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De Blasio wants streetcar line on Brooklyn-Queens waterfront


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Eh, I dunno about this. Usually these are done as tools for gentrification, and that area's really already past that, seeing how 1BRs we're already going for $1M+ in blind auctions a few years ago. Not to mention, the (G) still isn't running full length trains, and the B32 only runs every 30 minutes, but hey, you know what, if it'll pay for itself, I see no reason why not too.

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  • 2 months later...

The New York Daily News today has more information on how this idea that got started and who is involved with this idea.

When the idea started floating around, many of us on this forum said that let the developers pay for it and we were correct in our thinking.

Now we know what happened and it looks like the fire that started a couple of weeks ago involving the cops in Borough Park has just spread and it looks like this one will be a big one.

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The New York Daily News today has more information on how this idea that got started and who is involved with this idea.

When the idea started floating around, many of us on this forum said that let the developers pay for it and we were correct in our thinking.

Now we know what happened and it looks like the fire that started a couple of weeks ago involving the cops in Borough Park has just spread and it looks like this one will be a big one.

 

shall i cue up billy joel's we didn't start the fire? or burn baby burn disco inferno?

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My advice is just do nothing and watch the big scandal blow up as it is hot. 

There has already been one indictment with a lot more to come. With three great pradigms of virtue (notice how they cry crocodile tears after they were convicted) going to jail in the next two weeks, the media focus will be on the next shoes to drop and with three different law enforcement units looking into the various units, there surely will be more coming out. 

As far as the streetcar proposal is concerned, it is dead unless the developers want to pay for it themselves as no elected official will want to go near it as is tainted already.

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Agreed. I'm not a fan of streetcars unless they're in their own right-of-way, whether it's a center median in a wide street or a railway-style right-of-way, which this streetcar won't be.

 

Agreed. Streetcars make sense if they're structured the same way SBS routes are (dedicated lane, limited-stop service, bigger vehicles), not as rinky-dink waterfront shuttles.

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The mayor should forget about awarding this deal to one of his friendly group of consultants. The real estate industry in my opinion will not touch it now especially with all the law enforcement groups snooping around his hizzoner's friends as well as him getting ready to pounce on something that smells of a deal.

 

If the streetcar is not segregated from traffic, then there are no real savings in time. If you look at many of the cities that have re-invented it in the form of light rail, most of them have large segments where the line is separated from regular traffic. If you want a prime example where it is not segregated from regular traffic, just look at the Transit Toronto website (which incidentally is a  great website on Toronto transit with route histories and pictures of not only trolleys but buses as well)   

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The mayor should forget about awarding this deal to one of his friendly group of consultants. The real estate industry in my opinion will not touch it now especially with all the law enforcement groups snooping around his hizzoner's friends as well as him getting ready to pounce on something that smells of a deal.

 

If the streetcar is not segregated from traffic, then there are no real savings in time. If you look at many of the cities that have re-invented it in the form of light rail, most of them have large segments where the line is separated from regular traffic. If you want a prime example where it is not segregated from regular traffic, just look at the Transit Toronto website (which incidentally is a  great website on Toronto transit with route histories and pictures of not only trolleys but buses as well)   

 

I'm not a fan of the term light rail as I feel it's adding an artificial distinction to a thing where there shouldn't be any. Although it took the unnecessary rebranding in North America to bring about grade seperation, separated lines have been used in Europe for many years now, and they just called them 'trams' over there back in the day... as they do now.

 

That said, grade seperation would be absolutely necessary. Toronto is a great example. At one point it was taking the 504 King car over 80 minutes to cover 12 km in rush hour. I'm pretty sure this timing was slightly less than was required to do a two way trip on the King car back in the 1980s.

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The City just finished a report on it. Among other things it noted that the tram will probably cannabalize the ridership of the East River Ferry, which is being expanded at the same time.

Both the ferry network and the BQSC can co-exist without one killing the ridership of the other. The ferry will continue to bring riders to Wall St and east midtown while the proposed streetcar route will do its own thing as a north-south route between Brooklyn and Queens.

