Someone made a really great map of what the streetcar network used to look like in my city (Calgary)… It’s heartbreaking that it’s all gone.

@carstarsarstenstesenn

Жыл бұрын

same with so many north american cities. Chicago had a huge streetcar system and now it's all gone. I'm not saying we should have kept it all but if lines were modernized, it would be so much better than the buses we have now

@keltiboissonneault4263

Жыл бұрын

Am in Lethbridge Ab just 2 hrs south of Calgary! We also had street cars in our downtown. They recently unearthed the tracks while doing work on 3rd ave s. I wish they'd bring street cars/light rail back.

@AustinSersen

Жыл бұрын

Yeah, but at least many of the routes are still run as bus lines, namely the 1 and 2 and one of the ones to south Calgary, forgetting the number, 6 or 7 maybe? The most exciting parts of Calgary today are where the streetcars ran (or were planned to run): Beltline, Marda Loop, Inglewood, Bridgeland/Riverside, 20 Ave N, Centre Street. Despite decades of attack from car-oriented development patterns, Calgary is still the best car-free city I've ever lived in, and I've moved around a lot!

@jimbo1637

Жыл бұрын

As an NYC resident, I feel your pain. At lease you can take solace that one major city in your country (Toronto) saw the value in street cars and kept them.

OK, I lol'd at 6:21. The building out of public transit options is such an uphill battle. 1. You have to convince a community that their preferred mode of transportation decimated their social fabric 2. You have to convince a community to pump money into public transit - a form of transportation that none of them are familiar with because none of them have ever lived outside of their hometown or in great transit cities like Chicago, Boston, or DC. 3. You have to convince a community that their preferred zoning policy has also destroyed their social fabric (the same generation that bizarrely asks why kids don't play outside anymore or walk to school in the snow) 4. You have to convince a community that shops, offices, and homes should all be located near each other, preferably around a central plaza that can double as a transit hub 5. You have to convince a community that has been sedentary for at least 2 generations that it's OK to walk 10-15 minutes to get where you need to go. Luckily, Los Angeles has made a little more progress than Reno by building out miles of track and dozens of stations in the past 20-30 years. But the development around them doesn't favor the use of those stations, so people still drive everywhere. There's so much education that needs to be done.

@Matty002

Жыл бұрын

yes to all this ESPECIALLY point 2 people rarely talk about the crazy aspect in american culture of being PROUD to have never left the country. or state. or town. the willful ignorance is unbelievable in this country

" used to have streetcars" is the sad story of every town in North America. NA was not built for the car, it was destroyed for the car.

As someone who works with historical streetcars and interurbans, this is sadly a story that has played out for hundreds of cities and towns throughout America. Thank you for telling it.

I think it's more accurate to say the US was built on transit and then massively expanded, transformed and ruined by the car. It has good bones, but there's a lot of things that would need to change to get the most out of new transit today, and a lot of Americans can't imagine it. Also, minor point, but don't completely disregard branding's effect on ridership. It's certainly not anything like enough on its own, but it DOES have a psychological effect when done right. Take the London Overground network as an example. It used to be a hotchpotch collection of underused rail lines. When TFL took it over, they upgraded the stations, brought in new trains, increased the frequency of service, integrated the ticketing into the rest of their network and rebranded everything with a unifying logo and colour scheme using bright orange, so that it really stood out. They actually built hardly any new track, but in making all those changes, ridership increased massively. Anyway, I guess the thing is, you have to have the infrastructure there in the first place before rebranding can help, so your points are still valid.

Thanks for distilling the actual detailed causes of the death of streetcars - I just assumed that they were mismanaged by their own private companies, but losing right of way and deteriorating their product as a result makes so much more sense.

la had the world's best streetcar system before ww2, reaching very rural places in orange county and the inland empire, serving almost every corner of the region, even as far out as redlands and santa ana. over the 50s and 60s the system was taken out in favor of buses, and only in 1990 did the first part of the new rail system, the A line's initial segment, open. now it has 7 lines (one of them will be broken up between two other ones as part of the regional connector sometime within the next few months but service will continue) and much more is in the works, although very slowly, but it would take at least a century at this pace to have a system as good as the old one

My city (Winnipeg) also used to have a great network of electric streetcars in the early 1900's only to be torn up and done away with to focus on the automobile...such a shame, perhaps one day something like what we used to have could be revived in a modern way.

