I was greatly amused to see an editorial in the Strib on Saturday titled, “Riding streetcars back to the future”.The basic thrust of it is summed up in this paragraph:
“Modern streetcars are sleek in design. They are narrower and two-thirds shorter than light-rail cars. They are scaled to city neighborhoods. They operate singly and in mixed traffic, stopping every two to four blocks. Streetcar lines nowadays are often built as public-private ventures, then bid out to local transit agencies for operations and maintenance. Construction costs run two-thirds less than light rail.”
Picture – 1930′s Street car on 4th St. near the union Depot.
That’s exactly what I’ve been saying for years about the proposed LRT system on University Avenue.There are better ways of doing this, and Streetcars have some great advantages.
The most important difference between the two is that streetcars are lighter, and as such do not require as many utilities to be moved when the track is laid. The savings are appreciable from this small difference. Streetcar lines typically run $15 million per mile, whereas a typical LRT system is about 3 times that. University Avenue, for a number of reasons, will run about 6 times that.
The downside? The lighter Streetcars have a maximum speed of about 32 miles per hour, versus the sleek LRT that is capable of twice that. However, down the middle of a neighborhoodstreet, this is not a major limitation.
I bring this up because if we are to move Saint Paul away from a car-centered world, we have to look at building a system, not just a series of lines. Cars do not mix well with cities, and never will, because of the heavy demands for land in order to store them.
If inner-city land is to be more valuable than land surrounding it, there have to at least be alternatives that minimize the reliance on the car. That means a system that gets people from a lot of different neighborhoods to a lot of different destinations.
Will the Streetcar ever replace the car? I doubt it.There will always be some people that cannot be accommodated by a system, no matter how comprehensive. But if I were to name one thing that would increase the net value of all the property in Saint Paul, it would be a system that allows people to move back and forth without having to worry about parking headaches constantly.
I happen to think that once the price tag for the Central Corridor LRT comes in at 1.2-1.4 billion bucks, our leaders will have to sit down and look for an alternative to the grand scheme that simply won’t get funded.Here’s one idea.
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One of my complaints about our lovely city and it twin is the lack of public transportation. The light rail is a great but expensive idea which is similar to the “el” system in Chicago. But without the network of buses or street car options between the main arteries of el or light rail, it’s senseless to build the arteries. We need well planned capillaries, too.
About 6-7 years ago or so a couple of St. Paul council members — I believe one of them was Jay Benanav — began a tentative examination of rebuilding a “Heritage” (i.e. vintage equipment) streetcar system in St. Paul. They even took a junket out to Kenosha, Wisconsin to view that city’s then-new streetcar system.
Jim Stolpestad (who I’m sure you’re aware owns a significant chunk of Grand Avenue and beyond) was also pretty psyched about the idea at the time. Or maybe he was just acting like it in order to take the heat off of all the parking and traffic-congestion issues he was being hassled with at the time.
The initial plan was to lay down track from the Xcel Energy Center, then up through W. Seventh to Grand, and from there string it on through to the University of St. Thomas. If that proved profitable enough, the city would complete the loop in a few years with a track running down Selby Avenue, crossing Summit at the Cathedral (just like in the old days), and reopening the currently abandoned steetcar tunnel at the base of the hill, where it would be a straight shot back to Xcel. A little power plant at the Xcel site would run the whole thing.
At least that was the plan. Pity nothing ever came of it. Don’t know if it would mean much for Grand, but Selby would take off like a rocket if the streetcars ever returned there.
Kenosha’s system is a huge hit, by the way, and looks to be expanding in a few years.
with Houston in the not too distant past adding light rail to our downtown, I recognize this debate. I enjoy having light rail now that it is here. I would have never guessed the deaths we would incur. These things travel almost silently and hit pedestrians all the time.