Huston Street Racing Indianapolis based Urban Photojournalism & Transportation Advocacy

Streetcars in a LRT-esque alignment on College Ave? aka “Rapid Streetcar”

A recent meeting with some important local transportation planners posed an interesting question: How would you connect Broad Ripple to downtown? While the question may not be as point blank as that, it still shed some light on a pretty big concept and that is connecting places that people want to be. People want to be in Broad Ripple for the entertainment and shopping that it provides. All one needs to do is take a day (or night) trip to Broad Ripple to see how awesome it is. The sidewalks are wide, the storefronts are in your face. The shops are open and friendly as are the bars. The Monon Trail engages a few places through a number of residential and commercial areas of the neighborhood making it a key component of why the area works. Broad Ripple has many of the concepts that people enjoy and modern urban planners laud, which makes it ripe as a destination to be connected with.

Similarly, downtown provides a LOT of things that people desire. Shopping, nightlife, the region's primary business district and nearly as important, convention goers. It is the last component of that which makes for a compelling case for raising the sales tax proposed in the Indyconnect plan. With such a strong convention base one could assume that by collecting sales tax from convention goers, a large chunk of money could be gleaned from people who do not even live in the metro Indianapolis area. I dont think there is an economist anywhere that will tell you that is a bad situation. With the growth of the convention center underway, this is only poised to grow over the years. If you keep an eye on the local media outlets, it seems fairly often lately that we see a contract being signed for the long term convention because of the expansion going on. Those same convention goers could use a streetcar (or tram as they are called in Europe) to travel to our other good walkable neighborhoods, such as Broad Ripple. They like to be entertained as well, and while downtown does a fairly decent job of this, there is a lot of Indianapolis Culture not captured in the many downtown chain restaraunts.

Using these locations and working from the concept that connecting places can stimulate economic and infrastructural investement, I decided to make a case for streetcar transit from downtown to Broad Ripple. By choosing to install a streetcar from somewhere downtown, and heading up College Ave, a plan could be hatched to move downtown convention goers and workers back and forth to Broad Ripple; also collecting weekday commuters from the dense neighborhoods who work downtown. Government workers. Medical workers. The list is high Im sure with the higher income neighborhoods west of College and the much more middle class neighborhoods east of College, the mix is eclectic to be sure. And as you travel further south, you collect the neighborhoods on the rebound such as Fall Creek Place and the couple of blocks either way. Sure, one could argue that bus service would accomplish the same thing, but we have that, and even when the service up and down College was twice as frequent as it currently is, people werent flocking in droves to get on the bus to go to Broad Ripple. Similarly, a visit on a sunny day, or summer evening will demonstrate how they get there: BY CAR. It is ridiculous to even attempt to get a parking spot on one of these days. I can attest as I lived on the canal for a year and if you weren't home by 8:30pm, we were parking blocks away from our apartment.

One thing that some people may tell you is that streetcars will not provide a reliable speed-up over automobiles; and they would be right. The modern streetcar operates in traffic much like a bus does albeit on a rail embedded in the street. Another thing that transportation experts will tell you is that streetcars are usually tabbed more for downtown circulator types of duties. Portland, Or for instance, started a small loop in their downtown with short spans between stops (roughly 2-4 blocks) that has been heralded as a success but is used for simply as I pointed out, a downtown circulator. They supliment it's usage with a robust network of crosstown light rail trains. Minor compromises could be made by giving priority to streetcars at traffic lights, but it's not going to provide a large measurable increase in time when used in this frequent stop fashion. Don't be fooled.

The largest benefits of a streetcar on College Ave are likely to lie in it's static location over time, driving economic development along a highly travelled corridor, connecting places, and due to it's nature, being utilized as a commuter OPTION. I think a stronger case can be made for the latter as a commuter option because it looks cool, can be reliable and is seen as progressive. Many of the things that economic metrics struggle to simply capture. Also, a key to this argument, being less frequent than a downtown circulator. We are talking 10-15 blocks between stops perhaps. (Just guesstimating)

Light Rail vs Street Car

To contrast light rail with streetcars is walking a fine line these days. For the past 20 years or so, Light Rail Transit (LRT) have been referred to as a compromise to heavier rail type vehicles. LRT can accelerate faster, create less noise, traditionally operate in their own right of way, yet still safely operate closely with traffic on city streets. As modern urban rail systems have evolved, light rail cars have become more intertwined with street environments. That is to say that systems have been designed with large distances between stops in commuter like setups further from their urban cores only to increase frequency like a streetcar when they got to the downtown areas. This usually facilitates the easy drop off of workers to the places they need to be. This is pretty useful when put into the context that we want to collect commuters with a fast service that is less disruptive of their neighborhoods. Modern LRT vehicles are designed to operate at higher speeds to cover these long distances between stops and they do it well when grade seperated. Ive seen video of the MAX light rail in Portland competing for speed with freeway traffic when operating between stops. It's pretty entertaining! They accelerate rapidly and are capable of very high speed in straight runs.