@AustinSersen

Жыл бұрын

New Flyer certainly isn't helping rail transportation advancements in Winnipeg, but at least the new BRT is pretty nice. Was happy to get my Peggo card a few months ago!

Same case with my city, pheonix, it had a decent trolly system from downtown to other places that was torn up in the 50s and is now relegated to some maps and a car in the old state capital museum

The amount of cities that have had streetcar systems built in yesteryear only for them to be torn out instead of invested on, is astonishing and incredibly sad. Most people who argue, cultural or car centric infrastructure as the reason for the failure of public transit don’t know what they’re talking about. If they know their history, they’d know america was in fact built on rail.

@shauncameron8390

Жыл бұрын

For the benefit of industry elites of yesteryear largely.

Metro Vancouver also used to have an extensive streetcar and interurban network (BC Electric Railway) that was torn out post-WWII. While portions of some of the routes have been converted to trolleybuses or replicated by light metro (e.g. Expo Line, Canada Line), huge swathes of the region such as Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Langley, and much of Surrey (south of Fraser River) have no rail transit at all. Bus service is infrequent and indirect in these areas, and so a trip from Vancouver to Abbotsford or Chilliwack now takes longer than it did a century ago.

Echoing everyone else: San Diego CA used to have a streetcar system that was quite extensive. Our tram is not well built and taking public transit here is a pain but I still do it. They do not do transit-oriented-development here and instead make terrible “transit centers” in the middle of nowhere

@AssBlasster

Жыл бұрын

Lol that's a good way to describe the San Diego tram system. When riding the tram from EL Cajon to downtown, I often wondered why anyone would want to live along the Mission Valley corridor with the ugly interstate there. Granted, it's nice to comfortably leave the El Cajon suburbs with the tram when I visit family there.

A city councillor in my city (Edmonton) mentioned maybe changing a proposed LRT route into BRT. Another councillor absolutely shut her down and said that the world's most liveable cities all have rail-based public transit. I saw the exchange live and it was beautiful.

I would gladly take an intercity/village tram from home to college. I would probably pay a premium if I don't make it myself to be an early adopter.

Such a shame. I wish we'd see a return of streetcars and trains in the US.

Why did we have to screw up our small towns and cities for the sake of cars

@shauncameron8390

Жыл бұрын

When streetcars stopped being relevant and personal vehicles became more affordable for the average person.

There have been lots of books that have discussed the decline of streetcars and rise of automobility in North America. Two good ones are Fighting Traffic by Peter Norton and Road to Nowhere by Paris Marx.

reject modernity (cars), return to tradition (streetcars)

Sparks used to be called The Railroad City. I guess they gave that up instead of living up to that nickname.

I would just bike on the sidewalk here. About 17:00 all the cars keep driving in the bike lane.

@ethancrisp3491

Жыл бұрын

I choose to take the risk of the road in this town over the sidewalk. Many sidewalks don't even have space for a bike to use them since utilities and power line poles are just built right in the middle and visibility at intersections is way less.

@theoheinrich529

Жыл бұрын

@@ethancrisp3491 That also doesn't mention that the sidewalk is primarily built for non-wheeled mobility. The uneveness of most sidewalks are not a comfortable surface to bike on.

@AssBlasster

Жыл бұрын

@@ethancrisp3491 Yeah nah. I'll take the inconveniences of the sidewalk over one idiot driver that could just run me over in the blink of an eye.

@AssBlasster

Жыл бұрын

@@theoheinrich529 Not really. They have to built curb cuts and other features to meet ADA standards for wheelchair users. The sidewalks are built just fine for bikes, but they are never maintained after that and become uneven with damage from tree roots and such.

City Council in Colorado Springs apparently actually approved a revived streetcar line promoted by a private group. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of a rail accident, federal law changed to forbid streetcars in the vicinity of a rail line. That killed that.

great video, if only more people would listen to you

Bring back more social traveling.

