7 ms·

What a lot of pro-transit (full disclosure, I am full transit) folks fail to mention, is that most streetcars were initially built, in particular, those out tow

What a lot of pro-transit (full disclosure, I am full transit) folks fail to mention, is that most streetcars were initially built, in particular, those out towards the sunset, big chunks of LA, were actually built by property developers, as an incentive, "look! see! don't need a car! just like urban living, but look at all this extra space you get! just take the street car into town". Street cars were run at break even, or even at a loss, to sell property, and once they hit X saturation rate, the street car prices were raised to make it pay for itself, or simply sold off to the city to maintain, out of property taxes. With barely break-even rates, and no maintenance budget these lines quickly fell into disrepair, and no suprise, the city and local citizens decided to buy private cars, rather than eat a tax hike to pay for the maintenance of a rail line that only went downtown. Yes, absolutely Big Business bought up/bought out a lot of small-time public transit, but you need to look at how and why these lines were built in the first place. They did not spring up out of the goodness of the hearts of property developers. Street cars for many years existed as a perk to sell farmland to urban expats, and once they had served their propose, were rapidly dismantled due to lack of service and maintenance costs. Nothing comes without a price.

melony 4y ago
The reason they are failing is because they are slow ass and never modernized. Now they are primarily tourist traps. SF is a bad example of a city with street cars, there are many countries with much better implementations of street cars. You need to give street cars priority and make sure they don't get overly slowed down by city traffic. If you want people to take streetcars, overhaul the entire infrastructure. You can keep the outer decoration and layout but the insides should be replaced with the latest tech from Siemens/the Japanese.
- defrost 4y ago
  eg: Melbourne, Australia > Trams are a major form of public transport in Melbourne, the capital city of the state of Victoria, Australia. > As of May 2017, the Melbourne tramway network consists of 250 kilometres of double track, 493 trams, 24 routes, and 1,763 tram stops. > The system is the largest operational urban tram network in the world. As featured in the engineering nerd cult classic film Malcolm (1986) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wffDBsSgS5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wffDBsSgS5Q
  - spacehunt 4y ago
    Melbourne is not a great example of a modern fast system though. The trams are far too slow in the inner suburbs, with the exception of parts of 96/119.
  - deepdriver 4y ago
    You don't even need to be a wealthy country. Tram service is excellent in Zagreb, capital of Croatia, where they've had electrics trams for more than a century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Zagreb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Zagreb To someone from a place with modern, well-maintained light rail, I imagine Bay Area streetcars seem as quaint and outdated as old Ford cars in Cuba look to Americans.
    - Symbiote 4y ago
      > To someone from a place with modern, well-maintained light rail, I imagine Bay Area streetcars seem as quaint and outdated as old Ford cars in Cuba look to Americans. This is why San Francisco's streetcars are a tourist attraction. Few people go to Edinburgh just to ride on a modern tram, but some people visit Scotland and take a trip on a steam train (with or without the Harry Potter theme).
      - quesera 4y ago
        > This is why San Francisco's streetcars are a tourist attraction San Francisco's Cable Cars are a tourist transaction. They do also move thousands of officeworkers to downtown daily, though. But the streetcar system is much larger than the cable car system, and it is definitely not a tourist attraction.
        Taniwha 4y ago
        I think that what confuses people is that they run historic street cars down the surface Market St for the tourists, and more modern street cars underground (under Market St, above ground in the suburbs) for the locals
- m-ee 4y ago
  The N Judah actually managed to get slower. Having trouble finding the photo but someone posted an N Judah schedule on reddit from the early 1900s and it was actually faster to get to downtown than it is now. EDIT- Article about it https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/us/san-francisco-muni-strives-to-recapture-streetcar-speeds-of-1912.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/us/san-francisco-muni-str...
  - flomo 4y ago
    The T-Third is also slower than the bus it replaced, and that was only like 20 years ago.
NoToP 4y ago
Hold up. Why would people who weren't willing to accept the taxes to maintain the street car willing to instead pay all the tax which subsidizes car infrastructure. This narrative doesn't quite add up because everything you said about why the street car existed and the commuter pattern that fed into the economics of developers applies equally well to why cars and suburb development exists. So once suburban homes were sold, why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair which no one was willing to pay for?
- csours 4y ago
  Haha. It's absolutely beautiful when someone asks the good question. Related - why are people willing to subsidize someone else's road, but not willing to pay tolls -- or -- why are people willing to subsidize someone else's road, but not someone else's bus or subway fair.
- floren 4y ago
  > So once suburban homes were sold, why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair which no one was willing to pay for? This is currently playing out in older subdivisions all across America.
- toast0 4y ago
