KCMO Downtown Streetcar

[flyingember]

I rode a CAF Urbos 3 70% low floor tram multiple times on the Houston system this week. Photos coming early next week. Theirs are slightly wider and slightly faster, otherwise it's the same train as KC is getting, they come out of the Elmira, NY plant too.

They have all their trains nearly identical. If one didn't know the numbering system it would be hard to tell the Siemens and CAF trains apart, they got their trains customized to fit their existing look.

They're outstanding. The extremely forceful jerk as the train gets going, the acceleration time is crazy fast, is the only thing that makes the ride anything except smooth. Their layout has TONS of space for bikes, wheelchairs and such.

For train geeks, they have horns that can actually sound close to a freight train. Hopefully KC's does this too.

I knew this before, but no one is going to confuse a bus as an alternative to this when they first ride the system.
The demand for expansion will come fast and hard from the east side.

Houston ridership comes off of 6 transit centers (one per 4 miles) and it's very working class.

One thing to learn from, the line transfers aren't that well done. KC should look at clustering them much tighter together, like right around the corner from each other, when we gain an E-W non-connecting line.

[kucer]

I rode a CAF Urbos 3 70% low floor tram multiple times on the Houston system this week. Photos coming early next week. Theirs are slightly wider and slightly faster, otherwise it's the same train as KC is getting, they come out of the Elmira, NY plant too.

They have all their trains nearly identical. If one didn't know the numbering system it would be hard to tell the Siemens and CAF trains apart, they got their trains customized to fit their existing look.

They're outstanding. The extremely forceful jerk as the train gets going, the acceleration time is crazy fast, is the only thing that makes the ride anything except smooth. Their layout has TONS of space for bikes, wheelchairs and such.

For train geeks, they have horns that can actually sound close to a freight train. Hopefully KC's does this too.

I knew this before, but no one is going to confuse a bus as an alternative to this when they first ride the system.
The demand for expansion will come fast and hard from the east side.

Houston ridership comes off of 6 transit centers (one per 4 miles) and it's very working class.

One thing to learn from, the line transfers aren't that well done. KC should look at clustering them much tighter together, like right around the corner from each other, when we gain an E-W non-connecting line.

That would be funny. Didn't they just strongly vote it down thanks to the east side "leadership"? Once leaders of the east side get a ride on it, they are going to change their tune?

[DaveKCMO]

i'm fond of saying "there's no comment section on the ballot", so i wouldn't trust the conventional wisdom on why the vote failed (and failed so badly the farther east you went). i believe voters made a simple value judgment that streetcar itself wasn't worth a tax increase. that assessment would explain why even those wards/precincts closest to the linwood and independence lines also voted no. it also lines up with individual conversations i've had with many voters.

and, honestly, the "leadership" (i'm told) just wants prospect MAX -- and they're going to get it now with no tax increase.

[flyingember]

To me the vote failed because being for it was an argument made on the abstract.

Look demographically. Logically someone west of Main has the money to travel to other cities, east, not so much.
So you don't have a population with real world experiences with the differences between a train and bus.

The coming operations is what will lead to the change in opinion. It's all in real world experience.

The "leaders" won't change their mind but they don't need to. Thousands of bus riders into downtown can hop on the train for free and try it out themselves.

The vote was too soon in retrospect. People couldn't make up their mind based on experiencing the system. Instead they made it only on paying more without knowing what they would get.

[bobbyhawks]

I don't think it was difficult to see at the time that it was ill advised to tie all of the different spurs to the same vote. People were largely in favor of a line that went to at least the Plaza. It may have been a calculated risk to group the lines together, and it was done for all of the best reasons, but we would be on the same trajectory now for the Eastern spurs and would already be building the track towards UMKC.

Perhaps revisionist history, but I think we can learn to propose various chunks of the streetcar moving forward as individual votes. Until it is demonstrated that people understand the purpose of achieving coverage throughout the city, KC voters (like much of America) are still very much skeptical of anything that appears to be helping someone else more than them. If two lines exist on the same ballot, you risk the poorer demographic thinking it is built just for the rich, and the rich thinking it is just for the poor.

[DaveKCMO]

KC streetcar vehicle #1 is now in "dynamic testing" at the production facility in new york: http://www.kcstreetcar.org/kc-streetcar-vehicle/

[FangKC]

The only way to get the streetcar lines running to the east side neighborhoods that voted against them is:

have city leaders, or proxies, constantly say in public there will NEVER be a FREE streetcar line that goes to those neighborhoods.

have some city leaders, or proxies, say it's not worth running expensive streetcar lines to economically-disadvantaged neighborhoods--that there would be no upside or return on the investment.

have proxies say they would never support streetcar lines running east because they would only bring crime into other parts of the city.

have city leaders say that it's more important to invest in the city running north and south along those transit spines because that makes more sense than wasting investment on east side neighborhoods that are perfectly happy using the bus system.

find a crazy outspoken proxy to make repeated statements that poor people on the east side would only ruin the streetcar system if they had access to it.

say that people who will be streetcar users have no interest in living on the east side, or ever going there to spend their money.

Do these things over a long enough period of time, and east side neighborhoods will be clamoring for streetcar lines.

