Posts about Georgia

Streetcars can be longer

In simplest terms, streetcars can be longer than buses. Since streetcars run on tracks, there is no danger of jackknifing. Likewise, since streetcars are powered by overhead wire, there's not a single engine distributing power. Thus there's no physical limit to their length.

For example, streetcar manufacturer CAF offers its Urbos model in options ranging from 60 feet long up to 141 feet long. Bombardier's similar Flexity model comes in any length from 69 feet up to 148 feet.

Portland's famous streetcar is a relatively diminutive 65 feet long, but longer vehicles are beginning to show up in North America. Cincinnati is using a 77 foot long Urbos for its future line, and the first 78 foot long Siemens S70s have already been delivered to Atlanta. In Toronto, 99 foot long Flexities will soon ply the continent's largest streetcar network.

And that's just single streetcar vehicles. Streetcars can also be coupled into trains of multiple cars, so transit agencies that own shorter vehicles can still get the benefits of extra length without needing new railcars.

Agencies that want to run longer trains do have to provide longer stations, but since streetcar stations are typically simple, that's relatively easy to accomplish.

Ultimately the limiting factor on streetcar length is the size of city blocks. Streetcars can't typically be longer than one city block, lest they block traffic on perpendicular streets. But city blocks are usually hundreds of feet long, so streetcars can still be much longer than buses.

Streetcars can have diverse interiors

Even compared to buses of exactly the same length, streetcars can support a higher passenger capacity. Since gliding along rails is so much more smooth than rumbling along asphalt, and since there's no need for huge wheel wells, it's more practical for streetcars to have a lot of open space that maximizes standing capacity.

The 3 streetcars that DC has in storage use this strategy. They're 65 feet long, but they have much more capacity than a 60 foot long articulated bus because of the open floor plan. The trade off, of course, is that they have fewer seats, but only streetcars practically offer the choice.

What kind of flexibility is more important?

Faced with the choice of operational flexibility or capacity flexibility, which one rules?

It depends on the needs of the corridor and the goals of the transit line. Sometimes buses are the correct answer, and other times it's streetcars.

Sometimes it might make sense to use both on the same corridor. For example, streetcars capable of providing very high capacity might serve most passengers along a line, while buses capable of skipping around traffic might serve longer express trips on the same road.

There are 157 WMATA bus routes in the District of Columbia alone, with hundreds more WMATA and non-WMATA routes around the region. The majority of them are probably better served with buses, but some of them are undoubtedly better fits for streetcars.

The key for decision makers is to embrace the differences inherent to each mode, and decide accordingly.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

The county transportation officials who designed this street to be so dangerous, the AJC reporter who pointed out she hadn't been charged, the prosecutors who overcharged the case, and the jurors who had never taken a public bus all showed no remorse for encouraging a situation where people have to break laws and put themselves in dangerous situations just to travel to work and shop.

A similar windshield perspective is on display in a recent Anne Arundel crash. A driver fatally hit Alex Canales Hernandez and, as in Nelson's case, left the scene. Also like Nelson's, it happened on a busy arterial street that's been designed for maximum vehicle speeds and not for bicycle or pedestrian safety.

Anne Arundel police spokesperson Justin Mulcahy told the Maryland Gazette, "Certain stretches of roads should really be just for vehicles." He also encouraged cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers all to pay attention and make eye contact.

Setting aside the fact that "vehicles" include bicycles, certain stretches of road are just for motor vehicles, like freeways. But those always coexist with networks of other roads that can potentially serve all modes. In most suburban areas like Cobb County, Georgia and Anne Arundel County, Maryland, designers have often made local arterial roads more freeway-like without actually providing for safe bicycle and pedestrian alternatives.

Bus stops become tiny roadside perches mere feet from speeding traffic with few or no places to cross, and people trying to get around without a car, sometimes because they can't afford one, have to take their lives into their hands and risk being blamed when anything goes wrong.

Not only do rude commenters and commentators blame these victims, but so do some police and callous spokespeople like Mulcahy or Jonathan Perok of Prince William, who blamed a pedestrian for getting killed in Dumfries who turned out to be a VDOT contractor there to install a traffic signal.

