Something to keep in mind: Metro expects the average station stop time to be about 20 seconds. If no one is waiting at a stop and no one needs to get off, it won't stop at all. This weekend, the streetcar was stopped for as long as 5 minutes at some stations. That's because there was a crush of people onboard and a crush of people waiting to get on at every station. Cincinnatians also haven't learned their transit etiquette yet, letting people get off before getting on. I wanted to get off at 12th & Main but was stuck near the right side of the vehicle. As soon as the doors opened, more people started packing in, making it even harder for me to push my way to the left side to get off. This problem will go away as demand goes more towards normal levels. There were probably 5x to 8x time more people riding this weekend than the "projected" levels -- although we could blow away projections.

We moved 16,000 people on Friday

^ dang. Impressive.

On @troyeros points about convenience, it's much more important to me that we have real time info on transit apps. I completely understand and appreciate the role of this circulator route. What I can't understand is how a modern transit system can open to the public without realtime integration. I mean, I can get real time data on the #2141 Westwood Northern metro route but not the streetcar? Really?

 

Just missed the streetcar downtown by 50 steps. Aggravating.

A lot of these issues will be worked out. if ridership is as good as I think it will be, there will be pressure on the traffic engineers to give the streetcar more priority. Two and a half days into this, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Jumped on the streetcar this morning to work from 12th/Race to Fountain Square.  Got to work super fast as the streetcar wasn't very full and we only stopped a few times.  I think the "slowness" concerns are going to go away as we start regular service that doesn't involve packing large groups of people into what was essentially a sardine can this weekend.

We moved 16,000 people on Friday

 

Not bad considering it didn't open to the public until after 12. When will the numbers for Saturday/Sunday come in?

 

The folks from KC I met were worried that Cincinnati would eclipse their streetcar's first three days of boardings.

We moved 16,000 people on Friday

 

Not bad considering it didn't open to the public until after 12. When will the numbers for Saturday/Sunday come in?

 

The folks from KC I met were worried that Cincinnati would eclipse their streetcar's first three days of boardings.

 

Dunno when they will publish official counts. I wouldn't put this out there until they do

The folks from KC I met were worried that Cincinnati would eclipse their streetcar's first three days of boardings.

 

Any idea what those numbers were for KC?  I could only find Friday's and Saturday's online.

Is 16k good for opening day? It sounds good to me, but at the same time I don't know what to compare it to either.

http://kcstreetcar.org/ridership/

 

Looks like KC got 12,000 on day one and 14,000 on day two. Third day, a Sunday, it dropped of a bit to 5,500.

 

Highest single day of ridership was 15,780 a couple months in.

Somebody correct my math if I'm wrong here.

 

But it opened at noon and operated until 1 a.m. That means it operated for 13 hours which means it was moving 1,231 people/hour average.

 

People were saying it was taking around 45 minutes for the trains to do a full loop which means, assuming running all five trains (that was happening, right?) there would have been 6 or 7 trains an hour coming by each stop. In order to move 1,231 people with 6 or 7 trains they had to have all been at or above the stated capacity of 154 people.

 

So basically 16,000 is more or less as good as it was going to get within that operating timetable.

^ Purely theoretically, the maximum hourly ridership would be:

 

The capacity of the car * the number of stops a car makes in an hour * the number of cars running

 

The assumption here is that every passenger goes for just one stop, which is obviously infeasible. But let's assume it happens, and that the dilated boarding/alighting time means the streetcar averages 1 hour for the whole loop.

 

154 capacity * 18 stops * 5 cars = 13,860 hourly ridership

 

Times 12 operating hours (the fifth car was probably not done with its inaugural loop until after 1; we'll just say service started at 1 for simplicity)

= 166,320 total potential riders on Friday.

 

But, yeah, that could never happen. 16k seems pretty solid.

As an FYI, the pay machines do not handle kids pricing.  When we went to the Metro office a bit ago the woman working the counter was extremely confused and was saying things completely contrary to the website pricing.  When we asked them questions about kid pricing two weeks ago they had no idea what the rules were and it seems like that's still the case.  Really sad and frustrating they made very specific rules for kids with their height, but currently have no way of implementing those rules.

The "ridership" would be highest if everyone rode exactly one stop and got off.  All weekend, there were people riding the whole loop on a sightseeing trip.  That won't happen anymore on a large scale in a month or two. 

 

 

I would love to be able to see the streetcar's location in real time with the EZ Ride app. I really don't like searching a route and just getting a time. I want to see real time locations like Uber has.

That seems fairly easy to implement as well. Not sure why that isn't a feature?

