A way to restore North Philly Trolleys?

Hal wrote:Public or private, the fact remains that the Subway Surface trolleys Travel longer distances than the Express Broad Street Subway- I missed why that's of any importance.

All the systems are running inside the rails, which is really the appropriate scope of comparison. Whether you have sky above, or concrete seems irrelevant.

It's relevant because when the subway-surface lines are running with sky overhead, they're functioning as buses and no parallels can be drawn to a limited stop subway running multiple cars. Only the part of those lines remotely similar to the subway can directly be compared and that is the part in the tunnel.

Well, actually, I take whichever I think will come first.
Transit is a form of adverse selection- the longer the line, the more likely it is that the train is about to come.
If there is a crowd of people waiting for the El, I stay. The more crowded the platform, the more likely it is that the El is coming soon. If the El Stop is clear that means the El has just left, and that means it's faster to scoot down the subway and hop on the first Green Line car

Because of the extra stops, and having to go around the loop, I would suggest that the MFL even with a slightly longer wait would get to 30th at the same time, but that notwithstanding.

tangentially, where does the RIGHT side tunnel from 13th Street Lead to?- When you're waiting at the 13th Street tunnel, and look north, there are 2 tunnels- the one to the left leads back to the transit tunnel. Where doe the right tunnel go? Where did it go before that?

It's a short spur that dead-ends barely after it begins. As I can tell, it can be used to clear a bad car from the tunnel to get it out of the way of those following it. However the tunnel is either not wired or its wire is not connected because I know that when it is returned to the loop (in reverse) the pole must be reconnected to the wire above manually.

Hard for me to answer operating questions about a hypothetical service. Since the Subway Surface Lines seem to work, I'd generally say yes!

What you're proposing would have to be more frequent than the subway-surface lines. Only a bit so, granted, but the streetcars under Center City already fall behind schedule and who knows where the critical mass is. This comes about because you're trying to schedule transit service underground quite precisely but it has to coincide with when the cars enter the system which is controlled by traffic and traffic control.

True, but how far off? -=> Does the system crash, or does it recover? This is the acid test of the concerns- what actually happens?
I.E. how well has the green line done over the last, err, half century?
Do people take it to get where they are going? People vote with their feet, do they choose to use the Subway Surface service to make the
7 mile trip to Darby?

Over ... er ... walking? I would even if it were late compared with walking for the whole 7 miles. I've never stood around in any of the stations long enough to note exactly how well it works. All I know is I've waited longer than headways for certain lines at certain times. However I can pretty safely say that neither the BSS nor the MFL has ever been directly adversely affected by a stoplight or cars in their respective ways because it just ain't possible.

I don't follow- vehicle or train?

Pardon. Train. I go with vehicle being one singularly operated thing and car for its constituents. For streetcars they are coterminous.

Even then, isn't that only applicable from
a personal perspective. From a transit perspective, it's not the vehicle YOU catch, it's the capacity of service over time.

If overall capacity is not an issue, then why does the system run more often at rush hour? Dropping from 15 minute headways to 7.5 minutes is
good, so why isn't 4 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute sequentially better?
Faster sampling is better able to flatten peaks and equalize service.

It's not sequentially better because you can't control signalling that fast. If there were to be a problem, you'd have a big problem with 1-minute headways. With 8 minute headways you have significantly fewer individual things you need to control, and it keeps the system stable. Your system could have 7 different lines converging in a very small area, this is more than any place in West Philadelphia

Why are you even pushing streetcars... why don't you just go for a really big belt system like they have at the airport to move people? That would have 0 minute headways! Or if you wanted to sit down you could create a hybrid with a ski lift.

True, and troubling, but luckily it doesn't seem to happen in real life. Phew. Could is interesting. Actual is informative-
Does this actually happen with the 57 cars in 60 minute headways you see with Subway Surface Trolleys and their relatively short platforms?
I don't see any problems.

