^ Seems like we're zeroing in on signal timing as the main problem. The flow of traffic in the CBD runs east-west as it moves to the freeways. Our traffic lights are designed to expedite that flow. The streetcar principally moves north-south. So consequently we get a lot of red lights. That's what we need to work on.

I was able to take the streetcar back home successfully from the 12th and Race stop. This was around 8:30-8:45pm (Wednesday) and most seats were full with a good number standing.

 

 

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Here's a table I made with the best possible minimum headways (time between streetcars) in minutes, given the number of streetcars (rows) and the average MPH around a whole loop (columns.) 

 

It assumes perfectly spaced streetcars along the loop with no bunching.  This makes it somewhat unrealistic, since streetcar bunching has been a pretty big issue so far. 

 

Wait, we have only 2 street cars running in the evening? What about the weekends?

 

If so that's absolutely crazy. These long intervals feel as if it was done on purpose to kill the street car. What's going to happen when winter rolls around? Do we really expect people to stand in the freezing cold and wait 20+ minutes for a street car? I just don't understand how we don't have shorter frequencies in place.

As the table above shows, two streetcars could provide a pretty good frequency if they could average 7-10 MPH around the entire loop. There are some issues that we are seeing however:

 

1. Bunching: if one streetcar is  "catching up" to another. If frequency should be 15 minutes, but the second streetcar is behind the first by only 5 minutes, then the interval between the second streetcar and when the first comes around again is 25 minutes. I think we're seeing a lot of this in this first week of revenue service. They can get better at this by introducing more "dwell" time at the ends of the loop (Banks and Rhinegeist) where customers would understand stoping and waiting more than they would someplace in the middle of the route.

 

2. maintaining speed: streetcars are getting slowed down significantly in certain areas by navigating traffic, busses, and being extremely stop and go by hiting red lights right after making station stops, etc.  This is what could be improved with signal timing and dedicated lanes. Of course running three streetcars would give us much more leeway by providing a pretty good frequency with only maintaining an average speed of 5-7 MPH.

Ideally they should run 3 streetcars non-peak and 4 peak until the traffic signal timing is reconfigured later this year.

 

Not sure how they would pay for it though.

SORTA appears to be completely clueless in how to properly run the streetcar.  2 cars should never be running, the minimum should be 3.  All they're doing is turning off more and more people with how long they're having to wait.  And it's actually nice now, no one is going to want to use this in the winter when they know they're going to have to wait 15+ minutes with no idea of when the cars will actually arrive.  All the trouble it took to get this project and now it's finally here but it's running terribly.  At the minimum they need to figure out a real time arrival system asap.  Long term there's no reason why at least 3 cars shouldn't be operating at all times, but god knows how long it would take them to figure out a new contract. 

^You can't blame SORTA for only having 2 streetcars on off-peak hours and 3 on peak. That's all that was budgeted.

I used google maps, timed it out (supposed to arrive at 7:18) and got there at 7:17 to be let down.

We probably should focus on signal timing, and maybe even zero in on it as the main problem. But it isn't the first problem we should solve, because it's going to take a little while.

 

The core of this complaint, the same one I've had and I'm sure many others, isn't about streetcar frequency -- it's about the expectation of frequency.

 

If there was real time arrival information made available to Googles API, then when joshknut[/member] checked his phone, he would have seen he had time to finish that beer before going to the station. And when he got to that station he would have seen a quick update on actual arrival on the displays. He might not have been happy that the next car was 20 minutes out, but he would have probably taken it in stride, called someone to say he'd be late, etc.

 

So again, I fully agree that signal timing is important. But until we have a system where streetcars are reliably running every 10 minutes or so, I'd say that reliable RT arrival information is an equally important near term objective.

 

The thing is, this doesn't involve lots of money, or shouldn't. And it doesn't involve the ornery DOTE. It involves SORTA hiring a company who has done this before and making it a priority to get it done. And that should have happened during the testing phase. I'm still incredulous and frankly rather incensed that it did not. That's because, like joshknut[/member] I'm a big supporter of this and I absolutely hate seeing any negative opinion be created by things that just should've been nailed down.