We have the technology- http://bustracker.go-metro.com/hiwire?.a=iRealTimeDisplay

^Oooh. That just needs to be integrated with the app soon. I'll definitely bookmark this link. Are there really only 2 streetcars operating right now, though?

^Oooh. That just needs to be integrated with the app soon. I'll definitely bookmark this link. Are there really only 2 streetcars operating right now, though?

 

Could those just be the overflow busses they have been using?

We need real time arrival info at stations and on the app ASAP. It's really unfortunate that we don't especially knowing all the technology is already there. The scheduling is also still rusty, I waited for 27 minutes today at lunch at the 6th and Main stop, which during the lunch hour is unacceptable knowing people only get an hour or so to take lunch.

It might be the case that adhering to a strict schedule might not work given the variables in the downtown area.  It seems like a protocol which prohibits streetcars from proceeding until an earlier streetcar has cleared a specific location might be necessary to prevent the streetcars from bunching up.  For example, no streetcar can leave The Banks until the earlier one has cleared 6th St. 

 

On Friday it was amazing to watch how quickly the four streetcars bunched into a gang.  This meant the lead streetcar was at crush capacity and each of its station stops were slower than any for the relatively empty streetcars behind it.  I saw a gap of at least 20 minutes, and perhaps 30 minutes form at one point. 

 

 

We need real time arrival info at stations and on the app ASAP.

I could not agree more. I'm a huge supporter and can't believe this got built and tested without something so basic in 2016.

 

At the same time I just got on at main and 5th and all seats are taken plus about 15 standing. [emoji106]

It might be the case that adhering to a strict schedule might not work given the variables in the downtown area.  It seems like a protocol which prohibits streetcars from proceeding until an earlier streetcar has cleared a specific location might be necessary to prevent the streetcars from bunching up.  For example, no streetcar can leave The Banks until the earlier one has cleared 6th St. 

 

That's the way I though it was going to be all along.

We have the technology- http://bustracker.go-metro.com/hiwire?.a=iRealTimeDisplay

 

The real-time website has not worked for me. The website will say that a streetcar should be passing and there's nothing there or vice versa. In addition, using it on a phone is highly frustrating.

 

 

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Yeah, if nothing else, wait times will put a HUGE dent on the long term success of the street car.

 

Especially if a good chunk of the street car paying crowd is lunch goers from the CBD.

 

Real time info, and shorter street car intervals are an absolute MUST. Especially as we are nearing winter. People will absolutely not wait more than 15 minutes in the freezing cold for a street car.

We have the technology- http://bustracker.go-metro.com/hiwire?.a=iRealTimeDisplay

 

The real-time website has not worked for me. The website will say that a streetcar should be passing and there's nothing there or vice versa. In addition, using it on a phone is highly frustrating.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Yep.  Completely worthless.  I don't know what technology Metro has here but they should be asking for a refund.

I don't see much value in real-time arrival info or GPS apps for such a short and simple rail system.  This streetcar line is one notch more complicated than the tram at the airport.  I can't believe that somehow people have grown so impatient that things that didn't exist for the first 100 years of public transportation are now critical.  Someone who really needs to be somewhere is going to hail a cab.

 

That said, the lack of a ticket machine on the streetcars themselves is a problem.  Someone who runs after a streetcar won't have enough time to also purchase a ticket and so will risk getting fined.  In Portland and Seattle they have fare machines on each streetcar. 

 

 

I'd agree with you jake if all 5 cars were running, but IMO for a system with average headways of greater than 10 mins its useful, particularly on a small system like this where you could plan for an alternative if there are significant delays. Waiting more than 15 mins for a train is never fun and research has even shown its kind of people's limit.  Frankly from my perspective (in Chicago) I don't want to go back to the days when I first moved and waited up to 30 mins for a silly damen bus to arrive because a bunch of them got bunched together - if I knew they were going to be that delayed I could have walked about a mile down the street and picked up a westren ave bus to get me the same place.  Cincy doesn't have that level of alternatives but at the very least it could be the difference between taking the streetcar, a bus, an uber/lyft or a redbike. (IMO if I see a bus with a waiting time of 20 mins I almost always call an uber or lyft though my standards for a transit rich city like Chicago are way different than they would be in a transit deficient one).

 

Ideally the headways would be at 6 mins per car, but right now Cincy has to deal with 12-15 min ones...

Well, I think the problem is compounded by the fact that there is still a lot of bunching while Metro gets the hang of running revenue service. Some people today reported waiting 15 minutes and then just leaving. What a terrible first experience with the streetcar. If the arrival time on the sign was accurate, they may have just decided not to wait and left much earlier.... or maybe they ended up leaving 2 minutes before it would've arrived.