Jay Mallin made a great video in response to a similar Prince William incident that's equally relevant to Raquel Nelson's and Alex Canales Hernandez's cases. It's worth rewatching:

Wired also wrote today about a new report (PDF) framing transportation as a civil rights issue:

According to the report, the average cost of owning a car is just shy of $9,500. That may not sound like much until you realize the federal poverty level is $22,350 for a family of four. One-third of low-income African-American households do not have access to an automobile. That figure is 25 percent among low-income Latino families and 12.1 percent for whites. Racial minorities are four times more likely than whites to use public transit to get to work.

Yet the federal government allocates 80 percent of its transportation funding to highways.

"This is the civil rights dilemma: Our laws purport to level the playing field, but our transportation choices have effectively barred millions of people from accessing it," the report states. "Traditional nondiscrimination protections cannot protect people for whom opportunities are literally out of reach."

The report couldn't be more timely. Sarah Goodyear asks, could the intense media coverage of this issue mean that society is ready to start taking pedestrian rights more seriously?

The more information that came out, the more outrageous the charges against Nelson became. From an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story that came out the month after the incident:

On April 10, she and her three children—Tyler, 9, A.J., 4, and Lauryn, 3—went shopping because the next day was Nelson's birthday. They had pizza, went to Wal-Mart and missed a bus, putting them an hour late getting home. Nelson, a student at Kennesaw State University, said she never expected to be out after dark, especially with the children.

When the Cobb County Transit bus finally stopped directly across from Somerpoint Apartments, night had fallen. She and the children crossed two lanes and waited with other passengers on the raised median for a break in traffic. The nearest crosswalks were three-tenths of a mile in either direction, and Nelson wanted to get her children inside as soon as possible. A.J. carried a plastic bag holding a goldfish they'd purchased.

"One girl ran across the street," Nelson said. "For some odd reason, I guess he saw the girl and decided to run out behind her. I said, 'Stop, A.J.,' and he was in the middle of the street so I said keep going. That's when we all got hit."

Look at all the ways the design of the city's transportation system failed Nelson and her family. Bus service runs once an hour. There is no crosswalk to connect a bus stop with an apartment building it serves—nor any crosswalk for three blocks. A convicted hit-and-run driver who is half-blind and has alcohol and pain-killers in his system is considered less of a threat to the public than a woman who rides the bus and walks with her kids.

And as Radley Balko wrote in the Huffington Post, the odds were stacked against Nelson from the start.

"During jury questioning, none of the jurors who would eventually convict Nelson raised their hands when asked if they relied on public transportation," Balko wrote. "Just one juror admitted to ever having ridden a public bus, though in response to a subsequent question, a few said they'd taken a bus to Braves games."

Indeed, as David Goldberg wrote on T4America's campaign blog, "Nelson, 30 and African-American, was convicted on the charge this week by six jurors who were not her peers. All were middle-class whites" and did not ride public transit. "In other words, none had ever been in Nelson's shoes."

Many have asked if there's any way to help. Some expressed a desire to contribute to Nelson's legal fund. Others wanted to know if they could write a letter to someone demanding that Nelson's charges be expunged.

I've left two messages over the past week with Nelson's lawyer asking these (and other) questions. Neither message has been returned. So I can't answer your questions about a legal defense fund. Nelson's sentencing hearing is on Tuesday.

But there are now two petitions circulating. One, circulating at the Care2 petition site, asks the governor to overturn Nelson's verdict. At the moment I'm writing this, the petition has gathered 4,369 signatures, on the way to its goal of 10,000.

Another, which currently has 1,061 signatures at Change.org, asks not only for Nelson's release but for the installation of a crosswalk. That petition is addressed to the Cobb County Transportation Department, Cobb County Commissioner District 1 (Helen Goreham), and the Solicitor General (Barry Morgan).

We'll stay tuned for news on Nelson's sentence on Tuesday.

Cross-posted at Streetsblog Capitol Hill.