  > why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair which no one was willing to pay for? A street in disrepair is still usable, a street car line in disrepair becomes unusable much faster. Only one part of the rail needs to fall apart when nobody will pay to fix it and you can't use it anymore. Potholes and washouts and lots more problems are solved by driving slowly and carefully. Especially with earlier automobiles which were more likely to run on dirt roads.
  - NoToP 4y ago
    This is a plausible hypothesis, but the thing that's missing is how many times can rail be traversed before being unusable and how many times can a road be traversed by the same measure. Intuitively, I would imagine the net tonnage passed before wearing out asphalt is far lower than it is for a chunk of steel welded to the ground. Maybe the cost of maintaining rail feels worse / is a harder political sell because the full price is acutely concentrated in time, whereas each individual pothole is a mere budgetary papercut?
systemvoltage 4y ago
To make this happen, first, East Bay needs to make streets safer. It is ridiculous how crime ridden Oakland and Berkeley are to the point where it is probably wise to avoid public transportation all together. We need a national guard deployed here 24/7, that's how I feel walking around in downtown Oakland. With NYCSPA vs Bruen ruling, I am planning to obtain a handgun and a CCW license from Alameda sheriff with a shall issue reason as "Self Defense". You can go here and see how many people feel unsafe in California, particularly LA, SF and East Bay. https://old.reddit.com/r/CAguns/comments/vlnrrw/the_rcaguns_firearms_carry_megathread/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CAguns/comments/vlnrrw/the_rcaguns_...
- melony 4y ago
  Is it really that bad? Seems to be mostly just homeless people and drug users.
  - sammalloy 4y ago
    It’s a good question. Whenever this discussion comes up, my take on it is that people are concerned about being random victims. In other words, some aspects of this have to do with being in the wrong place at the wrong time and not feeling safe in your environment. I think it would be helpful to change the frame of the discussion and ask what we can do to make people more safe and comfortable. The BBC recently had a discussion about this in the UK, and they came up with all sorts of specific and targeted solutions. We rarely see that happen over here on this side of the pond.
    - uoaei 4y ago
      Another question worth asking is: what is the rate of randomly directed violent crime? I suspect it's small enough to be a rounding error vs violent crimes between people with pre-existing relationships. Still, I agree with your point about the rhetorical focus. Simply reciting the statistics isn't going to alleviate anxieties.
      - sammalloy 4y ago
mc32 4y ago
It’s a classical conspiracy theory. There are truths interspersed with assumptions and fabrications sustained by a fantastical desire -in this case halcyon of dependable public transit everywhere which was razed by greedy bus manufacturing companies in cahoots with petrochemical companies. When in reality it’s closer to the story of the ferries that ferried cars across the bay before the bridges were built. Or the story of railroads before the interstate system displaced nearly all interstate passenger rail.
- twobitshifter 4y ago
  Interesting that you mentioned the decline of ferries. Streetcar systems depended on ferries to bring riders their way. If you are making a trip by ferry you’ll need a way to get around when you get off on the other shore. The Atlantic Avenue line in Boston is a good example of a ferry dependent line. Once they opened the East Boston and Sumner tunnels and people could drive through the Bay, taking the train became much less attractive.
- NoToP 4y ago
  The interstate system was a massive subsidy to cars and car dependant lifestyles. To compare it to tech disruption like what happened to ferries makes the death of interstate passenger rail seem natural. In reality, no industry could survive their competitor being so heavily subsidized. If we threw that amount of money at high speed rail, we could probably choke out a good portion of the airline and car industry combined.
opo 4y ago
The podcast 99% Invisible did a good podcast covering the Red Car. From their overview article on the episode: >...Henry Huntington took his money and headed for Los Angeles. He purchased the biggest transportation system in the city, the Los Angeles Railway (LARy), and then incorporated it into a new company called Pacific Electric. Huntington also started building hundreds of subdivisions on the periphery of Los Angeles and used Pacific Electric trains—bright red trolleys—to connect the subdivisions to downtown Los Angeles. >Over time, though, Huntington had built so many subdivisions that his Red Car couldn’t do a good enough job connecting the city’s disparate areas. The Red Car was never designed to be a comprehensive system like the New York City Subway; rather, it existed primarily to get people in and out of Huntington’s subdivisions. Angelenos who could afford cars found it was easier to get around by driving. The Red Car fell into disrepair, and was mocked as a “slum on wheels.” https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-70-the-great-red-car-conspiracy/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-70-the-great-... A book that covers this in more depth is: https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/24015/HENRY_E_HUNTINGTON_AND_THE_CREATION_OF_SOUTHERN_CALIFORNIA.pdf https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/24015/HENRY_E_HUNTI...
dionidium 4y ago
I can't remember where I read this, but somebody once said something like, "If there were a conspiracy to kill the streetcars in favor of automobiles, then it was a conspiracy conducted with the enthusiastic support of the American public." Transit enthusiasts and urbanists -- I'm both -- love any narrative that says that suburbanites have been tricked into their living arrangements by nefarious outside interests, but in fact this is what Americans have more or less demanded.

