independent power distribution network.

The argument about MegaBus, Greyhound, etc., isn't clearcut either, not only because the gas tax doesn't entirely cover the Highway Trust Fund, but it also doesn't cover all roads.  People tend to forget that gas taxes don't pay for local roads at all.  Now, to be fair the amount of local roads these long-distances buses use has decreased over the years as state and interstate highways were built, but they still don't pay the full cost of the roads they use. 

 

Also, long-distance passenger service was generally profitable for railroads, but commuting and shorter haul trips were not.  Note that it's called commuting is because it originally meant "to reduce", so the normal fare was commuted for frequent short-haul trips to increase patronage and help develop suburban property.  Interurbans took up a lot of this short-haul traffic, but being almost wholly dependent on passenger use, they were decimated by increasing use of automobiles which coincided with the paving of many state highways in the 1920s.  Thus many were in receivership or already abandoned before the legislation was passed to split them apart from their electric services.

 

All that said, there are two simple things that could make a private urban transit system profitable, higher gas and parking costs.  Gas is rising by itself, but increasing taxes on it would certainly help fill in the funding gap for better maintenance too.  Parking is another huge subsidy for driving that routinely gets ignored.  Private garages tend to better reflect market rates for parking, but on-street prices are usually much much lower, leading to overuse.  This is just in downtown areas, but slightly farther out locales with excessive surface parking are a whole other problem.  With these corrections made, denser land use and shifts in living style will come about more on their own.  Trying to encourage those things without more realistic parking and driving costs makes it much more difficult to get people into using a transit system.  As it is, everything is hyper-subsidized now to try to compete with everything else, and it makes you wonder just what would happen if all subsidies for all passenger transportation were removed.