I do think that you can pretty safely say that the US *has* been "built for the car", but only the present day US. The US hadn't always been built for the car, but the current one was. It was built one way for a long time and then we started building it a different way in the 1900's. It's not unfair to say that we did genuinely change to being built for the car, but that really just goes to show that the way we build our society can be changed and over a single person's lifetime too. It's not too late change and, going forward, build the US for people.

We also used to have streetcars, build in the 1910s mostly and rebuild after bombing in the second World War. The streetcar-system was ripped out in the 60s. To be fair there were still heavy rail lines leading to the next three towns/cities, including my own village. Two of those lines were also discontinued in the 90s. And this is europe by the way

Wish the Carson city bus would run regularly ..I want to be able to go back and forth easily

As someone who loves US Muscle cars dearly, has owned one, and kinda wants to move back from owning a car due to the maintenance costs... I just want the choice to be able to walk somewhere, and have the ability of walkable independence, I'd sacrifice more drivable areas for more walkable, bikeable, and unimpeded transit if that's what it would take. Transit maintenance HAS to be cheaper than maintaining a parking garage, or even the miles upon miles of roads that stretch across the US.

It's weird that some of these developers talk about issues of public transportation, claiming they're worried about low commuter numbers, but their plans do not consider or nothing to reduce roads and cars, or place them in accessible areas, raise density in their towns, nor plan to build or expand along the streets and paths of these networks. They just want A and B and cars in between. They're stuck with the suburban zoning mindset.

The private automobile should have been nipped in the bud. Long ago, cars should have been highly restricted from downtown central business areas. This has gone on for so long that people who believe cities are built for cars don’t know how it was or could be. You pretty much have to be eighty years old or older to recall street cars in even smaller municipalities.

Great video!

1:37 greetings from Bratislava :)

America was built along water, expanded by rail, and demolished for þe car.

Such a shame. I would love to have streetcars here again

Same thing with Miami 😢.

The Reno Streetcar movement seems like it was a good try. Every city could use an organization like this. Some may even succeed.

Simple add more buses or light rail while at the same time cut down on the number of driver license that are issued and renewed. Don’t renew them for people who drive recklessly and those that don’t actually need a car to go to work or do something the bus can’t replace and this you have instant ridership since those people can no longer drive.

I don't know what Wild West that guy was living in but... The actual period between 1865 and 1899 was series of gold rushes that a bunch of rail companies insisted were totally a thing. What really happened is the train company made a deal with a couple would be land lords and those land lords started gold mines. Basically it's been a Ponzi Scheme since the beginning, the difference is the older system can't go further out from the core because of a lack of the automobile.

It’s interesting how people’s perceptions of history are so fundamentally altered on something that people within their immediate family could have born witness to.

It may have been… the WW2 that saved streetcars in Europe and Japan.

If you built 16 tracks through reno, the streets will still be packed. 1. 100 years ago, Reno was way more compact and less people owned cars and mass transit was more practical. Mostly because of no other choice. 2. Now, Reno is much more built out and mass transit is really not worth it. 3. Unlike big towns with tourism, Reno's few tourists would mostly not use it. Existing mass transit such as the bus only attract many undesirables and no security/police are present at all times. You want to ride that bus? The train would be no better as Reno's city government places a very low priority on mass transit. 4. Where you going to build it? On Virginia St? And ruin all the businesses? 5. How many people use the bus when leaving Sam's Club, grocery stores, Home Depot, etc.? Trying bring a cart full of purchases from Sam's on the bus or train. 6. Lastly, the streets will still be packed because like anything else, it will just fill in with even more people! The answer to Reno's problem is way slower growth. The poorly designed town, lack of any local or regional government with any common sense just means its not going to work. And who would want to ruin our incompetent RTC's beautiful traffic circles popping up like dog doo all over town? I love watching RTC's own bus go right over the curbs. 7. Lastly, a city that can't control their own finances can not afford billions to waste on mass transit. Hillary can barely get a pothole filled, never mind building such as system. Are you aware that the City of Reno still owes easily over $100 million on the (worst decision ever made) train trench?

BRT? What BRT? All I see is a bus! 😂

There is an easy solution to the issue! Solution a) - Reduce the width of the streets to make way for light rail services, combined with solution ) - Make car owners pay for the environmental damage they cause.

Americans had the world's best mass transits once. Before the dark times, before the 1950s.

comment for algorithm

#BanPrivateCars