Streetcar

[bradh]

so nothing on Cincy's streetcar? is it having problems that no one wants to bring up?

[Urbanized]

Freeway is a term used to describe the free flow nature of the road given it is a fully controlled access facility.

Driving on them isn’t free even if you don’t have to pay a toll. You still have to pay for gas, you pay taxes on that gas. You have pay for a car which you also pay thousands of dollars in taxes on. You have to pay for maintenance if the vehicle, the products you buy also have taxes on them. The companies that ship those products and cars pay taxes and fuel taxes as well. You also have to pay drivers license fees as well. Whatever the excuse for those funds may be. In order to drive unless someone is giving you a free car and paying to fuel and if they paid for your drivers license(which isn’t that expensive anyways but for the sake of argument) then you are paying to use that freeway.

The maintence of the buses and rail cars have to be paid for somehow. Even with fares, I don’t think there is a single rail line in the country that turns a profit except for the NEC. Besides, with more and more cars becoming extremely conservative on fuel, new fuel alternatives, and ridersharing services, I beleive every single transit agency has reported a drop in ridership except for PATH(Jersey City). Remember, that’s even with the rail expansions that have been opening up left and right.

Wait until autonomous cars start hitting the market. We’re still 5-10 years away from their true entry into the market and we’re seeing cities and states are already scrambling to write laws and prepare for their arrival. I honestly believe they will put the final nail in the coffin for rail based travel at least for inner cities.

Should you ever care to challenge your own worldview, this would be a great place to start: https://www.theatlantic.com/business...-costs/412237/

[Urbanized]

so nothing on Cincy's streetcar? is it having problems that no one wants to bring up?

Yes, it is having lots of challenges. Widely considered a massive failure on every level; the opposite of the revered KC implementation.

[bradh]

Yes, it is having lots of challenges. Widely considered a massive failure on every level; the opposite of the revered KC implementation.

I had heard that, I was hoping someone here smarter than me on these subjects can expand why, and how OKC can avoid such failure.

[Laramie]

OKC can learn from cities like Kansas City & Cincinnati who have implemented streetcars ahead of us.

[KayneMo]

From what I can find, Cincinnati had an average daily ridership of 1,693 (470/mile) from July 2017 - June 2018, while KC's was 5,645 (2,566/mile) from Jan 2018 - Dec 2018.

[Plutonic Panda]

Should you ever care to challenge your own worldview, this would be a great place to start: https://www.theatlantic.com/business...-costs/412237/

I do every day and I have read it’s an interesting piece for sure.

Edit: to also add I should point out nowhere in my post did I say no new improvements were needed.

[bradh]

From what I can find, Cincinnati had an average daily ridership of 1,693 (470/mile) from July 2017 - June 2018, while KC's was 5,645 (2,566/mile) from Jan 2018 - Dec 2018.

Rough, I'd like to hear from Jeff or any other streetcar enthusiasts or experts what has gone wrong in CIN

[ChowRunner]

Street car is expected to arrive at 11am this morning, for those who are interested.

[warreng88]

Traffic snarls to continue until summer

By: Brian Brus The Journal Record February 12, 2018

OKLAHOMA CITY – Downtown traffic pressure will be relieved slightly this summer as many street projects are tied up, city Public Works Director Eric Wenger said.

Several blocks have been detoured or reduced to single lanes due to a combination of Project 180, streetcar rail installment and private development, Wenger said. Although the MAPS 3-funded modern streetcar has gotten a lot of media attention lately, he said, private projects are taking up just as much street space.

The latest such closure has been at Robinson and Park avenues due to the refurbishment of the First National Center. In January, pieces of the building’s façade fell to the street and sidewalks. Utility work is now being done at the intersection.

Then there’s the space around BOK Park Plaza, 499 W. Sheridan Ave., which recently started accepting Bank of Oklahoma employees. That project has been underway for about two years. On the north side of downtown, there’s the Contemporary Arts Center, 1200 N. Broadway Ave. And the 21c Hotel at 900 W. Main St. has caused its share of traffic diversions as well.