Streetcar technology is nothing to scoff at as well. With quick acceleration possible, they are able to operate pretty efficiently in traffic, at least, as well as a 65 foot long hulk can operate. See the short clip below (about 30 seconds) demonstrating how deftly a Portland Streetcar is able to accelerate and move right with traffic. It's not sports car speed, but its not bad either.

With that said, if we were to compare using one versus another, streetcars are MUCH cheaper in their execution. The construction costs alone make streetcar pretty attractive. To demonstrate this, see the two graphics below showing a cross section of light rail (from Denver's LR design guidelines) and a cross section of a street car bed (from Tucson's Streetcar EIS) 3 ft + versus 1 foot... seems pretty simple to me. One can make a case for avoiding utility relocation with streetcar thereby drastically decreasing cost, and abbreviating the timeline.

As far as I have been able to figure out, a modern electric light rail vehicle costs about $3.5 million while a streetcar vehicle comes in around $2-3 million. I wouldn't quote me on that, but it is the best that I can figure out. They don't sell them out of a catalog. haha Rail costs are similar based on a weight per foot basis. They are very similar. 

If we explore a "rough" route from south Downtown to 62nd Street in Broad Ripple, not counting travel upon 62nd street but dropping off in the area, then google maps tells us that is 8.2 miles (43269 feet). Consider at the minimum that 4 rails will be ran (2 for northbound, 2 for southbound), that is roughly 173076 feet of actual track to be used (not counting what would be needed for a maintenence facility). Using $0.35/pound (generic steel commidity value in Feb 2010) and assuming 39.5 pounds per foot, that is approximately, $2,392,775.00 in raw material cost for the steel rails.

Using rough math to compute the amount of concrete that will be needed we use the same 43269 feet multiplied times 2 (1 bed north, 1 bed south), by the width of 8.2 feet, by a depth of 1 foot nets us 709,611 cubic feet (or 26255 cubic yards) of concrete. A generic figure of $70 per cubic yard (found on a contractor site via google) nets $1,837,892 in concrete costs.

So far, that is: $4,230,667 in raw material costs. We must assume rebar reinforement under the concrete as well, but as for how much, this is where my practical knowledge fails for I do not know how it is constructed or laid.

A similar cost estimate can be formed for the Light Rail but it is going to look similar to that plus, cost for concrete ties, aggregate, storm water drain as well as the pre-fab utility re-location. You can start to see that light rail construction costs are a measure of magnitude greater in comparion. What this comparison doesnt account for is labor costs (BIG), electrical systems, overhead wire supported by streetside poles or periodic electrical power centers along the route. Nor does it consider the amount of vehicles needed to support useable headways or operating costs (although I think $3-$4 million annually isn't too far from the mark for operating costs).

What can be considered though, is that streetcars operating on the street can reach attainable speeds to compete with buses, and if spaced further apart than 2-4 blocks ala "circulator fashion" can offer an almost light rail like frequency. Given the extreme cost savings when compared to light rail, a compelling case can be made for streetcars instead of heavier, Light Rail vehicles.

For all of my ranting and banter going on here, lightrailnow.org penned an article advocating this approach. (see article here)

In the end, the public must weigh in on such a concept. The current NE Corridor study doesn't even hedge on such a concept however, is in a similar realm. I believe personally, I would almost be okay with a single track rail line from the NE to downtown, if we could argue our way into an inner city streetcar to collect the benefits that we, as Indianapolis residents, would hope to glean from broaching the rail transportation barrier here in Indy. A robust campaign to alert citizens of Indianapolis of the benefits of fixed rail transit would be useful in gaining the needed support to impliment such a service. Equal amounts of advertising would need to be done by all downtown restaurants and hotels to let their visitors know that this wonderful service is there to be used.

As always, I welcome reader comments on this topic, one that I consider will be quite a volatile subject.

EDIT: Kevin over @ UrbanIndy posted about this last night and I thought that it was fitting I include a link to his article about it. Recently, the Harmoni neighborhood in midtown Indy put a plan on the table at the Indyconnect meeting advocating for a College Ave line.  Here is a link to a .pdf they created exploring future infrastructure development plans.