I'm going to draw from the system in Pittsburgh for a second. (Pittsburgh is my secondary home and I make frequent use of its equally-deprived transit system). Pittsburgh's bus system is hub-and-spoke. Most service runs radially from downtown to the outer parts of the city and then the suburbs. In the city, most routes run on trunk lines and then split later on. For example, the 61a, 61b, and 61c all use Forbes Avenue and split near (<2 miles) the city limits to follow different routes. (note these are all buses but this example, the type of service I discuss, can be mapped onto any form of transit)

When you're waiting for an inbound bus at or closer to the city than their merge point, you can take any of them, and the buses get quite crowded. Now, the closer the merge point is to downtown, the less this is a problem because the fewer stops there are where people will take the first of all of the buses that come (yes people will always take the first bus that comes, but not the first of all of the routes on that trunk because all of them don't service stops past the merge point).

I can tell you from experience that, in waiting for a downtown-bound bus even though I frequently wait at a location where there are supposed to be buses every two minutes during rush hour, buses fill up even further out than I am. The first bus takes all the passengers at the first stop after the route merge, the second bus takes anyone from the first stop that got there after the first bus left and anyone at the second stop that the first bus couldn't stop at because it was full. Iterate this down and realize that I'm at the 12th stop. It can be a while before I see service because of all of the full buses that don't stop. Similarly the return trip is worsened by all the people travelling to Oakland and taking whatever the first bus is. You often can't make it onto the first 3-4 buses during rush hour if you're unfortunate enough to be Oakland-bound, and the worst part is when people going to Oakland fill a bus and you're going further than the split and can't take just any bus like they can. Oh yes there can be problems with a system like this. The subway-surface lines are just lucky that they don't carry much local traffic before their split.

The merge point for the subway-surface lines is just west of the CBD. Erie is much farther north of City Hall than 40th street is west of it. There are basically several little-used stops between the entrance of the surface cars and the loop (and also 30th street). The BSS has many more busy stations over a longer distance. That is to say: there are fewer problems on the subway-surface lines because most people are not using them for subway-local service. They don't for the most part take the first car that comes, they take the one that takes them where they want to go (Overbrook, Darby, &c.). Your plan would have people on the outer parts of the line taking the car they need, but a much greater number than on the s-s lines taking whatever shows up first. Thus the problem arises.

If the actual, real life service doens't have any problems,
why does your hypothetical service suffer from problems?

The actual, real-life service doesn't exist. Unless I've completely missed something, there are no streetcars running under Broad Street. The hypothetical service has problems because the West Philadelphia paradigm can't be mapped perfectly onto North Philadelphia.

And "doesn't have any problems"? At all? Really?

-Adam

(N.B. I'm leaving for a trip of some length later this morning. Do not take my absence as either apathy or an admission of defeat, it's merely a lack of connection. Pleasure arguing the points with you gentlemen [ladies? are there any here?])

As much as I prefer streetcars to buses, we must be realisic here. The primary attraction of the Diesel Bus, the GM-NCL conspiracy aside, IS the flexibility situation. As long as one is simply proposing going back to the old street-railway system, which was supplanted by the bus, esthetic, capacity, and envoronmental concerns aside ( where the streetcar has the advantage), most of the advantages for street operation is with the bus. Back in the PTC days, I was a traffic checker ( recording arrival time, passengers boarding, leaving, and on the vehicle at assigned locations) for the company. On one occasion we had a check scheduled for the 23 which had to be cancelled halfway through because something occurred ( I believe it was a fire) which completely backed up the cars. With buses, supervisors could divert or short-turn the buses almost anywhere, the streetcars were stuck behind each other because there was no place where they could be turned or diverted. It took most of the day for normal service to be restored.
Even in streetcar days, most passengers on the 23 going downtown or into South Philadelphia transferred to the BSS at Erie Ave.

Establishing a form of subway-surface operation on restored North Philly streetcar lines would create an advantage for streetcars, and the several options for using existing tunnels to do this proposed in this thread are intriguing. New subway construction, if it occurred, would most likely involve the heavy rail-rapid transit ( trains) situation, rather than streetcars. ( Remember, the primary purpose for including trolleys in the Market Street Subway was to get those streetcar routes off Market Street because of congestion).
Actually, of all of the North Phila streetcar routes which formerly existed, the original Route 6 ( to Willow Grove) had the greatest advantage over the buses which ultimately replaced it because it ran on its own right of way north of Ogontz Ave. It is ironic that the portion which survived the longest was the portion with the least advantage--- the street running portion within the city.