[bobbyhawks]

^^Ha. Well said.

[aknowledgeableperson]

and, honestly, the "leadership" (i'm told) just wants prospect MAX -- and they're going to get it now with no tax increase.

There might be another way to look at this.
The Prospect bus line better serves the East Side than taking a streetcar ride to Main. The question I would ask, maybe it has and I don't know, how many riders along the proposed line would travel to Main? What kind of demand existed for the proposed line? I may be wrong but my guess the demand just wasn't there. For the current line there was a demand or support, but for the routes on the ballot the demand just wasn't there.

[flyingember]

Apparently a restaurant with a streetcar theme closing down because the second generation owners didn't want to keep it open casts doubt on the actual train's success

Huh?

http://www.tonyskansascity.com/2015/09/ ... eates.html

[shinatoo]

Satire.

[flyingember]

Satire.

From any other site I would believe that

[WSPanic]

That restaurant is/was awful. I ate there about 5 years ago - terrible, bland food. No real dishes/flatware - styrofoam plates and plastic forks. Miracle it lasted this long.

[FangKC]

Walt Bodine talking about when the restaurant was closing down at 4922 Main Street. No mention that it would move to Crown Center, so that decision may not have been made at the time of the broadcast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amQQm_1mg-c

Not the same car, but another one advertising A Streetcar Named Desire at the Music Hall.

[DaveKCMO]

substation #3 was installed today at truman road south and main street, in the vacant strip next to the trench. four substations will power the overhead lines with 750 volts of direct current.



...and in case you missed it, here's KC vehicle #1 on the test track in elmira, new york (to arrive here oct. 29):

[flyingember]

and, honestly, the "leadership" (i'm told) just wants prospect MAX -- and they're going to get it now with no tax increase.

There might be another way to look at this.
The Prospect bus line better serves the East Side than taking a streetcar ride to Main. The question I would ask, maybe it has and I don't know, how many riders along the proposed line would travel to Main? What kind of demand existed for the proposed line? I may be wrong but my guess the demand just wasn't there. For the current line there was a demand or support, but for the routes on the ballot the demand just wasn't there.

consider this, the initial downtown service redo has (effectively) every east side bus line that hits downtown crossing Main and going all the way to Broadway.

So clearly there's a lot of demand to hit a bunch of downtown corridors.

I bet there will be a huge amount of transfers to the streetcar as the new service doesn't have a north-south route west of Grand otherwise and that gets people 2 blocks closer to a lot of jobs

[aknowledgeableperson]

and, honestly, the "leadership" (i'm told) just wants prospect MAX -- and they're going to get it now with no tax increase.

There might be another way to look at this.
The Prospect bus line better serves the East Side than taking a streetcar ride to Main. The question I would ask, maybe it has and I don't know, how many riders along the proposed line would travel to Main? What kind of demand existed for the proposed line? I may be wrong but my guess the demand just wasn't there. For the current line there was a demand or support, but for the routes on the ballot the demand just wasn't there.

consider this, the initial downtown service redo has (effectively) every east side bus line that hits downtown crossing Main and going all the way to Broadway.

So clearly there's a lot of demand to hit a bunch of downtown corridors.

I bet there will be a huge amount of transfers to the streetcar as the new service doesn't have a north-south route west of Grand otherwise and that gets people 2 blocks closer to a lot of jobs

I know about the bus lines but don't forget those are multiple lines not a single line serving a narrow corridor. Many of those lines would not feed into that proposed route.

[DaveKCMO]

the operations contract has been signed:

http://www.kansascity.com/news/governme ... 68507.html
http://www.kcstreetcar.org/wp-content/u ... -FINAL.pdf

[flyingember]

There's no way all work will realistically be done by the end of October at this point. I'd estimate 1st-2nd week in November best case.

October 29 is in 3 weeks and 6 days.

The whole-street repaving has 10-12 blocks left to go, and it takes roughly a day per block (or you run down a few blocks the middle and come back and do the outside edge the second day). The scheduling issue is you can't have lanes open on the outside while stop work has them blocked. So paving work delays stop work, or vice versa.

There's still track slab to pour. I saw a pre-req for part of the slab at Union Station curing today. The last of the slab at 3rd and Grand is mostly done. There's still one plate covering something and there's holes to put asphalt in just south of this intersection.

Three stops have not been started, there's not even barriers blocking them, and they each take 3-4 weeks minimum. One was supposed to have been started this week at 3rd and wasn't because there's underground work that has the place the temp lane goes blocked off. Yes, there's still underground work for the project to complete.

There's the entire signal work at Union Station. The base plates for that appeared to have gone in today or yesterday. Other intersections getting new signals took 2-3 weeks minimum after that point.

There's a lot of sidewalk work. This got towards 9th St on one side. I'd guess there's 5-7 days of sidewalk repair to go.

I'd guess there's 3-4 weeks of corner repair. Corner repair follows stop work for the closest corners.

There's still parts of the OCS cables not permanently attached to the poles/cross cables and the connecting plates need to go in. So the basic cabling isn't complete let alone hooking it up to be live.

[DaveKCMO]

the alignment test won't occur the day the first vehicle arrives.