Following up our previous note about the Portland Streetcar having record high ridership, I’d also like to mention (thanks to a post on The Overhead Wire) that the Seattle Streetcar has already exceeded its first year ridership projection three months ahead of schedule. Between the time the Seattle Streetcar opened on December 12, 2007, and October 1st of this year, the streetcar carried 347,000 riders.
Again, I link to these because the Fort Worth system will be inspired by systems such as Portland and Seattle, and it’s instructive to note the success being had with similar systems in other cities.
Assuming Fort Worth moves forward with the proposed streetcar system, how long do you think it would take before the first lines are up and running?
Perhaps questions like this will be covered in Joel’s wrap-up report from his trip.
JP,
Depends on how optimistic you are. :) I’m pretty optimistic. I’ve been told some very encouraging things, but I’m not sure I’m allowed to publicly state them just yet.
It all depends on what type of funding route you go on. Seattle did it themselves, up in 5 years from idea to operation. If you go with federal funding you’ll wait 10 years. Now. If I were a betting man, I would bet that if you built your starter line with local money, a process will be in place in 3 years to do your extensions federally. Cross your fingers…
Overhead Wire,
The word I have is indeed that Fort Worth will be bypassing federal funds for the startup, mostly because the city’s wanting to get the system up and running quickly and they don’t want to wait for federal funds. The discussion I hear most is that we’re doing it with Fort Worth funds.