 

^You can't blame SORTA for only having 2 streetcars on off-peak hours and 3 on peak. That's all that was budgeted.

No, but we can and should squarely blame SORTA, as loudly as possible, for a failure to deliver a realtime arrival data system, and for displaying lies on the station displays.

After talking to someone last night in the know, apparently we use the same tracking system as Kansas City does for both buses and streetcars. Neither of us have been able to successfully implement the tracking on streetcars, despite success with the buses and neither can figure out what the problem is. They wanted to use the same system as the buses so that it was easy to integrate into our existing system and so dispatchers don't need two monitors with different UI to learn. It's a pain and I hope they either figure out the issues or switch to a new tracking system for streetcars.

More than a whiff of skepticism in this Streetsblog article by Angie Schmidt, who I don't believe came to the grand opening:

http://www.streetsblog.net/2016/09/14/after-epic-struggle-the-cincinnati-streetcar-is-finally-a-reality/

 

In a few months I assume that we're going to see a lot more articles like this:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/08/02/kansas_city_s_streetcar_is_counting_crazy_high_ridership.html

 

 

I loosely follow these writers and podcasters, and it's always funny to see how a sentiment appears and then spreads between them.  As I mentioned in a post from a few days ago, anti-streetcar hit pieces have appeared over the past 2-3 years on the Streetsblog/City Lab/etc. websites, mostly fueled by the Washington, DC debacle.  If the Cincinnati streetcar maintains an average of 5,000+ passengers, they're going to be eating dirt as much as COAST-type opponents. 

 

 

 

 

After talking to someone last night in the know, apparently we use the same tracking system as Kansas City does for both buses and streetcars. Neither of us have been able to successfully implement the tracking on streetcars, despite success with the buses and neither can figure out what the problem is. They wanted to use the same system as the buses so that it was easy to integrate into our existing system and so dispatchers don't need two monitors with different UI to learn. It's a pain and I hope they either figure out the issues or switch to a new tracking system for streetcars.

 

Ryan, I sent a note to Grether. He thinks your idea of getting rid of scheduled arrival time on the reader boards and just reporting out when the next three streetcars will arrive has merit. Also, someone else suggested putting route maps in the head liner above each door. No answer on that yet.

Any prelim numbers for paid fares yet?

Any prelim numbers for paid fares yet?

 

Might see those today.

After talking to someone last night in the know, apparently we use the same tracking system as Kansas City does for both buses and streetcars. Neither of us have been able to successfully implement the tracking on streetcars, despite success with the buses and neither can figure out what the problem is. They wanted to use the same system as the buses so that it was easy to integrate into our existing system and so dispatchers don't need two monitors with different UI to learn. It's a pain and I hope they either figure out the issues or switch to a new tracking system for streetcars.

 

Ryan, I sent a note to Grether. He thinks your idea of getting rid of scheduled arrival time on the reader boards and just reporting out when the next three streetcars will arrive has merit. Also, someone else suggested putting route maps in the head liner above each door. No answer on that yet.

Since you guys are "in the know" and talking to these folks, I just have to press on some details here.

 

What do you mean by reporting "when the next three streetcars will arrive"? Do you mean using the eventual RT arrival data (after those problems are solved)?

 

Since we don't have that information now, I'd also ask that Grether be requested to eliminate the scheduled times entirely from the board, until the RT data is online.

I was waiting at Gomez last night around 7 and observed what has become the standard operation for the northbound leg: long wait for streetcar, then a packed streetcar goes by, followed--2 to 3 minutes later--by almost empty streetcar.

 

But everyone knew this was going to happen. The southbound route down Walnut is a crawl. I know that they moved all the bus stops that they could, but with all the testing that was done, you think this could have been better game-planned. A few months ago, we were walking past the CAC. Streetcar went by and I hit a stopwatch. We went to Pi and sat outside, ordered a beer.  As we waited, one, two, and finally the streetcar I timed went by, almost 30 minutes later.

