Interesting piece, thanks. I also enjoyed his piece "Streetcars: An Inconvenient Truth." His argument is based on length, speed and cost; the main point is that a technically equivalent bus would often be cheaper and thus could be run on a longer, more useful route. If you look at the hundreds of millions spent on DC Streetcar and its limited utility, this all starts to look quite obvious. So why did we do it?
I think there is another aspect that usually goes unstated, which is the vibes. If you're a mayor you want to build a tram. If you're a tourist you want to ride a tram. If you're a prospective resident you want to live near a tram. Yes, it's smoother and yadda yadda, but really it's because it has more sex appeal. A technically equivalent bus may well be _technically_ equivalent but could never be truly equivalent. Nobody would write a play entitled A Technically Equivalent Bus Named Desire. In a way, spending money on a tram is similar to spending money on parks or flowers or public art. And so we will spend the money; and we will build the streetcar; and damn the technical equivalence.
I wonder what the world would be like if we were honest with ourselves.
I never heard of the (Washington, D.C.) DC Streetcar until this comment.
Wiki tells me:
> The DC Streetcar is a surface streetcar network in Washington, D.C. that consists of a single line running 2.2 miles (3.5 km) in mixed traffic along H Street and Benning Road in the city's Northeast quadrant.
Is it even worth building a rail project that short? I had less than 900K riders last year. Something about light rail is so underwhelming to me.
I think there is another aspect that usually goes unstated, which is the vibes. If you're a mayor you want to build a tram. If you're a tourist you want to ride a tram. If you're a prospective resident you want to live near a tram. Yes, it's smoother and yadda yadda, but really it's because it has more sex appeal. A technically equivalent bus may well be _technically_ equivalent but could never be truly equivalent. Nobody would write a play entitled A Technically Equivalent Bus Named Desire. In a way, spending money on a tram is similar to spending money on parks or flowers or public art. And so we will spend the money; and we will build the streetcar; and damn the technical equivalence.
I wonder what the world would be like if we were honest with ourselves.