“Plus there are numerous, small, incremental blocks around vacant buildings that need to be modernized,” he said. “There’s a lot of private development that’s not public work at all. It’s all part of the revitalization of downtown.”

The next adjustment drivers will face is the partial closure of Broadway and NW 10th Street as rail is laid for the streetcar. Kristine Torkelson, a spokeswoman for the ADG firm handling the project, said each section of the rail takes several weeks of construction, and that can be stretched depending on where utilities are installed and whether electric power lines are needed above the streetcar route. Intersections are a special case as well because some of the work can be covered temporarily by thick metal plates to allow traffic to pass. The Broadway and 10th Street intersection work will begin shortly and will disrupt access east to the Interstate.

Torkelson said rail construction is still expected to be complete by the end of the year. The cars will then have to be tested before allowing riders.

City Hall has been upgrading everything on the streets and between buildings downtown for several years as part of Project 180, a $180 million public works project driven by the construction of the Devon Energy corporate tower.

Some of that work on Gaylord Boulevard will be completed in about a month. Cold temperatures have slowed concrete work, Wenger said. The only other package of P180 tasks to complete are now underway at Main Street near Gaylord and Broadway. Another stretch of road will be affected on N. Robinson from Sheridan to Park Avenue.

“That work has been suspended because there’s other private and streetcar work in the area,” he said.

[Pete]

The streetcar that has been headed south on the back of a truck is due to arrive in OKC at 11AM this morning.

They are doing a big media event, so expect lots of photos and reports of it being off-loaded and placed on the tracks near the maintenance facility.

[LakeEffect]

Rough, I'd like to hear from Jeff or any other streetcar enthusiasts or experts what has gone wrong in CIN

No Sunday service, actually stopping service during big events instead of adding service, hiring an operator that wasn't performing O&M, late and unreliable streetcars, a Mayor that is not supportive... to name a few things.

[Urbanized]

https://www.citylab.com/transportati...roblem/510143/

http://www.omaha.com/news/metro/stre...c963ff7eb.html

[KayneMo]

From what I can find, Cincinnati had an average daily ridership of 1,693 (470/mile) from July 2017 - June 2018, while KC's was 5,645 (2,566/mile) from Jan 2018 - Dec 2018.

Oops, it should be Jan 2017 - Dec 2017 for KC, not 2018. Cincinnati's is an estimate through June 2018.

[Urbanized]

I’ve followed the Cincinnati/KC thing reasonably closely through a lot of the urban planning, walkability and transportation blogs plus experts I follow on social media and have heard the same explanations LakeEffect mentions. Also have heard their trains have had extreme reliability issues (probably attributable to the O&M issues mentioned).

Fortunately we don’t have to worry about buy-in from the local political powers that be.

I also think we have avoided the “doesn’t go where people want to go” issue.

But the things that do concern me are the lack of Sunday service and frequency/reliability caused by congestion. If you read those links I posted it mentions that KC - in addition to being the linear route I talked about - benefits from being on generally wide streets which allow it to operate separate from much of the automobile traffic and avoid congestion. Cincinnati, OTOH, is often bogged down on congested streets and can’t hit its service times. So the public gets frustrated and starts finding alternate ways to get around. Cincinnati fixed some of these issues with signal prioritization, but can’t of course change the route itself at this point.

I think these are things that should very much concern OKC. Traffic congestion downtown is extremely pronounced on event nights plus Friday and Saturday nights, especially in nice weather. These should be prime times for the streetcar. But I really worry about places like 10th Street, Bricktown, etc. I hope there is a proactive approach taken to - for instance - banning horse carriages from streetcar routes and possibly creating temporary protected streetcar lanes on busy nights via movable Jersey barriers, signalization, even traffic cops. I’d love to see formalized streetcar priority on streets like Sheridan and Reno in Bricktown or on 10th Street.

I really think the only way this thing has the type of success we’d like to see is to go all-in with a traffic plan that prioritizes streetcar reliability and service interval.

[bradh]

I hope OKC learns from those issues because if they don't it's going to be embarrassing.

[David]

The first Streetcar has been delivered, see the following for a short video of it down by the maintenance facility.

https://twitter.com/DowntownOKC/stat...64112398393347

[shawnw]

Didn't realize the massive route of the streetcar in the 1930s.