As I have said---- I LOVE streecars ( they are the primary focus of my railfan interest) however, I doubt very seriously whether, aside from some "hertiage" operations. we will ever see streetcars replace buses in the same way that buses replaced streetcars. Light Rail lines with significant PRW, yes, the old street railway type-- no.

As for buses replacing streetcars, consider that there ended up being far less demand for bus service than for streetcar service. The passengers (almost) universally hated the buses; it was only the bean counters that liked the buses, since the onus of infrastructure maintenance was shifted from them to the departments of public works (i.e. the road maintainers). Besides, with the increased automobile usage, the buses never carried the amount of passengers that streetcars did.

Far be it for me to ever suggest that the bus is, or ever was, a superior vehicle to the streetcar. Streetcars had greater capacity (The Phila PCC cars, with a standing load, could carry 90 plus passengers, while the buses, at least in the PTC era never topped 70.----This is from my traffic checking days) and had all of the enviornmental and other advantages that we all have cited. IMHO, the flexibility situation was the only real advantage of the bus over the streetcar. My point, though, was that, given today's thinking, you are not likely to ever see streetcars "reclaim" their street territory from the bus without the use of PRW.

walt wrote:Streetcars had greater capacity and had all of the enviornmental and other advantages that we all have cited.
IMHO, the flexibility situation was the only real advantage of the bus over the streetcar.

My point, though, was that, given today's thinking, you are not likely to ever see streetcars "reclaim" their street territory from the bus without the use of PRW.

That's a better way of phrasing what I'd been trying to say.

Cars killed off the trolleys, not busses.
Busses took over because they had flexibility to react to changing routes
The competition for trolleys is not busses, the competition for trolleys is cars.

If you want to win the race, don't play exclusively on the busses territory-
the streets and highways. If you want trolleys to win the race, you have to take advantage of rails that go where tires can't.

Hal

So efficiency means nothing? It doesn't bother you that buses, which by the US Governments own numbers are the LEAST efficient mode of transport, are running over existing track? You seem to have this bizarre all-or-nothing attitude with respect to your plan, "if trolleys can't run to City Hall then why even bother?" As has been mentioned, there is a VAST grey area between massive expenditures and the no build (or indeed 'destroy') option. Trolleys are faster, more efficient, carry more people in greater comfort, and in great numbers are cheaper to maintain than a diesel bus fleet. There are PLENTY of reasons to reinstate trolley service other than some shiny new (and yet old) tunnel opening up. A free transfer to the BSS at Erie would go a long way toward giving people the service that you hope to give them with your plan. The only exception is it wouldn't involve the regauging of 8 to 10 miles of track, the elimination of an existing (and more than adaquate) service with a much riskier service pattern, one where subway on-time performance would be dependent upon street traffic north of Erie. If you ride the subway surface often you will find that often a disturbance at 40th or anywhere along the line (say a car tries to drive into the tunnel, I saw it last summer) can lead to a shockwave effect down the whole line. One little disturbance at 40th St blocking up trolleys for 5-10 minutes in the rush hour, not even something that makes it's way up to Mrs Moore's desk, and yet the trolleys are bunched. The first 2 or 3 trips through for a given line after the disturbance is cleared will be SRO from the time they leave 15th headed for their western terminals, the small platforms dangerously overcrowded (except 33rd, it's never crowded).

If you're so big on giving everyone a one seat ride everywhere, then why not just build a subway to Chesnut Hill? Mt Airy? Torresdale? East Oak Lane? or even Lawndale? Oh yeah, that's right, it's expensive, but so would be both reinstating trolley service AND then converting it to run in the BSS tunnel. Transit seeks to serve the most people most of the time, they won't serve everyone everytime, SOMEBODY is always going to have to transfer. Reinstating trolleys running from an underground erie terminal would allow the riders to run on tracks the buses couldn't. They'll file off the trolley and in a dozen or two steps, be at the BSS, such a luxury would be virtually impossible with a bus, excepting a busway (which would be a waste). Also it would be significantly cheaper than trying any plan to incorporate the existing PTC trolley and BSS system. Perhaps instead of looking to kill the BSS's capacity we should look to fill it with more subways, through things like the Roosevelt Blvd subway.