melony 4y ago

The reason they are failing is because they are slow ass and never modernized. Now they are primarily tourist traps. SF is a bad example of a city with street cars, there are many countries with much better implementations of street cars. You need to give street cars priority and make sure they don't get overly slowed down by city traffic. If you want people to take streetcars, overhaul the entire infrastructure. You can keep the outer decoration and layout but the insides should be replaced with the latest tech from Siemens/the Japanese.

defrost 4y ago
eg: Melbourne, Australia > Trams are a major form of public transport in Melbourne, the capital city of the state of Victoria, Australia. > As of May 2017, the Melbourne tramway network consists of 250 kilometres of double track, 493 trams, 24 routes, and 1,763 tram stops. > The system is the largest operational urban tram network in the world. As featured in the engineering nerd cult classic film Malcolm (1986) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wffDBsSgS5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wffDBsSgS5Q
- spacehunt 4y ago
  Melbourne is not a great example of a modern fast system though. The trams are far too slow in the inner suburbs, with the exception of parts of 96/119.
- deepdriver 4y ago
  You don't even need to be a wealthy country. Tram service is excellent in Zagreb, capital of Croatia, where they've had electrics trams for more than a century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Zagreb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Zagreb To someone from a place with modern, well-maintained light rail, I imagine Bay Area streetcars seem as quaint and outdated as old Ford cars in Cuba look to Americans.
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    > To someone from a place with modern, well-maintained light rail, I imagine Bay Area streetcars seem as quaint and outdated as old Ford cars in Cuba look to Americans. This is why San Francisco's streetcars are a tourist attraction. Few people go to Edinburgh just to ride on a modern tram, but some people visit Scotland and take a trip on a steam train (with or without the Harry Potter theme).
    - quesera 4y ago
      > This is why San Francisco's streetcars are a tourist attraction San Francisco's Cable Cars are a tourist transaction. They do also move thousands of officeworkers to downtown daily, though. But the streetcar system is much larger than the cable car system, and it is definitely not a tourist attraction.
      - Taniwha 4y ago
        I think that what confuses people is that they run historic street cars down the surface Market St for the tourists, and more modern street cars underground (under Market St, above ground in the suburbs) for the locals
m-ee 4y ago
The N Judah actually managed to get slower. Having trouble finding the photo but someone posted an N Judah schedule on reddit from the early 1900s and it was actually faster to get to downtown than it is now. EDIT- Article about it https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/us/san-francisco-muni-strives-to-recapture-streetcar-speeds-of-1912.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/us/san-francisco-muni-str...
- flomo 4y ago
  The T-Third is also slower than the bus it replaced, and that was only like 20 years ago.

NoToP 4y ago

Hold up. Why would people who weren't willing to accept the taxes to maintain the street car willing to instead pay all the tax which subsidizes car infrastructure. This narrative doesn't quite add up because everything you said about why the street car existed and the commuter pattern that fed into the economics of developers applies equally well to why cars and suburb development exists. So once suburban homes were sold, why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair which no one was willing to pay for?

csours 4y ago
Haha. It's absolutely beautiful when someone asks the good question. Related - why are people willing to subsidize someone else's road, but not willing to pay tolls -- or -- why are people willing to subsidize someone else's road, but not someone else's bus or subway fair.
floren 4y ago
> So once suburban homes were sold, why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair which no one was willing to pay for? This is currently playing out in older subdivisions all across America.
toast0 4y ago
> why didnt the roads collapse into a state of disrepair which no one was willing to pay for? A street in disrepair is still usable, a street car line in disrepair becomes unusable much faster. Only one part of the rail needs to fall apart when nobody will pay to fix it and you can't use it anymore. Potholes and washouts and lots more problems are solved by driving slowly and carefully. Especially with earlier automobiles which were more likely to run on dirt roads.
- NoToP 4y ago
  This is a plausible hypothesis, but the thing that's missing is how many times can rail be traversed before being unusable and how many times can a road be traversed by the same measure. Intuitively, I would imagine the net tonnage passed before wearing out asphalt is far lower than it is for a chunk of steel welded to the ground. Maybe the cost of maintaining rail feels worse / is a harder political sell because the full price is acutely concentrated in time, whereas each individual pothole is a mere budgetary papercut?