 

With months of empirical evidence based on testing, you would have thought they had the data to gameplan better. I guess not.

 

 

After talking to someone last night in the know, apparently we use the same tracking system as Kansas City does for both buses and streetcars. Neither of us have been able to successfully implement the tracking on streetcars, despite success with the buses and neither can figure out what the problem is. They wanted to use the same system as the buses so that it was easy to integrate into our existing system and so dispatchers don't need two monitors with different UI to learn. It's a pain and I hope they either figure out the issues or switch to a new tracking system for streetcars.

 

Ryan, I sent a note to Grether. He thinks your idea of getting rid of scheduled arrival time on the reader boards and just reporting out when the next three streetcars will arrive has merit. Also, someone else suggested putting route maps in the head liner above each door. No answer on that yet.

Since you guys are "in the know" and talking to these folks, I just have to press on some details here.

 

What do you mean by reporting "when the next three streetcars will arrive"? Do you mean using the eventual RT arrival data (after those problems are solved)?

 

Since we don't have that information now, I'd also ask that Grether be requested to eliminate the scheduled times entirely from the board, until the RT data is online.

 

That's what he's looking into. No posted schedule. Just GPS-actuated arrival times

 

I was waiting at Gomez last night around 7 and observed what has become the standard operation for the northbound leg: long wait for streetcar, then a packed streetcar goes by, followed--2 to 3 minutes later--by almost empty streetcar.

 

But everyone knew this was going to happen. The southbound route down Walnut is a crawl. I know that they moved all the bus stops that they could, but with all the testing that was done, you think this could have been better game-planned. A few months ago, we were walking past the CAC. Streetcar went by and I hit a stopwatch. We went to Pi and sat outside, ordered a beer.  As we waited, one, two, and finally the streetcar I timed went by, almost 30 minutes later.

 

With months of empirical evidence based on testing, you would have thought they had the data to gameplan better. I guess not.

 

 

 

Out of all the problems, bunching seems like the easiest one to fix. If a streetcar arrives at The Banks and there is already another streetcar in front of it on Main Street in the CBD, the rear streetcar should dwell at The Banks until the front streetcar turns onto 12th Street.

Also, someone else suggested putting route maps in the head liner above each door. No answer on that yet.

 

I encountered a couple going to the Reds game that parked at the Gateway Garage and caught the southbound streetcar at Central Parkway. They were looking at the head liner for a map of the route and asked me when we'd pass Washington Park...

I was waiting at Gomez last night around 7 and observed what has become the standard operation for the northbound leg: long wait for streetcar, then a packed streetcar goes by, followed--2 to 3 minutes later--by almost empty streetcar.

 

But everyone knew this was going to happen. The southbound route down Walnut is a crawl. I know that they moved all the bus stops that they could, but with all the testing that was done, you think this could have been better game-planned. A few months ago, we were walking past the CAC. Streetcar went by and I hit a stopwatch. We went to Pi and sat outside, ordered a beer.  As we waited, one, two, and finally the streetcar I timed went by, almost 30 minutes later.

 

With months of empirical evidence based on testing, you would have thought they had the data to gameplan better. I guess not.

 

 

 

Out of all the problems, bunching seems like the easiest one to fix. If a streetcar arrives at The Banks and there is already another streetcar in front of it on Main Street in the CBD, the rear streetcar should dwell at The Banks until the front streetcar turns onto 12th Street.

 

I think that the bunching is exacerbated by chance -- the lead streetcar has bad luck at two red lights but the following streetcar gets green at those same two lights.  All the sudden there are few passengers at stations or even a skipped station and now it's right behind the leading streetcar. 

 

 

Right, but isn't that something that the dispatcher is supposed to be watching? "1177, I need you to dwell at Washington Park for an extra 1 minute, you're catching up to 1175." If they're paying attention and actively managing it, they can fix it.

^If the tracker system is malfunctioning on streetcars they can't inform the operators.

 

I'm not there, so I can't say definitively what the dispatchers are seeing, but they might not be able see where they are in real time.