Btw, when I was hanging out with some forumers last weekend one of them mentioned how the streetcar brought Cincinnati up to the next level like St Louis.  St Louis does have some stuff that's pretty cool, but I'm not sure if its really the next level, that city is a total tragic mess - way too much urban renewal and waay too much deindustralization.  The city was once a fantastic dense unique blend of Cincinnati rivertown tenements, rowhouses, and town homes, combined with Chicago style early skyscrapers (almost all built with top notch brick!) - it now is a fractured mess of a city with massive districts of parking lots or shoddy new infill where beautiful brick buildings once stood along with miles and miles of abandonment anywhere north of Delmar Ave (1/2 the city!).  Other than rail transit and maybe a few more modern cultural amenities Cincinnati is generally in much better shape than it is.

 

Also Cincy should learn from it in that St. Louis' bus system is a step below its trains - there are a lot of lines IMO that should run more frequently, one can't even get to St Louis' OTR equivalent Soulard from downtown (though really its more like if a small chunk of Kenyon Barr survived) without taking a bus which literally runs once an hour, this same route also includes the Budweiser brewery which is a major tourist destination :/.  Hopefully future transit improvements to Cincy also include better bus service as well - from what I understand it this is an approach the Twin Cities have taken and its paid off (I was just there Labor Day weekend and felt their system was pretty great, especially the A line "BRT" which allowed me to get from St Paul to Longfellow where I was staying a lot easier than it would have by regular bus or by taking the green line to the blue line).

If the average rider really is only going to take the streetcar a couple stops, it absolutely does not make sense to wait more than 10 minutes for a train, unless it's pouring down rain. Walking would simply be faster, not to mention cheaper. That is why I think real time

arrival info is actually MORE important for the streetcar than it would be on a longer light rail line. If you're committing to take transit across town, it doesn't matter as much when the train comes, because walking isn't an alternative. Most transit in these type of systems is grade separated, meaning you can generally learn the schedule if you're a regular rider because the times don't change based on traffic or other disturbances that at-grade transit is disrupted by. If you're an infrequent user of the system, you can just show up and know that a train will be there In a reasonable amount of time. With the streetcar, if you can time it correctly, it's a pedestrian accelerator and really beneficial. Additionally, if you're taking the streetcar from pole to pole (Banks to Rhinegeist), you probably would also not mind waiting an unspecified amount of time, because people generally won't walk that distance. But if you're only taking it a few blocks, being able to time when the streetcar will arrive is crucial to its success.

Well if you can't see the streetcar coming, it's not getting to your station within five minutes.  Even if you can see it in the distance, the exact minute when it arrives can't be known. 

 

The message boards could be very useful in the event of a service delay, but I don't know who controls them. 

Unless you are at a spot in the line where the car turns like Findlay Market...

Redirected from my photo spread of my streetcar visit...

 

Thanks for documenting your travels and experience, KJP. I love that we have the Ultimate Air Shuttle connecting the two cities. My sister just moved to Lakewood a few months ago and my parents have already taken the shuttle to go visit for a weekend and said its absolutely the way to go. As a transit expert, what did you think about the speed and stop spacing for the streetcar? Those both seem to be points of discussion now that it has opened. 

 

The stop spacing is good but the speed is low. Unfortunately you can't do dedicated streetcar lanes because of the narrow streets unless you make most of the streetcar's streets transit/pedestrian/bike only. I liked that the streetcar has traffic signal priority but signal preemption would make it even faster.

Well if you can't see the streetcar coming, it's not getting to your station within five minutes.  Even if you can see it in the distance, the exact minute when it arrives can't be known. 

 

The message boards could be very useful in the event of a service delay, but I don't know who controls them. 

 

Jake, I'm sorry, but the idea that RT information is not important is off base - you really need to take off the blinders on this one.

 

First, this system is not designed for you - or me, for that matter. If that were the case, it would fail miserably. So let's get out of this idea that "thinking logically makes the most sense." It doesn't.

 

Second, you may have noticed that people < 35 are spending a lot of time with their phones lately. They don't leave their house without knowing what is going on, and believe me, it will seem truly bizarre to go and wait for a modern streetcar and not know when it will arrive. Let's start off with a good customer experience at the beginning, all right?

