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Modern streetcars, like those Cincinnati plans to use, cost about $3 million each, run on an overhead electrical wire and carry up to 130 passengers per car on rails that are flush with the pavement. And since streetcars can pick up passengers on either side, they can make shorter stops than buses.

Streetcar advocates point to Portland, Ore., which built the first major modern streetcar system in the United States, in 2001, and has since added new lines interlaced with a growing light rail system. Since Portland announced plans for the system, more than 10,000 residential units have been built and $3.5 billion has been invested in property within two blocks of the line, according to Portland Streetcar Inc., which operates the system.

Critics, including Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian research organization in Washington, and an expert on urban growth and transportation issues, counter that growth along streetcar lines is dependent on public subsidy and of little use.

“It looks like it’s going to take you somewhere, but it’s only designed to support downtown residents,” he said. “If officials fall for the hype and don’t ask the hard questions, voters should vote them out.”

Cincinnati’s streetcar enthusiasts counter that they serve to shrink residents’ everyday world of work, shopping and entertainment by bringing services and businesses to one area.

“One happy consequence will be that streetcar customers who live in the area will be less mobile by choice,” said John Schneider, a Cincinnati real estate developer and downtown resident who championed an unsuccessful 2002 county sales tax proposal that would have financed a regional light rail system.

Since then, gas prices have risen sharply and advocates have started emphasizing streetcars’ ability to revitalize urban neighborhoods.

“In years gone by, people would move to cities to get a job,” Cincinnati’s city manager, Milton Dohoney, said. “Today, young, educated workers move to cities with a sense of place. And if businesses see us laying rail down on a street, they’ll know that’s a permanent route that will have people passing by seven days a week.”

After looking into streetcar systems in Seattle, Tacoma, Wash., and Charlotte, Mr. Dohoney became convinced that they spur growth. “Cincinnati has to compete with other cities for investment,” he said. “We have to compete for talent and for place of national prominence.”

A hundred miles north, Mayor Michael Coleman of Columbus, Ohio, has come to the same conclusion and is pushing to build a $103 million streetcar network along the city’s High Street connecting Ohio State University with the downtown business district. The loop would be paid for through a 4 percent surcharge on concert tickets, sporting events and downtown parking and a $12.5 million contribution from Ohio State.

“It is directly tied to economic development, and when times are tough in Ohio, we need an additional tool to create jobs,” Mr. Coleman said.

While critics question whether scarce city money would be better spent elsewhere, Mr. Coleman argues that streetcars are important to the city’s growth.

“We have to plan for the future,” he said. “I believe in 10 years, we would ask, ‘Why didn’t we do this?’ It will be 10 times more expensive, and the cost of gas will be unaffordable.”

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Among the first customers are actress Jamie Lee Curtis and filmmaker husband Christopher Guest, actress Laura Harris, film producer Ron Yerxa, as well as businessmen Jon Spallino and Jim Salomon.

“It’s so smooth,” said Harris, who played villainness Marie Warner on the hit TV show “24.” “It’s like a future machine, but it’s not.”

Harris, Spallino and Yerxa were flown to the ceremony, courtesy of Honda. Yerxa says he’s excited to show off the car and believes there’s “a lot of interest.”

The biggest obstacles standing in the way of wider adoption of fuel cell vehicles are cost and the dearth of hydrogen fuel stations. For the Clarity’s release in California, Honda said it received 50,000 applications through its Web site but considered only buyers living near hydrogen fuel stations in Torrance, Santa Monica and Irvine.

“This is indeed a historic day for both Honda and American Honda - a new chapter in our nearly fifty-year history in America,” said John Mendel, a senior vice president at America Honda Motor Co. at a morning ceremony here. “It’s an especially significant day for American Honda as we plant firm footsteps toward the mainstreaming of fuel cell cars.”

Initially, however, the Clarity will go only to a chosen few starting July and then launch in Japan this fall.

Although Honda Motor Co. (HMC) was the first Japanese automaker to launch a gas-electric hybrid vehicle in the U.S. in 1999, it has been outpaced by the dominance of Toyota’s (TM) popular Prius.

Toyota announced in May that it has sold more than 1 million Prius hybrids, while both the Honda Insight and the hybrid Accord have been discontinued due to poor sales.

The FCX Clarity is part of Honda’s plan to keep pace with rivals in green technology. It also plans to launch a gas-electric hybrid-only model, as well as hybrid versions of the Civic, the sporty CR-Z and Fit subcompact.

As the Light Rail Now article pointed out, “Ridership-forecasting modelling procedures mandated by the Federal Transit Administration unrealistically expect public behavior to be the same whether they’re offered LRT or just a bus.”

“The federal government wants us to use these models to compare various projects, like light rail and bus lines, the same way,” said Doug Allen, vice president of planning and development for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit agency.

The problem is that people like light rail a lot more than they like buses – a fact the federal rules don’t take into account, say transit agency officials.

Local FTA officials said the agency was working on the problem and referred questions to the Washington, D.C., communications office, which didn’t return repeated calls for comment made over two weeks.

“How people respond to rail is different than how they respond to bus,” said Utah’s Crandall.

“There’s a dependability on travel time with rail that there isn’t with buses. It has its own tracks and you know where it goes,” he said.

In recent years, reacting to the barrage of criticism from transit agencies with new rail systems, the FTA has somewhat begrudgingly begun to permit revising ridership forecasting models to allocate a higher estimate for rail-specific attributes – if local experience can demonstrate such an effect. That’s what seems to be happening In Charlotte; as the Charlotte Observer reported (Dec. 16th, quoting transit agency management), “Higher than expected ridership on the Lynx light-rail line might raise ridership projections for the $750 million Northeast Corridor line and make it more financially feasible….”

“The higher ridership in the south definitely raises the stock” observed CATS CEO Ron Tober.

If the ridership level for the Lynx south line (Blue Line) remains high for approximately a year, Tober told the Observer, “then CATS will look at recalculating its estimates for the Northeast Corridor.

“We’ll probably increase the projected ridership for the Northeast Corridor” Tober added. “That should move us up in the competition for federal funds. It probably will result in us getting speedy approval from the Federal Transit Administration.”
Light Rail Now! NewsLog
URL: http://www.lightrailnow.org/news/n_newslog2008q1.htm#CHA_20080110
Updated 2008/01/10