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I'm not a fan of the term light rail as I feel it's adding an artificial distinction to a thing where there shouldn't be any. Although it took the unnecessary rebranding in North America to bring about grade seperation, separated lines have been used in Europe for many years now, and they just called them 'trams' over there back in the day... as they do now.

 

That said, grade seperation would be absolutely necessary. Toronto is a great example. At one point it was taking the 504 King car over 80 minutes to cover 12 km in rush hour. I'm pretty sure this timing was slightly less than was required to do a two way trip on the King car back in the 1980s.

 

The big distinction is that a streetcar operates much like a local bus (every two blocks) and may run in mixed traffic, while light rail tends to be separated and make half-mile stops (more like limited stops), and is more likely to have grade separation or other fancy, expensive infrastructure.

 

European trams lie somewhere in the middle depending on location, but in general they stop more frequently than a limited bus but less frequently than a local bus. The mindset over there is that if the bus is required to come below every X minutes, it might as well be a tram.

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In my experience, I've actually noticed that trams and local buses seem to be on the same level when it comes to stop frequency. European buses usually have more doors, and to optimize their passenger boarding capabilities, the stops are more spaced out.

 

Generally, there are no clearly defined guidelines for what a European tram system should contain, and how it should be differentiated. A horse drawn tramway is considered a tramway like an electric one, and a right of way running down a suburban street is classified together with a track running down a medieval street. There is a high speed line in Slovakia which reaches speeds of 70 km/h, and runs in the median of a highway at points, but is part of a generally slower network. I don't think Europe even has the term LRT, though that may be because they've done trams in ROWs much longer.

 

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In my experience, I've actually noticed that trams and local buses seem to be on the same level when it comes to stop frequency. European buses usually have more doors, and to optimize their passenger boarding capabilities, the stops are more spaced out.

 

Generally, there are no clearly defined guidelines for what a European tram system should contain, and how it should be differentiated. A horse drawn tramway is considered a tramway like an electric one, and a right of way running down a suburban street is classified together with a track running down a medieval street. There is a high speed line in Slovakia which reaches speeds of 70 km/h, and runs in the median of a highway at points, but is part of a generally slower network. I don't think Europe even has the term LRT, though that may be because they've done trams in ROWs much longer.

 

A tram and a local bus in Europe are very much the same thing (with exceptions for the Stadtbahn-like systems with light-rail style infrastructure), but with the caveat that buses in Europe stop at significantly wider stop spacing than their American counterparts tend to do (stops every 400m are the standard; buses in Manhattan stop every two blocks, or every 160m in comparison), which is why i made the distinction between a European tram and an American local bus.

 

Europeans are also more about maximizing efficiency incrementally and not arbitrarily siloing things, which is why their versions of commuter rail tend to resemble an actual second metro rather than a peak-heavy commuter express (see: RER, S-Bahn)

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We will see this just like we saw the 42 St. light-rail line! Don't hold your breath!

 

I remember sitting in on a concept meeting for that plan and asking what specific problem was being solved and what other alternatives had been considered...

 

Consultant: "It's obvious. Buses are too slow."

 

Me: "What about limiting 42nd Street to buses only. That was done once for Earth Day and buses flew across town."

 

Consultant: "But that's not light rail."

 

In other words, they started with a solution and then came up with a problem for it to solve. (I suspect that the REAL "problem" was that a politically connected consultant wanted money.)

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Gotham Bus is correct (and thank you for your comment) as just like the proposed streetcar is a problem in search of a solution so is everything else that this mayor says or does yet he cannot understand why he is under investigation by at least three different law enforcement units in this city alone? There most likely is more investigations coming with Monroe County (Rochester) coming on board and maybe a couple more of upstate law enforcement agencies in the mix.

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I think that the only way for any street rail to work in New York City is it must have its own private right of way free from other traffic. It will never happen as between the NIMBYS, bicycle riders, the find an excuse to sue them crowd, pedestrians with their devices that have become their brains and the MTA itself will kill it. There are some streets where light rail could work in this city but where will the yard be located so for all intensive purposes, it is dead on arrival.

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