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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

> ... managed to tear out the streetcars (on hindsight a mistake)

Having lived in places with OK (SF) or good streetcar service (Berlin, which is a nice A/B test case with East/West Berlin) I am a huge fan of streetcars.

But my understanding is that in general the streetcars never made money in suburban developments. What I remember reading (on HN first!) was that they were deployed in early (post WWII) suburbs to entice urban people to move to a suburbs, but were operated at a loss. When the town eventually had to take them over they shut them down.

Does the economics really work out when you don't have urban density?

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> they were deployed in early (post WWII) suburbs to entice urban people to move to a suburbs

No, the streetcar suburbs were ALL pre-war. Pre-WWI, mostly. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb ) And the streetcar companies were generally private companies that operated at a profit -- until they had to compete with cars for both riders and space. And this is key, nobody loved the streetcar companies, because they had a history of gouging commuters. So when those companies got in trouble, there was no political will for any kind of bailout.

Thanks, I did angolia HN search while writing my comment but couldn’t find my reference. Looks like my memory was faulty.

I will never understand why mass transit is held to profit-making standards but roads are not.

roads often were until the Eisenhower administration pushed for free national highways, since he was part of a military test convoy that only made it across the country after 62 days on poor, or nonexistent roads. https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/...

The highways that are present from before that time in the US are tolled, like the turnpikes found in the Northeast.

It's more than that. For intra-city transit, anti-transit people generally demand that public transit pay for itself, while still demanding all the roads (inside the city) be free. Of course, there's a big question about practicality when it comes to putting tolls on all the small roads and streets in a city, but these same people are the ones who oppose "congestion charges" like that implemented in London, which effectively imposes a toll for using any of the roads inside a certain area.

Pretty much any public transit is operated at a loss very few exceptions usually make money off real estate, namely stations in prime locations.

To be fair, I think a lot of the benefits of public transit go to people who aren't even using it. When you make it easier to go somewhere, more people will go there which is good for business at that somewhere. There are also the benefits of reduced traffic for those who do end up driving.

Yes. Although my argument would be slightly different. Subsidizing public transit in many cases is cheaper than upgrading roads. There is also social element. Elders & kids, disabled, DUI crowd… Public transit helps a lot to engage them.

I thought streetcar not making enough money was related to stupid price controls (pardon the redundancy) setting it to a fixed cost not indexed to inflation and then wondering why it can't sustain itself.

A streetcar is just a bus that can't be rerouted or go around a road obstruction.

> A streetcar is just a bus that can't be rerouted or go around a road obstruction.

A single-lane BRT can carry 9000 people, while a single-lane streetcar/tram/LRT can carry 18000:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity

Rail gives you more capacity. Of course if you don't need that capacity then the value proposition is questionable: perhaps better to start with a BRT and try to get things to grow.

BRT would be a good (and cheap) upgrade for a lot of the absurdly wide stroads covering US cities. Bonus points if you can get the intersections on those roads converted to roundabouts. The whole reason why those stroads got so comically wide is so that all the cars have somewhere to park while they're waiting for the next light. Roundabouts are continuous flow and can handle a lot more traffic than a signaled intersection, so you can take out the center lanes in favor of dedicated bus infrastructure.

The reason why most buses suck to take is because they can never keep to a schedule when they're sharing the same lanes that private cars take, have to wait at the same lights as them, etc.

>The reason why most buses suck to take is because they can never keep to a schedule when they're sharing the same lanes that private cars take, have to wait at the same lights as them, etc.

They're also pretty damn uncomfortable to sit on: bouncing motions, herky-jerky steering motions, etc. Compare that to sitting on a subway car: the subway is FAR more comfortable because it's riding on rails and doesn't bounce around a lot. And if it's really crowded, it's a lot easier to stand up while riding a subway than a bus.

Besides the sibling replies, it can also be powered better, from direct connection to the electrical grid. More efficient than lossy conversions from battery storage or combustion fuel, and also saves the weight and complexity of those components.

Plus, no tyres. It turns out that tires cause a surprising amount of pollution.

Electric trolleybuses are probably the better tradeoff.

Except it usually also has a dedicated lane. Businesses and people also know that the bus line is fixed, so it makes all development along it significantly more attractive. A bus route can come and go per financial quarter.

And if that lane gets obstructed you lose the entire streetcar line from that point on.

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