W. K. Lis
Superstar
Almost half the businessess on Spadina felt the line had no impact?
Most likely they never asked their customers the question, or the same people came before and after.
Almost half the businessess on Spadina felt the line had no impact?
Most likely they never asked their customers the question, or the same people came before and after.
Almost half the businessess on Spadina felt the line had no impact?
Several areas. The synopsis is available from this link:
reproduced here…..We found that:
• Instead of living up to pre-construction reports that streetcars on dedicated lanes would cut travel time from Bloor Street to Queen’s Quay by 5½ minutes — the environmental assessment boasted of up to 10 minutes in savings — the 510 appears to take longer than the buses that plied the route from 1948 to 1997. A TTC document obtained last month says the trip takes one minute longer in the afternoon rush hour than in 1990. Data on historical and current transfers indicate a 17-minute bus trip in 1993 now takes 19 minutes by streetcar.
• The 510 may be the slowest of all routes between the Bloor-Danforth and Queen Street. Travel times on TTC transfers put Bloor-to-Queen trips at 12 minutes on Spadina, 8 minutes on Bathurst and 10 minutes on other routes.
• The TTC says ridership on Spadina is up 30 per cent since 1997, the year the line opened. But when compared with 1992, the last year before construction tore up the street and cut into ridership, Spadina appears to be down 1.5 per cent, while overall TTC ridership is up about 3.4 per cent.
• TTC cost-to-revenue ratio lists show the Spadina and Harbourfront lines (now considered one for accounting purposes) have plunged to 35th-best among the TTC’s 132 surface routes. In 1997, they were No. 1 and No. 9, respectively, with the Spadina bus one of only seven routes turning a profit.
We discussed this here before. What remains unclear is the questions, does the change from bus to rail increase ridership? In my opinion, on Spadina, it did not.
Well if we are just quoting newspapers then I offer this one..........
reproduced here…..
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=210484
We discussed this here before. What remains unclear is the questions, does the change from bus to rail increase ridership? In my opinion, on Spadina, it did not. It is difficult to compare the old Spadina 77 ridership with the 501 because the 501 includes Queens Quay now. Add to that changes in the other factors that influence ridership, like the number of condos on QQ, employment levels, etc. and attributing any change to mode alone would have to be based on opinion. Not fact.
As to the question at hand in this thread, if LRT was to be truly stimulative, it would have to show an absolute change in aggregate development. If the growth around the lines occurs at the expense of other areas it is a zero sum game.
The biggest problem with trying to measure the impact a transit line has on development or business is that there is no consistent base line. There are too many other factors that are constantly at work to say that any particular amount of growth, or lack of it, is directly related to the transit system. Also there is no such thing as a ‘control’ street to compare an evolving street with because every street is different and is affected by so many other factors.
By Bill Fulton
Streetcars are the hottest thing in the downtown revitalization business these days. They’re in operation in Portland and Seattle and in planning and construction stage in places like Washington, D.C., Oklahoma City, Cincinnati, Fort Lauderdale and Kansas City. And don’t worry – California will get its share of streetcars as well, especially Southern California. The Downtown Los Angeles streetcar appears all but certain to be open by around 2016, and three Orange County cities – Anaheim, Santa Ana, and Fullerton – are exploring the idea.
At last week’s New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Kansas City, one of L.A.’s leading streetcar advocates – Shiraz Tangri, a lawyer for Alston & Bird and the general counsel for LA Streetcar Inc. – laid out the game plan for how the downtown streetcar will be built. A critical piece of the puzzle was put into place last fall, when downtown voters approved a Mello-Roos District to help finance the streetcar. It’s one of the few cases in California history that a Mello has been successfully adopted in an urban location – which, all by itself, may be a harbinger of things to come.
At first glance, streetcars would not seem to have much of a place in the 21st Century. These self-propelled single-car vehicles are much slower even than light-rail trains and they typically run in the street with regular traffic. Yet they’re catching on all over the country as a more efficient downtown circulator than the typical bus or shuttle – and one that will generate new real estate development along the way.
That’s clearly what’s happened in Portland, where the streetcar connects downtown with the hopping Pearl District and with the South Waterfront, where it connects to an aerial tram to Oregon Health Sciences University, which is located atop a nearby hill. Other cities are trying to replicate the Portland story. Virtually all streetcar projects seek to connect disparate destinations in or near downtowns. They’re all starting with only a few miles of service and compared to other rail transit investments they’re cheap -- $100 million or so on average.
But, as Tangri pointed out in his presentation in Kansas City, no city in the country is better poised to use the streetcar well than L.A. “It’s a history project and an identity project,†he said of the L.A. streetcar. “We should be the most pedestrian-friendly city in the world. We have a great climate. It is incredibly dense.â€
Downtown Los Angeles is already experiencing an amazing renaissance. The opening of the Staples Center in 1999 and the city’s pathbreaking adaptive reuse ordinance shortly thereafter kickstarted a rejuvenation that has increased downtown’s population from 10,000 to 50,000. Downtown is the hub of a burgeoning regional transit system that is likely to double in size over the next decade, thanks largely to Measure R.