 

Third, lots of people who take buses check the schedule before going to the stop. That's why there are schedules. On the other hand, the streetcar will never have a reliable schedule, cause it's not designed to be run in that manner. Hasn't everyone had the experience of taking a bus on a slow traffic day and just sitting there waiting at a stop until the bus slowed down to the schedule? That's the only reason why bus schedules are even modestly accurate, and now you have suggested that the streetcar behave similarly. If you wanted to create a customer experience worse than waiting > 15 minutes "in the dark" for a streetcar to arrive, it would be having them wait even 5 minutes one or two stops before they want to get off. To think that mode of operation is better than just running them as fast as you can, but telling people where they are at, is a bit silly, to be frank.

 

Finally, this is technology that's proven and done. Metro has had years to think about implementing this and somehow they haven't done it. It just epitomizes the weakness of these sorts of agencies for implementing technology solutions. They need to allocate resources and get this done, not just acceptably, but in a way that is just as high a quality as the streetcar infrastructure.

Finally, this is technology that's proven and done. Metro has had years to think about implementing this and somehow they haven't done it. It just epitomizes the weakness of these sorts of agencies for implementing technology solutions. They need to allocate resources and get this done, not just acceptably, but in a way that is just as high a quality as the streetcar infrastructure.

 

I'm guessing it's a budgeting thing?  Can they just open up the data to the internet and let some outsider make it a passion project?

It's too bad that signal retiming will not take place until later this year. There are too many places along the route that are frustrating because the streetcar leaves a station and get caught at the very next red light. The operator knows this is going to happen, so they do not even accelerate to 25 MPH when leaving the station. They simply coast at 10 MPH or so up to the next light, which turns red by the time they arrive. When the retiming is complete, streetcar should essentially get green lights between each station, which is going to make it much faster. These are easily solvable problems, it's just too bad that the DOTE did not take the streetcar seriously until it opened to passengers.

Redirected from my photo spread of my streetcar visit...

 

Thanks for documenting your travels and experience, KJP. I love that we have the Ultimate Air Shuttle connecting the two cities. My sister just moved to Lakewood a few months ago and my parents have already taken the shuttle to go visit for a weekend and said its absolutely the way to go. As a transit expert, what did you think about the speed and stop spacing for the streetcar? Those both seem to be points of discussion now that it has opened. 

 

The stop spacing is good but the speed is low. Unfortunately you can't do dedicated streetcar lanes because of the narrow streets unless you make most of the streetcar's streets transit/pedestrian/bike only. I liked that the streetcar has traffic signal priority but signal preemption would make it even faster.

 

Doesn't a dedicated streetcar lane defeat the purpose of the streetcar and make it more of a light rail type vehicle. I always thought that was what separated the two forms. Streetcar ran on city streets but the light rails had dedicated right of ways

The Cincinnati streetcar is designed to light-rail standards. Toronto has one of the most successful streetcar systems because much of it operates in dedicated lanes. A small portion of it even operates in a subway. There are no hard-and-fast rules about how A Streetcar or light rail or subway or commuter rail service should operate. All of them are designed with regards to local conditions and local needs.

I have found that using the google maps app when getting ready to head out works very well. Gives me an idea of when I should leave to reach the streetcar in time to have a very short wait.

 

 

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Regarding the real time arrival data, this data is <a href="http://bustracker.go-metro.com/hiwire?.a=iRealTimeDisplay">already being collected and made available publicly</a>. It just needs to get to the stations (message boards) and to the "official" EZ Ride App, and eventually to <a href="https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/reference/">Google's GTFS</a>. I know SORTA is working on all of these. Just wish it could be in place now.

It's too bad that signal retiming will not take place until later this year. There are too many places along the route that are frustrating because the streetcar leaves a station and get caught at the very next red light. The operator knows this is going to happen, so they do not even accelerate to 25 MPH when leaving the station. They simply coast at 10 MPH or so up to the next light, which turns red by the time they arrive. When the retiming is complete, streetcar should essentially get green lights between each station, which is going to make it much faster. These are easily solvable problems, it's just too bad that the DOTE did not take the streetcar seriously until it opened to passengers.

 

From the Main St and Liberty St meetings with DOTE, it's very apparent that they simply view the streetcar as an impediment to the free flow of car traffic. They have made multiple snide comments like "Maybe if everyone starts riding the streetcar, then we can do this [significantly narrow Liberty or make Main 2-way]."

Regarding the real time arrival data, this data is <a href="http://bustracker.go-metro.com/hiwire?.a=iRealTimeDisplay">already being collected and made available publicly</a>. It just needs to get to the stations (message boards) and to the "official" EZ Ride App, and eventually to <a href="https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/reference/">Google's GTFS</a>. I know SORTA is working on all of these. Just wish it could be in place now.