It's massive ridership surprised me:

"From their beginnings around 1902, use of Oklahoma City street cars reached their zenith in 1919, carrying a total of 17.5 million passengers, up from the 9.5 million passengers in 1915. Ridership fell in 1924 to just about twelve million due to increased automobile travel. In 1925, the railway company put its first buses into operation, further detracting business from the streetcar system. By 1930, bus service was available throughout the city, including a route north along Walker Avenue, along the Jefferson Park neighborhood. Street car use rose briefly again in 1930 to seventeen million. Obviously the future of public transportation was moving ever closer toward buses exclusively.[23] Street car service continued in Oklahoma City until 1946, when the decision to convert to strictly a bus system forced the sale of assets related to inner-city street car lines.[24]"

Endnotes
23. Hare and Hare, Report of the City Planning Commission: Oklahoma City. Oklahoma 1930. p.41.
24. Oklahoma Transportation Company Collection, "Minutes, 1946," Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma.

Proposal: "OKC 2046", a campaign to get us back to near the rail density we had in 1946 by 2046.

[Laramie]

Proposal: "OKC 2046", a campaign to get us back to near the rail density we had in 1946 by 2046.

Agree! Work to include our unique districts like Paseo, Stockyards & Asian districts.

Next streetcar expansion ( approximately 3 miles) should focus on Film row: 21c Museum, Jones Assembly & West Village Apartments; add the unique Asian district.

[shawnw]

Only if it's built out to Classen (even if it doesn't then go up it) for that expansion up to CHK that was previously referenced in one of the rail threads as being preliminarily discussed.

[LocoAko]

She lives!

https://www.facebook.com/okcstreetca...2272292582348/

[turnpup]

We were there. It was truly a sight to behold! Watching the way they unloaded it off the transport truck and onto the tracks was fascinating. Those guys had the whole thing masterfully choreographed, making a logistical very big deal look like it was simple. Here's how it went down once they pulled up:

First they unhooked the transport truck. The flatbed was lower in the front than the rear so the front of the streetcar was slanted downward toward the tracks. Then they put a metal track-sized ramp up to the flatbed aligned with the wheels of the streetcar. The truck was relocated to the rear of the streetcar. After the crew did some preliminary work unhooking various chains and other things, a winch-type thing was hooked to the rear of the streetcar. Then they started inching the car forward, very slowly, onto the ramp and down toward the tracks. It made a little thump sound when the final set of wheels left the ramp and the whole thing settled onto the track itself. The winch hook was removed and the streetcar rolled its way into the maintenance facility.

One down, what is it, six to go?

[Urban Pioneer]

We were there. It was truly a sight to behold! Watching the way they unloaded it off the transport truck and onto the tracks was fascinating. Those guys had the whole thing masterfully choreographed, making a logistical very big deal look like it was simple. Here's how it went down once they pulled up:

First they unhooked the transport truck. The flatbed was lower in the front than the rear so the front of the streetcar was slanted downward toward the tracks. Then they put a metal track-sized ramp up to the flatbed aligned with the wheels of the streetcar. The truck was relocated to the rear of the streetcar. After the crew did some preliminary work unhooking various chains and other things, a winch-type thing was hooked to the rear of the streetcar. Then they started inching the car forward, very slowly, onto the ramp and down toward the tracks. It made a little thump sound when the final set of wheels left the ramp and the whole thing settled onto the track itself. The winch hook was removed and the streetcar rolled its way into the maintenance facility.

One down, what is it, six to go?

Yep! Six to go. I talked to the delivery guys from Brookville. They are literally turning around and grabbing the next one.

[Pete]

I can just imagine the crew moving that streetcar off the truck and ultimately into the maintenance facility, all on walkie talkies coordinating the effort, then when it reaches its resting place you hear this crackle through the earpieces: "The dolphin is in the Jacuzzi... I repeat, the dolphin is in the Jacuzzi."

And everyone rejoices and high-fives like a NASA crew upon splashdown.

[Urbanized]

The complete arrival and unloading video can be viewed at https://www.facebook.com/OKCStreetcar/