 

FWIW the vehicles seem to be spaced pretty good leading into the lunch hour right now.

So if the real time tracking isn't working, why not radio in and report "entering CBD", "leaving The Banks", "entering OTR", "approaching MOF" so Dispatch has a rough idea?

The drivers can just call each other on their cell phones. 

The drivers can just call each other on their cell phones. 

 

Pretty sure Metro has a rule against that

John Schneider[/member] Last time I was in the bay area, I stayed at my friend's house in Orinda. We took BART to O.co, SFO, and everything in between. I thought BART ran great and was friendly to use. I know it's a different animal but maybe there are some things that are instructive. Some thoughts of mine:

 

BART, NYC (and others) have expresses. Is having an Express Train an option? Say one of them only stops at TBX, 12/Vine (or any designated mid-point) and Findlay.

BART has a Developer Program (https://www.bart.gov/schedules/developers). Available are a host of things:

 

Complete BART trip plans from BART's official trip planning engine, Car crowding levels, special schedule notices, advisories and fare calculations

Real time estimates by platform, including direction and car length

Abbreviated service advisories (< 160 characters, like we use in our SMS services)

Station information, and so much more...

 

Is this an option for SORTA to allow fans/geeks to make this happen faster?

 

(EDIT: I now seem to recall BART does not have express. Confirm?)

The drivers can just call each other on their cell phones. 

 

Pretty sure Metro has a rule against that

 

They don't even need to call each other, if each driver just placed a cell phone somewhere in the streetcar it could be tracked using many apps. We are acting like this real time location services is some rare technology when literally every smart phone already has had it for 6+ years.

BART does not run express trains. The rest are all learning opportunities, but you have to understand that BART and the NYC Subway run with automated train control systems, which allows everything to communicate in the system (not always well, but better than what the Cincy streetcar has at the moment). ACS systems don't work for surface running systems like the streetcar or Muni when it's above ground because its in mixed traffic and the ACS can't account for unpredictable motorist movements.

The streetcar can't have express trains because that would require extra tracks to allow the express trains to pass the local trains. In cities that have streetcars and light/heavy rail, you can think of the streetcar as the local and the light/heavy rail as the express.

^ You could mimic the results of an express train by having a streetcar flip the switch at 12th and Race and just do half a loop, if the clustering got really bad. If there are two cars right behind one another, and only two cars running, it would make perfect sense to cut one of their routs in half. It would inconvenience the people on the car at the time, but improve service for every future rider.

^ You could mimic the results of an express train by having a streetcar flip the switch at 12th and Race and just do half a loop, if the clustering got really bad. If there are two cars right behind one another, and only two cars running, it would make perfect sense to cut one of their routs in half. It would inconvenience the people on the car at the time, but improve service for every future rider.

 

You can't do that. Mass transit must be dependable and take the user where they want to go. You can't have it switch routes once people have boarded. First of Jarrett Walker's 7 demands:

 

What Makes Transit Useful?  Seven Demands and How Transit Serves Them

 

A customer’s expectations of transit can be boiled down to seven demands:

 

It takes me where I want to go.

It takes me when I want to go.

It’s a good use of my time.

It’s a good use of my money.

It respects me.

I can trust it.

It gives me freedom to change my plans.

^ You could mimic the results of an express train by having a streetcar flip the switch at 12th and Race and just do half a loop, if the clustering got really bad. If there are two cars right behind one another, and only two cars running, it would make perfect sense to cut one of their routs in half. It would inconvenience the people on the car at the time, but improve service for every future rider.

 

You can't do that. Mass transit must be dependable and take the user where they want to go. You can't have it switch routes once people have boarded. First of Jarrett Walker's 7 demands:

 

What Makes Transit Useful?  Seven Demands and How Transit Serves Them

 

A customer’s expectations of transit can be boiled down to seven demands:

 

It takes me where I want to go.

It takes me when I want to go.

It’s a good use of my time.

It’s a good use of my money.

It respects me.

I can trust it.

It gives me freedom to change my plans.

 

It violates the 1st and 6th rules in that list. Very problematic.

