Streetcar Network

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

So Frank’s previous post gave me an excuse to draw out what I think makes sense as a streetcar extension.

I think that streetcars should be used for their intended purpose as “pedestrian accelerators” as many bloggers have been writing about lately. Streetcars are not LRT and they are not BRT. They should be used to connect dense center city neighborhoods, and not as a substitute for LRT. They should have all day activity centers all along them rather than nodes of activity.

I also think that they could be very useful in creating a much better E/W connect because people will transfer if you have high quality transit like a streetcar. I live in Fremont and I have a really hard time justify taking a ~45 minute 2 bus ride to Capitol Hill when I can drive or bike in less than half that amount of time. However if there was a streetcar I would take it. This will also become increasingly important with LINK and BRT coming online. N/S travel is going to become much faster but this also means that transfers in the E/W direction are going to become even more critical to build a strong network. I think it is important to keep in mind that transfers are not always bad. As shown around the world strong transit systems have high transfer rates. As we build a real transit system I think we need to keep that in mind.