While I await Councilmember Joel Burns to finish up a wrap-up of the Streetcar Study Committee’s trip to the Pacific Northwest to study the streetcar systems of Portland, Seattle, and Tacoma, I think it’s worthwhile to point out a bit of news (which I found linked to off the excellent transit blog The Overhead Wire) on the success of Portland’s system, which the Fort Worth system will draw a lot of inspiration from. The Portland Streetcar has hit new record ridership highs - weekday ridership is at 12,600 per day (about a 25% increase from the year before), with Saturday ridership at 11,700 and Sunday ridership at 7,300. All are record highs. The 10-month annualized ridership for FY 2008/2009 now stands at 4.3 million passengers.
These charts show the increasing ridership trend on the Portland streetcar. Click for a bigger view.
so are we still in the talking stage of this project? no plans have been set in stone or routes solidified, right?
Chad,
There just hasn’t been a lot of public talk just yet about it. I’ve been told that the committee expects a more solidified route map by the 13th, which will be a good step forward.
Last night, I’m told that Mayor Moncrief very enthusiastically endorsed the project at the City Council meeting. The support is building very seriously at this point.
A glorified bus is all this is. If they wanted to make Fort Worth cool, they’d do open air cars like San Francisco. Otherwise all you have is a bus that will be just as nasty as the current city buses.
Funny - the ridership numbers (revealed *in this very post*) and popularity of these systems would not seem to agree with you that it’s a “glorified bus.”
I’ve been over the benefits of the streetcars vs. buses time and again. They are hardly glorified buses - they have very real benefits and attractions compared to a bus.
The open air heritage cars are nice as a tourist attraction and I’d like to see restored vintage Fort Worth streetcars used for special events on the new network, but they are not comparable in many ways to these cars. These are meant to be real workable transit, enclosed, smooth, modern, *air conditioned.*
I’m not sure if this question belongs on a streetcar thread or a bike thread… but can you take bikes on streetcars?
You can take them on the TRE.
You can get 2 on the front of the city bus (and if those are full, you can take them on-board if they don’t block the isle).
I didn’t know how it worked with streetcars.
JP,
According to TriMet, the Portland streetcar allows bikes on streetcars:
http://trimet.org/howtoride/bikes/bikesonstreetcar.htm
I imagine it’ll be possible on ours as well.