 

 

^ You could mimic the results of an express train by having a streetcar flip the switch at 12th and Race and just do half a loop, if the clustering got really bad. If there are two cars right behind one another, and only two cars running, it would make perfect sense to cut one of their routs in half. It would inconvenience the people on the car at the time, but improve service for every future rider.

 

You can't do that. Mass transit must be dependable and take the user where they want to go. You can't have it switch routes once people have boarded. First of Jarrett Walker's 7 demands:

 

What Makes Transit Useful?  Seven Demands and How Transit Serves Them

 

A customer’s expectations of transit can be boiled down to seven demands:

 

It takes me where I want to go.

It takes me when I want to go.

It’s a good use of my time.

It’s a good use of my money.

It respects me.

I can trust it.

It gives me freedom to change my plans.

 

It violates the 1st and 6th rules in that list. Very problematic.

 

I think it would violate all of those rules.

^ You could mimic the results of an express train by having a streetcar flip the switch at 12th and Race and just do half a loop, if the clustering got really bad. If there are two cars right behind one another, and only two cars running, it would make perfect sense to cut one of their routs in half. It would inconvenience the people on the car at the time, but improve service for every future rider.

 

Toronto is famous for "turning back" streetcars in order to keep headways consistent. I've even been on one where the announcer said "everyone must get off at this station, this streetcar is turning back" but then we all got on the next one that came by. They can do this because their frequency is pretty high and the routes are longer. Any they have many more places they can turn around, not just a single point in the middle.

 

If people expected to take our streetcar from The Banks to Washington Park and the driver said "everyone has to get off at 12th & Vine," I think most riders would be angry and probably not take it again. Our system really should've had a turnback at Fifth Street for situations when 2nd/3rd are totally clogged.

The drivers can just call each other on their cell phones. 

 

Pretty sure Metro has a rule against that

 

I have seen a driver order takeout, then stop in a restaurant and pick up the food.  It's kind of lawless in Zone 2. 

 

 

John Schneider[/member] Last time I was in the bay area, I stayed at my friend's house in Orinda. We took BART to O.co, SFO, and everything in between. I thought BART ran great and was friendly to use. I know it's a different animal but maybe there are some things that are instructive. Some thoughts of mine:

 

BART, NYC (and others) have expresses. Is having an Express Train an option? Say one of them only stops at TBX, 12/Vine (or any designated mid-point) and Findlay.

BART has a Developer Program (https://www.bart.gov/schedules/developers). Available are a host of things:

 

Complete BART trip plans from BART's official trip planning engine, Car crowding levels, special schedule notices, advisories and fare calculations

Real time estimates by platform, including direction and car length

Abbreviated service advisories (< 160 characters, like we use in our SMS services)

Station information, and so much more...

 

Is this an option for SORTA to allow fans/geeks to make this happen faster?

 

(EDIT: I now seem to recall BART does not have express. Confirm?)

 

This is a local circulator, that's all. The average trip is a little over a mile. It will get faster as the city improves the signals, but it's never gonna be BART.

 

If you want speed, we need a tunnel to UC

The drivers can just call each other on their cell phones. 

 

Pretty sure Metro has a rule against that

 

They don't even need to call each other, if each driver just placed a cell phone somewhere in the streetcar it could be tracked using many apps. We are acting like this real time location services is some rare technology when literally every smart phone already has had it for 6+ years.

Yep, funny. I can buy a little battery powered coin-sized thingy with a GPS / cell chip and map/track whatever I decide to stick it on. Now there's obvious important details about an industrial system, but its the availability of cheap versions of this that make not having it so maddening.

 

And Google has tons of resources and community pages about writing to their live transit API https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs-realtime/.

 

SORTA is obviously just not very resourceful in this area. They are flailing with their own personnel and legacy systems. They probably should kick their IT staff in the butt and hire someone who knows cloud platforms, modern web languages and interfaces, and build this.