systemvoltage 4y ago

To make this happen, first, East Bay needs to make streets safer. It is ridiculous how crime ridden Oakland and Berkeley are to the point where it is probably wise to avoid public transportation all together. We need a national guard deployed here 24/7, that's how I feel walking around in downtown Oakland. With NYCSPA vs Bruen ruling, I am planning to obtain a handgun and a CCW license from Alameda sheriff with a shall issue reason as "Self Defense". You can go here and see how many people feel unsafe in California, particularly LA, SF and East Bay. https://old.reddit.com/r/CAguns/comments/vlnrrw/the_rcaguns_firearms_carry_megathread/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CAguns/comments/vlnrrw/the_rcaguns_...

melony 4y ago
Is it really that bad? Seems to be mostly just homeless people and drug users.
- sammalloy 4y ago
  It’s a good question. Whenever this discussion comes up, my take on it is that people are concerned about being random victims. In other words, some aspects of this have to do with being in the wrong place at the wrong time and not feeling safe in your environment. I think it would be helpful to change the frame of the discussion and ask what we can do to make people more safe and comfortable. The BBC recently had a discussion about this in the UK, and they came up with all sorts of specific and targeted solutions. We rarely see that happen over here on this side of the pond.
  - uoaei 4y ago
    Another question worth asking is: what is the rate of randomly directed violent crime? I suspect it's small enough to be a rounding error vs violent crimes between people with pre-existing relationships. Still, I agree with your point about the rhetorical focus. Simply reciting the statistics isn't going to alleviate anxieties.
    - sammalloy 4y ago

mc32 4y ago

It’s a classical conspiracy theory. There are truths interspersed with assumptions and fabrications sustained by a fantastical desire -in this case halcyon of dependable public transit everywhere which was razed by greedy bus manufacturing companies in cahoots with petrochemical companies. When in reality it’s closer to the story of the ferries that ferried cars across the bay before the bridges were built. Or the story of railroads before the interstate system displaced nearly all interstate passenger rail.

twobitshifter 4y ago
Interesting that you mentioned the decline of ferries. Streetcar systems depended on ferries to bring riders their way. If you are making a trip by ferry you’ll need a way to get around when you get off on the other shore. The Atlantic Avenue line in Boston is a good example of a ferry dependent line. Once they opened the East Boston and Sumner tunnels and people could drive through the Bay, taking the train became much less attractive.
NoToP 4y ago
The interstate system was a massive subsidy to cars and car dependant lifestyles. To compare it to tech disruption like what happened to ferries makes the death of interstate passenger rail seem natural. In reality, no industry could survive their competitor being so heavily subsidized. If we threw that amount of money at high speed rail, we could probably choke out a good portion of the airline and car industry combined.

opo 4y ago

The podcast 99% Invisible did a good podcast covering the Red Car. From their overview article on the episode: >...Henry Huntington took his money and headed for Los Angeles. He purchased the biggest transportation system in the city, the Los Angeles Railway (LARy), and then incorporated it into a new company called Pacific Electric. Huntington also started building hundreds of subdivisions on the periphery of Los Angeles and used Pacific Electric trains—bright red trolleys—to connect the subdivisions to downtown Los Angeles. >Over time, though, Huntington had built so many subdivisions that his Red Car couldn’t do a good enough job connecting the city’s disparate areas. The Red Car was never designed to be a comprehensive system like the New York City Subway; rather, it existed primarily to get people in and out of Huntington’s subdivisions. Angelenos who could afford cars found it was easier to get around by driving. The Red Car fell into disrepair, and was mocked as a “slum on wheels.” https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-70-the-great-red-car-conspiracy/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-70-the-great-... A book that covers this in more depth is: https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/24015/HENRY_E_HUNTINGTON_AND_THE_CREATION_OF_SOUTHERN_CALIFORNIA.pdf https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/24015/HENRY_E_HUNTI...

dionidium 4y ago

I can't remember where I read this, but somebody once said something like, "If there were a conspiracy to kill the streetcars in favor of automobiles, then it was a conspiracy conducted with the enthusiastic support of the American public." Transit enthusiasts and urbanists -- I'm both -- love any narrative that says that suburbanites have been tricked into their living arrangements by nefarious outside interests, but in fact this is what Americans have more or less demanded.