If flexibility is such a great problem, why not take the billions that'd be needed to construct this laughable BSS conversion and make all heavily used bus routes trolley routes again? Scrap SVM and take the money from that (or even just the billions to plan it) and start laying rubber encased track in the street. We'll have the trolley network back it's ante-NCL status in 20 years or so. After all, a bus still needs infrastructure, just less of it. You still need roads to carry those buses, people won't tolerate riding on gravel roads. Perhaps if the burden of maintaining the tracks fell on the City of Philadelphia (perhaps they'd just pay SEPTA to do it) then SEPTA'd feel more inclined to bring back the trolleys. I really think the potential jud gement on bringing them back will end up being more of a political decision rather than anything relating to energy efficiency, passenger demands (although they do affect politics) or any other pragmatic concern.

I've always thought that GM used NCL and their diesel bus monopolies as a means to an end. People would have stayed with the trolley and the city if it hadn't been for the overwhelming PR campaign, the government subsidizing of the suburbs, the building of the interstates (although that just about came later). Really NCL and their diesel buses were used as a tool by GM to get people out of transit oriented city environments and into car oriented suburbs. The people who would have remained in the city and had trolley service would have had little reason to get a car, but once the buses came in there was little incentive to stick around, since a car is vastly better than a bus.

Adam:

Thanks for clarifying the bumble bee issue, it seems I was a bit confused on it. But I think it illustrates an important point, if you designed a bumblebee like we design aircraft it'd need to run to 40 mph to take off and would do so in more than a foot. Similarly if you designed a modern airliner like a bumble bee, it wouldn't fly, the laws of physics as they apply to the smaller bumblebee would not apply in the same way to a much larger version. Not everything is scalable, and among those things is modal choice and the planning doctrine behind running rail transit. Just because one-seat rides are all the rage for commuter rail lines doesn't mean that light duty LRV lines should also run downtown.

Wdobner wrote:So efficiency means nothing?
It doesn't bother you that buses, which by the US Governments own numbers are the LEAST efficient mode of transport, are running over existing track?

Well, if you focus on efficiency, you open yourself up to the problem of defending trolleys against the new hybrid technologies, prius, regenerative electric/diesel- Unfortunately, it's possible the hybrid busses may be more efficient than trolleys-

I'm looking for a practical reason to restore trolleys. I think that the best candidate for a restoration will be service that closely resembles the only trolley service that SEPTA didn't cut- the Subway Surface.

Wdobner wrote: You seem to have this bizarre all-or-nothing attitude with respect to your plan, "if trolleys can't run to City Hall then why even bother?"

Not City Hall, but if the trolleys don't have a competitive edge that is tangible to the average rider i.e. faster, or more convienent, then I don't think a trolley restoration is going to happen.

Wdobner wrote: As has been mentioned, there is a VAST grey area between massive expenditures and the no build (or indeed 'destroy') option. Trolleys are faster, more efficient, carry more people in greater comfort, and in great numbers are cheaper to maintain than a diesel bus fleet.
There are PLENTY of reasons to reinstate trolley service other than some shiny new (and yet old) tunnel opening up.

But there are no "geat numbers"- SEPTA(?) just sold the Lycoming Depot,
they're dragging their feet about the Route 15, and are tearing out the existing trolley wires along Torresdale(?). I'm not looking for efficiency, I'm looking for a clear advantage that would be sufficient to convince people to start restoring trolley tracks.

Wdobner wrote:A free transfer to the BSS at Erie would go a long way toward giving people the service that you hope to give them with your plan. The only exception is it wouldn't involve the regauging of 8 to 10 miles of track, the elimination of an existing (and more than adaquate) service with a much riskier service pattern, one where subway on-time performance would be dependent upon street traffic north of Erie.