John Schneider[/member] Last time I was in the bay area, I stayed at my friend's house in Orinda. We took BART to O.co, SFO, and everything in between. I thought BART ran great and was friendly to use. I know it's a different animal but maybe there are some things that are instructive. Some thoughts of mine:

 

BART, NYC (and others) have expresses. Is having an Express Train an option? Say one of them only stops at TBX, 12/Vine (or any designated mid-point) and Findlay.

BART has a Developer Program (https://www.bart.gov/schedules/developers). Available are a host of things:

 

Complete BART trip plans from BART's official trip planning engine, Car crowding levels, special schedule notices, advisories and fare calculations

Real time estimates by platform, including direction and car length

Abbreviated service advisories (< 160 characters, like we use in our SMS services)

Station information, and so much more...

 

Is this an option for SORTA to allow fans/geeks to make this happen faster?

 

(EDIT: I now seem to recall BART does not have express. Confirm?)

 

This is a local circulator, that's all. The average trip is a little over a mile. It will get faster as the city improves the signals, but it's never gonna be BART.

 

If you want speed, we need a tunnel to UC

 

Understood. I'm certainly not in the neighborhood of being an expert. Just trying to draw some input from personal experience and let you guys shoot it down. Who knows what will come out of the exchange?

SORTA is obviously just not very resourceful in this area. They are flailing with their own personnel and legacy systems. They probably should kick their IT staff in the butt and hire someone who knows cloud platforms, modern web languages and interfaces, and build this.

 

It's probably not that easy because the guys have to be taken off of other jobs which might have deadlines or are otherwise deemed more imprortant.  I have never worked at a company where there weren't nagging, and sometimes disastrous problems with the business software, and owners or senior management who simply Do Not Understand Computers. 

The IT field is highly competitive and it's hard for SORTA or UC to hire good people for $40k when they can go to the private sector and make $120k for the same job.

SORTA is obviously just not very resourceful in this area. They are flailing with their own personnel and legacy systems. They probably should kick their IT staff in the butt and hire someone who knows cloud platforms, modern web languages and interfaces, and build this.

It's probably not that easy because the guys have to be taken off of other jobs which might have deadlines or are otherwise deemed more imprortant.  I have never worked at a company where there weren't nagging, and sometimes disastrous problems with the business software, and owners or senior management who simply Do Not Understand Computers. 

I'm a partner in a software company that provides data integration services for the water industry. We don't do this particular thing, but I know enough to say that the problem usually lies with not having the right people on the bus. Government agencies are notoriously bad in this regard, when it comes to moving data around.

 

This is a new and wonderful software world. Have a look at the above Google link - it's readable. This is a huge technology base, and you are reaping benefits from it every single day, whether you know it or not. There are people who know how to do this.

 

 

The IT field is highly competitive and it's hard for SORTA or UC to hire good people for $40k when they can go to the private sector and make $120k for the same job.

So you don't hire them. You contract with them.

^-Cincinnati Bell does do IT consulting [or at least they did about 10 years ago]... (lots of contract workers at Cincy fortune 500 companies), I wonder if it would behoove them to offer that service to SORTA to improve their brand...

The IT field is highly competitive and it's hard for SORTA or UC to hire good people for $40k when they can go to the private sector and make $120k for the same job.

So you don't hire them. You contract with them.

 

The problem is still money. SORTA has little of it, and Federal FTA formula funds are limited in use and scope. I'm not familiar with SORTA's operating budget very intimately, but the Cincinnati UZA got just under $20M in FTA formula funds (Sections 5307, 5337, and 5339) in FY2015-16 - they share this amount with TANK according to some agreement, I'm sure. And it's very likely that SORTA flexes most (all but the $1.9M of 5337/5339 funds, most likely) for operations. They're budget is very tight. They simply don't have to extra funding capacity to upgrade their back-of-house equipment for good real-time data. This is an issue faced by many legacy operators with very limited operational funding. They end up having to flex all their federal funds (which is meant for capital improvements) for operations.

