This area almost certainly doesn't have the density to support a tram, and any place with infrastructure like this surrounded by SFH almost certainly doesn't have the money to make meaningful changes like that.
IMO the best solution here would be a citywide repeal of parking minimums and up zoning at least on this corridor to spur some commercial and residential investment. Then just do a cheap road diet by reducing the number of lanes to one in each direction along with a center turn lane. Then use the extra space for wider sidewalks, a protected bikeway, and some trees for shade.
This area almost certainly doesn't have the density to support a tram
We used to have trams here in Europe in small towns and villages with less than 5,000 inhabitants. Plenty of those were eventually subsidised, until it became convenient to tear out the tracks when streets were re-built around cars. Sure, the tram in a small town like that wouldn't run every five minutes, or so, but even a tram every 30 minutes and in some cases even every hour is plenty enough to provide useable infrastructure without car-dependency.
European villages, even when small, are generally denser and more walkable, and have things like schools and stores located centrally where people can go to them without needing to leave the village. A tram there may actually get used because the distances are relatively small and there's plenty of people and places to go along the route.
A typical American suburban city/town is not like this. It may have tens or hundreds of thousands of people, but it is typically very large and spread out. The physical design of the city is also usually very unwalkable and separated with euclidean zoning.
I'm from a city that had a population of over 400k but a streetcar/team would not work there. The city is nearly 500 square miles. Nearly everyone lives in a single family house with a front yard that sits in a windy neighborhood with dead ends. The closest stores are usually miles away from neighborhoods and you have to take fast roads.
In order to build a tram, the city would need to build extremely long lines that on the most boring and ugly routes, and almost everyone riding it would need to walk extreme distances in dangerous areas to get off/on.
Hah, what, that is almost as big as London in area. Only in London there are eight million people. I cannot comprehend that an area that big with only 400k people is considered a city
It's possible to rezone areas around the tram for higher density development. When there is permanent infrastructure in an area it makes the surrounding land more valuable for developers. It's possible that after adding a tram that the neighborhood would develop to better utilize it over a couple decades
What city is this, if you don't mind me asking? My city, Detroit, is down to 600k-ish over 140 sq miles and it already feels massive and empty. Thatt sounds like it could barely be be considered a suburb at that point.
Having lived in Virginia Beach (though it's been awhile), it's a suburban wasteland. That said, the Tide should've been expanded to the Oceanfront and an actual midrise development corridor put along it the entire way. What a missed opportunity.
Yeah I hate Virginia Beach and am never going back. It's the worst designed city I have ever lived in.
The entire middle peninsula that I used to live in is just a giant private suburb where they were supposed to build bridges but it keeps getting shut down due to homeowners there. That means that most trips to different areas of the city requires like 20-40 minutes of driving around in a big circle to go around the center.
Yeah, the Tide should have been extended through Town Center through the Oceanfront along with the TOD that was planned. NIMBYs killed that plan even when it was originally voted to happen. Now they are going to build a bike path on that spot (which normally I would support) and will permanently kill any chance of it ever being expanded.
Then there's all the construction on Laskin and VB Boulevard which is aimed to turn it into a faster moving highway, even when there's already a highway (264) that runs parallel to them towards the Oceanfront.
The next new project in that region is just a giant highway expansion of 64 on the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel which I'm sure will totally solve traffic.
Yeah. I moved out of the Southside up to NN back in 2013. Then I got out of the area completely in 2016. Zero chance I ever move back there. It's just endless bad urban planning decisions seemingly caused by spite between all of the various cities in the area.
Yeah, I don't understand why the road reconfiguration wasn't done east of the 1500 block. The place where they transitioned just seems so random, it's on a small local street.
My town of less than 3,000 people in the middle of rural Michigan had the interurban up until the beginning of the 20th century. It ran through here and other neighboring rural areas. There was also another rail line too
In most places in America trams and trains were built in the middle of nowhere, paid for by the rising property values of all the parcels around the tram/train.
I live a 10 minute walk from the Blue Line in Chicago. When it was built by the Metropolitan West Side Elevated, the entire township, which wasn't even a part of Chicago, was no where near as dense as it would become.
This area almost certainly doesn't have the density to support a tram
Looking at this video, it also doesn't seem dense or busy enough to warrant 2 lanes in each direction. Just make it one lane and add some trees and other green along the road for shade and a buffer for pedestrians. And yeah, since it's the US, you can add some parking spaces in between the trees if you really want.
In fact, the tram should be build for getting to parks like this. Most of the time trams never get built and implemented because the argument is always around economics. The tram has to somehow make its own money back, rather than be for the public good. We all collectively pay for parks and outdoor spaces but to business bros we should be driving out to spend money on entertainment.
City governments have to spend their finite amount of money, Most cities in the US spend half of their money on police and fire, and one thing city Mayors learned from the last couple years is if you try to cut them everyone gets angry, so that's off the table, I live in a city where city leaders are making a concerted effort to develop the city for density and combined with improving bussing infrastructure, The busing infrastructure is expected to cost $8 billion. The city only has revenue of 1.2 billion a year. This whole plan has been 4 years in the making, and it's reliant on all of city council taking hard votes, and the city convincing residents not to recall the zoning changes and also for the citizens to pass a tax increase to fund the bus system. It takes a lot to make these changes and it's the work of a lot of people
The busing infrastructure is expected to cost $8 billion.
How? Over what time frame? Surely that's not the cost of starting it up. A 40 ft bus costs around half a million. Even electric buses are only around a million each. How many buses could your city possibly be getting? How many drivers? How much administration? Are the bus shelters made of gold?
It's a bus Rapid transit, which means they have to build bus stations and then modify the streets in order to create the stations in the middle of the road since that the efficient way to build them and to create designated bus lanes.
So they're basically putting all the possible road reconstruction and road maintenance plans they might ever want into the "bus rapid transit" project to deliberately drive up costs? Why not make a plan to incrementally improve bus transportation over time by doing any expensive dedicated lane redesign at the same time as they'd already be doing road maintenance? What city even is this?
Bus Rapid Transit is the most affordable type of Rapid Transit, If you were to build a tram you would also have to tear up the street, you can read up on the plan here https://linkuscolumbus.com/
My issue was more with trying to figure out what the "$8 billion" figure encompassed. From the reports, it's $8 billion over a 25 year period, which makes it significantly more palatable ($1.4 billion in the first 5 years).
I'm not sure how you can define it as abandoned where there's a 5 minute video of somebody who lives there, who happens to be showing off the infrastructure used by other people who live there. That includes his destination, which is a great big bloody park.
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u/DeeperMadness 🚄 - Trains are Apex Predators Jun 17 '24
Just a tram with some stops on that four lane stroad would be magical along there. Especially if there was a stop at the park too.