Correct. But irrelevant. The problem is that trolleys are gone, SEPTA seems downright hostile to them- how do you change that?

Yes, SEPTA could increase usage by creating a free transfer
- but you'd increase ridership on any line by making it a free transfer.

Wdobner wrote: If you're so big on giving everyone a one seat ride everywhere, then why not just build a subway to Chesnut Hill? Mt Airy? Torresdale? East Oak Lane? or even Lawndale? Oh yeah, that's right, it's expensive, but so would be both reinstating trolley service AND then converting it to run in the BSS tunnel.

The question I presented is "whether reinstating trolley service tied into the BSL is workable. "

The question of whether trolley service will be restored is simple - no.
Not in the SEPTA budget, not on the transit radar. I don't think that's a good decision from an efficiency standpoint, but that's the decision, that's the capital plan.

Wdobner wrote: Transit seeks to serve the most people most of the time, they won't serve everyone everytime, SOMEBODY is always going to have to transfer. Reinstating trolleys running from an underground erie terminal would allow the riders to run on tracks the buses couldn't. They'll file off the trolley and in a dozen or two steps, be at the BSS, such a luxury would be virtually impossible with a bus, excepting a busway (which would be a waste). Also it would be significantly cheaper than trying any plan to incorporate the existing PTC trolley and BSS system.

But reinstating trolleys would cost a helluva lot of money. Realistically it would cost less to impliment that same service as a dedicated busway, and currently, the busses connect with the subway- SEPTA's already got the passengers, there's no incentive to provide better service for a lower price.

Wdobner wrote:Perhaps instead of looking to kill the BSS's capacity we should look to fill it with more subways, through things like the Roosevelt Blvd subway.

Eh, I like the idea of Dual Mode diesel/3rd rail electric trains running from R5 into Fern Rock, or R6 into Erie to get down to Center City.

Wdobner wrote: If flexibility is such a great problem, why not take the billions that'd be needed to construct this laughable BSS conversion and make all heavily used bus routes trolley routes again?

Cause I can't turn the clock back and push 500,000 people and 5,000 businesses back into Philadelphia, and without them, the trolleys are working at a disadvantage.

Wdobner wrote:Scrap SVM and take the money from that (or even just the billions to plan it) and start laying rubber encased track in the street. We'll have the trolley network back it's ante-NCL status in 20 years or so. After all, a bus still needs infrastructure, just less of it. You still need roads to carry those buses, people won't tolerate riding on gravel roads. Perhaps if the burden of maintaining the tracks fell on the City of Philadelphia (perhaps they'd just pay SEPTA to do it) then SEPTA'd feel more inclined to bring back the trolleys.

You're never going to get direct money to increase transit in a City with dropping population. Doens't make sense to spend more money where people used to be. Economics say it makes more sense to go after the suburban fares, the higher cost fares. Logically, the highest and best use or at least most lucrative use of the BSL express is probably to run dual mode diesel/3rd rail trains from Quakertown, New Hope, Newtown, Reading etc- those are going to be longer distance, higher payment fares,
which brings more money in.

Center City to Fern Rock is $1.30 for a token, but $3.00 by train.

Logically, the "fare smart" thing to do is shift to incrimental pricing, charge for convienence, and carry longer distance- i.e. higher fare, traffic into Philadelphia.

But, until that happens, I'll keep asking about the options for trolley restoration.


Hal

Something that hasn't been mentioned yet that I think is important is that the city of Philadelphia (in the county and city political boundaries) is continuing to lose population. You just don't have the same population density that you had 50 years ago. So transit doesn't have as many riders, therefore you'd be wasting money by building more rail infrastructure that nobody uses.

If the city were to get their wage tax in line with the rest of the state (1% vs. 4+%), and maybe up the sales tax to be more like NYC and other cities, maybe we'd have more residents and offices in the city. The other thing is to improve the education system. It's something that will pay off many years in the future, but it's important if Philly wants to have more than just a low-end service workforce.

I would love to see a technical solution to this, such as building rail lines, etc., but the problem is ultimately political. SEPTA can't have progress unless the city has progress.