 

Here in the Bay Area, the operators have decent state of good repair (and getting better), because the MPO (MTC) makes transit a very large priority. We require our operators to spend FTA funds on capital expenses only, and only on preventive maintenance or operations when all other purposes have already been covered. So we have good real-time data. We have good vehicle state-of-good-repair (except BART, but that's in progress). There's also the matter of scale.. Compare the $20M for the Cincinnati UZA (Split among 4 operators - Metro, TANK, Butler County, Clermont County) to the $448M in the Bay Area's 12 UZAs (26 operators). It's very difficult to compare Cincy to the Bay...

I hate to admit it, but I understand the anti street crowd a little bit now.

 

We created a really expensive system, that is slow, and has incredibly long intervals. The worst part is that simple stuff, that would seem like no brainers like having real time eta's on the street car, and being able to purchase a ticket on board the street car is not even implemented!  A part of me wish we could've perhaps pushed harder for high speed rail instead.

 

If this issue with the intervals don't get fixed, it will absolutely kill the street car. I can get over the fact that the street car isn't the fastest thing in the world. But I can't get over waiting over 20 minutes for a street car to arrive (especially when I can walk from OTR to the banks in the same time it would take for me to wait). Hopefully these kinks will get worked out, but it sounds like this is not something that will be fixed quickly.

 

 

You don't want ticket buying on board. That doesn't work anywhere.

 

Real time arrival information should get figured out, but honestly that's still a luxury as far as rail goes in much of the country's systems. Many still don't have accurate real-time arrival information (and haven't died because of it).

 

Bunching of streetcars happens. Go to San Francisco and go to the Outer Sunset and sit around for a little bit and watch the MUNI trains coming to the end of the line. You'll have none for half an hour or more and can check on their app and see that there are 3 coming all in a row, one after the other (and their rail transit hasn't died because of it).

 

Literally none of these issues are insurmountable and a death sentence. Pretending they are is just being dramatic.

The IT field is highly competitive and it's hard for SORTA or UC to hire good people for $40k when they can go to the private sector and make $120k for the same job.

So you don't hire them. You contract with them.

 

The city is now canvassing for ideas for the next city budget, could the city allocate additional earmarked money to Metro to get real time info implemented for busses and the streetcar?

I hate to admit it, but I understand the anti street crowd a little bit now. We created a really expensive system, that is slow, and has incredibly long intervals.

 

 

Um, do you not understand that that is simply a matter of appropriately funding operation of the system?  That Cranley succeeded in getting as few streetcars running as possible under the guidelines of the federal grants?  If we can get him out of there, then this thing can be adequately funded and we can 3-4-5 streetcars all the time.  This thing could have the #1 ridership of any new streetcar system in the country, and there could be a push to buy a sixth car so that we can run 5 more often.

 

Also, the real-time arrival information is borderline irrelevant.  When I was a kid, my dad used to catch the bus next to a telephone pole with an orange stripe.  Metro didn't even have those route markers with the bus numbers on them that they have now.  If people can see a streetcar coming, then they know it's almost there.  If it's out of sight, then they're waiting at least 5 or 10 minutes.  Not hard to figure out. 

 

 

I hate to admit it, but I understand the anti street crowd a little bit now. We created a really expensive system, that is slow, and has incredibly long intervals.

 

 

Um, do you not understand that that is simply a matter of appropriately funding operation of the system?  That Cranley succeeded in getting as few streetcars running as possible under the guidelines of the federal grants?  If we can get him out of there, then this thing can be adequately funded and we can 3-4-5 streetcars all the time.  This thing could have the #1 ridership of any new streetcar system in the country, and there could be a push to buy a sixth car so that we can run 5 more often.

 

Also, the real-time arrival information is borderline irrelevant.  When I was a kid, my dad used to catch the bus next to a telephone pole with an orange stripe.  Metro didn't even have those route markers with the bus numbers on them that they have now.  If people can see a streetcar coming, then they know it's almost there.  If it's out of sight, then they're waiting at least 5 or 10 minutes.  Not hard to figure out.

 

The anti-streetcar crowd are not some kind of transit connoisseurs that would prefer grade separated light rail. They would prefer NOTHING, and fought hard to keep anything from happening. They are transit nihilists.