Even so, as Tangri pointed out in his Kansas City talk, Downtown L.A. is big – it’s a long way from Staples to the hip lofts east of City Hall – and it can be tough to get around. Furthermore, some parts of Downtown have not shared in the rebirth. For example, along Broadway – once Downtown’s premiere shopping street – the upper floors of 12-story buildings remain mostly empty even as neighborhoods all around have new life. (Tangri says there is 1 million square feet of vacant space on Broadway.) Indeed, Broadway is the focal point of the streetcar project; Councilmember Jose Huizar has assigned the same staff member to be the point person for both the streetcar and Broadway.
Like so many other streetcar projects around the country, the L.A. project is being put together entirely outside the traditional public transit structure. (L.A. Metro is supportive but has nothing to do with the project.) And as Tangri and others often point out, when business leaders promote – and pay for – a transit project, it’s going to have different a completely different goal: economic development rather than mobility. “We talk a lot about transit-oriented development,†he said, “But this is development-oriented transit.â€
Though some cities around the country are relying on state and federal funds to help pay for their projects, L.A. – like other cities, including Kansas City – is relying almost entirely on what amounts to a parcel tax. Among other things, the Mello is levied as a gradient – those close to the line pay more. And, as Tangri and other streetcar experts frequently say, you’ve got to link those places that are hot in the real estate market with those that aren’t. It’s a way of extending the hot market to new locations.
The Mello-Roos victory last November is an especially interesting and important aspect of the L.A. streetcar effort. Originally a Proposition 13 workaround, Mellos have traditionally been used only in greenfield locations because they require two-thirds voter approval. In areas with few voters, the vote is among property owners only, which means developers and local governments have typically negotiated an infrastructure finance deal and than the developer (often the sole landowner) votes the Mello district into existence. Cities have usually stayed away from urban Mellos because they fear voters won’t go for the extra tax.
In Downtown L.A., though, all those new hipsters helped the cause. Whereas many property owners may have been reluctant to tax themselves for the streetcar, the new downtown residents – the voters – were more than willing deliver the two-thirds vote for the additional tax, which of course falls in the property owners and not – at least not directly – on those residents who are renters. The streetcar vote could flip traditional California thinking about urban Mellos on its head.
Tangri said the streetcar should begin construction next year and open in 2016. This is a similar timetable for many other streetcar projects around the country.
I remember reading in the Star a couple of years ago interviews with business owners who were still adamant 20 years later that the streetcar had ruined Spadina. And I have no doubt you'll find the same thing on St. Clair. There are more vacant storefronts than ever around St. Clair and Oakwood.
On the other hand, it seems like most people who live near the line love it. When I was house shopping a few years ago I basically ruled out neighbourhoods too far from streetcars, and ended up near St. Clair. In addition there are now decent-sized condo developments that are on the St Clair streetcar line and not terribly close to the subway.
Streetcars don't just attract development (I think they do), they encourage some times of economic activity over other types of economic activity. I guess that the business that suffered are those that attracted car drivers for whatever reason - for example on St. Clair some of the bigger business that are failing are furniture stores. I suppose they have had to compete with big suburban stores, and the perception that St. Clair is difficult to drive and park on has driven more customers away. At the same time restaurants, in particular, seem to be doing very well.
THE FACTS ARE OUT THERE FOR ALL TO SEE
I went through this in Pittsburgh. We hired DeLeuw Cather to study
which was better and Light Rail won, but only because I would not
let DeLeuw Cather take short cuts.
DeLeuw Cather figured out Light Rail cost job by job and mile
by mile but for bus costs, they just took the system average. I would
not allow that. They agreed to price out BRT job by job and mile by
mile and lo and behold, LRT was less costly. Everyone on the
panel wanted BRT but me but I got LRT because the data supported
it. It so happened that way because the Light Rail served a pros-
perous area with lots of automobiles, so most riders were in the peaks
avoiding traffic congestion.
Most bus riders were transit dependent so rode all day long creating
a much different peak hour labor cost. Pittsburgh had a four hour
minimum tripper so many bus drivers got paid four hours for one round
trip with passengers only one way.
Ottawa shows clearly the difference. They were sold BRT by
dishonest bus salesmen so for a decade as they expanded the
BusWay they lost a million passengers a year. Albert and Slater
Streets downtown got so congested with buses it ruined business
and slowed buses to 3 miles per hour downtown. Ottawa is now
building Light Rail to alleviate their mistake.
The best example on a small scale was the Route 103 in subutban
Philadelphia. It was Light Rail until1967 when it was converted to
BRT. Even with slightly more frequent service riders fell 15 % and
costs went up. By now, bus riders have fallen 80 %.and service is
just a shadow of what it once was. Routes 101 and 102 are still
rail and have had no such heavy losses but they lost some riders
when Regional Rail fares were brought down and service speeded
up. E d T e n n y s o n
Calgary and Edmonton are a perfect example of this. They built their respective systems are roughly the same time but Edmonotn decided to built a smaller system because it wanted the LRT underground downtown. Calgary decided the opposite and wanted a larger system serving more people and decided to have the downtown portion at grade along a transit-only corridor. The money they saved helped build a far larger system serving many more people, destinations, and work places. Proof is in the pudding, similar sized cities but with the CTrain carrying 3x as many passengers as Edmonton's LRT.