 

Yes. joshknut[/member] I don't think the times you are currently seeing in google maps are real; I think they are estimated, either based on schedule or otherwise. If you are saying that the times posted end up reliably being something like +/- 1 minute... please let me know!

 

It is *frustrating* that we are so behind on this.

 

It is made much more so, for me, by what Metro itself says on its own web site:

 

"Metro is committed to bringing real-time information to our riders.  We're currently testing a new Real-Time Info Line which will allow riders to call Metro, enter the number posted on their bus stop sign, and get the estimated arrival time based on GPS tracking data.  We're also working to release this data to developers to make transit apps that provide real-time bus locations.  It's too soon to give an estimated launch date, but it's coming soon."

 

This is just sooo not confidence inspiring. I mean, calling them up and entering a number on my phone? Really? And how, exactly, can it ever be acceptable for it to be "too soon to give an estimated launch date"? An estimated date!

 

This sounds to me like one guy who's managing all their windows updates and firewalls, and tinkering with real-time APIs when she gets the chance.

50,646 opening weekend riders.

 

• Friday, Sept. 9: 18,141 passenger trips

• Saturday, Sept. 10: 17,160 passenger trips

• Sunday, Sept. 11: 15,345 passenger trips

 

KC had 32,326 on opening weekend. Over the 4-day labor day weekend KC had 42,913.

 

Not a bad start! We could go 16 days with no riders and still be ahead of the projected daily ridership. Looking forward to seeing the numbers after a full month of service.

50,646 opening weekend riders.

 

• Friday, Sept. 9: 18,141 passenger trips

• Saturday, Sept. 10: 17,160 passenger trips

• Sunday, Sept. 11: 15,345 passenger trips

 

KC had 32,326 on opening weekend. Over the 4-day labor day weekend KC had 42,913.

 

Not a bad start! We could go 16 days with no riders and still be ahead of the projected daily ridership. Looking forward to seeing the numbers after a full month of service.

 

Can't recall of the top but was KC free both of those weekends you mentioned?

Can't recall of the top but was KC free both of those weekends you mentioned?

 

KC's streetcar is always free, for now.

Used it to commute for the first time today (I had ridden it Sunday to go to dinner, and it was packed).  What a pleasant experience, and there were people getting on and off throughout the journey. 

The one caveat I have with the numbers is that the Kansas City Streetcar is always free and the Cincinnati Streetcar was only free for opening weekend, so the numbers may have been higher for the Cincinnati Streetcar because people wanted to try it out before they had to pay. It's still a really impressive number and a really good sign for the streetcar, but I do think the fact that the Cincy Streetcar will usually cost money raised ridership for the free weekend.

 

Also, our streetcar is a longer route, so it should expect a higher ridership/day.

Regarding the real time arrival data, this data is <a href="http://bustracker.go-metro.com/hiwire?.a=iRealTimeDisplay">already being collected and made available publicly</a>. It just needs to get to the stations (message boards) and to the "official" EZ Ride App, and eventually to <a href="https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/reference/">Google's GTFS</a>. I know SORTA is working on all of these. Just wish it could be in place now.

 

Yes. joshknut[/member] I don't think the times you are currently seeing in google maps are real; I think they are estimated, either based on schedule or otherwise. If you are saying that the times posted end up reliably being something like +/- 1 minute... please let me know!

 

It is *frustrating* that we are so behind on this.

 

It is made much more so, for me, by what Metro itself says on its own web site:

 

"Metro is committed to bringing real-time information to our riders.  We're currently testing a new Real-Time Info Line which will allow riders to call Metro, enter the number posted on their bus stop sign, and get the estimated arrival time based on GPS tracking data.  We're also working to release this data to developers to make transit apps that provide real-time bus locations.  It's too soon to give an estimated launch date, but it's coming soon."

 

This is just sooo not confidence inspiring. I mean, calling them up and entering a number on my phone? Really? And how, exactly, can it ever be acceptable for it to be "too soon to give an estimated launch date"? An estimated date!

 

This sounds to me like one guy who's managing all their windows updates and firewalls, and tinkering with real-time APIs when she gets the chance.

 

I'm afraid you are spot on. SORTA has had some version of limited real time "bus tracking" for several years... but it still feels like it is "in beta". Such a shame since investing in this kind of technology would significantly improve the riding experience, making they whole system much more reliable/predictable. 

Also, our streetcar is a longer route, so it should expect a higher ridership/day.

 

I don't believe that's technically true.  While Kansas City uses Main Street for a majority of their streetcar route, it is double sided, thus it is longer than Cincinnati's in track-mileage (I believe it's over 4 miles).  Cincinnati simply uses parallel streets for one-way tracks.