Comments on: Milwaukee Officials Advancing Streetcar Project with Goal of Attracting More Federal Funds

By: ethnic drums

ethnic drums — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 19:44:58 +0000

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By: Nathanael

Nathanael — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:43:42 +0000

It’s just a starter line. It would be an excellent starter line, however: consider the people coming to Milwaukee from Chicago by train. Probably a majority of them would use this line.

By: Nathanael

Nathanael — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:42:02 +0000

Apart from the crucial low-floor issue, the PCCs are actually better designs than many of the modern streetcars. :( It was a *good* design. A few updates to use solid-state hardware, and there you go.

I wouldn’t recommend running any of the other historic streetcar types — pre-PCC designs tend to have some seriously unattractive features.

I suspect that a “Low Floor PCC” design would be incredibly popular, like the “New Routemaster” for London will be.

By: Ocean Railroader

Ocean Railroader — Tue, 11 May 2010 00:55:43 +0000

Some of the those old streetcar lines on that website would be really good for new light rail lines or extended streetcars going out of the city core.

By: Eric G.

Eric G. — Mon, 10 May 2010 17:37:54 +0000

This routing will make a good starter line for Milwaukee. They do need extensions, especially to UWM, but mostly they need to start turning dirt. It’s a significant improvement over some of the earlier concepts. Milwaukee has a chance to be a very livable city. Having lived in Wisconsin for many years I know that it is a place that could be very attractive to gen-Y “creatives” but the politicians are too often afraid to take any risks or do anything bold in order to reap the potential of the place. Suburban interests have really crippled any progress with a selfish isolationist mindset for about 4 decades now. This is an encouraging change for Milwaukee itself, regardless of what the burbs may do or not do. Along with HSR, it might get people thinking about a broader vision for alternative mobility and stronger urban cores in the midwest.

By: FG

FG — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:22:36 +0000

I think this is the system – towards the bottom of the page there are photos of grade separated stations, etc.

http://www.thetransportco.com/id11.html

By: Ocean Railroader

Ocean Railroader — Mon, 10 May 2010 01:18:45 +0000

I noice on this map that the streetcar lines really don’t go past Interstate 43 and past Interstate 94. I remember hearing a story that there was an abondoned Interurban streetcar line that linked up with places 20 miles south of this city. Maybe this new streetcar system could start moving towards getting towards the Interurban lines or at least move into other sections of the city on the other sides of the interstate.

By: Ocean Railroader

Ocean Railroader — Mon, 10 May 2010 01:13:07 +0000

The bulk of the service would be modern and most of the time people would see it such as if there are 20 streetcars on the line and say two or three of them are the old fashioned ones or even a retro vesion of a old streetcar but with better heating and cooling systems along with seats in it. The people that would want to see and ride them would go look for them while the people who don’t want to ride them could have the other 17 modern streetcars. Even if the old streetcars only ran on the weekends that would be good mixed in with the other modern streetcars. A old streetcar puts the soul back into a rebuilt streetcar system.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 10 May 2010 00:21:49 +0000

I’m skeptical about how useful such a short line, running only every 10-15 minutes, would be. The end-to-end distance of the phase 1 shown in this plan is less than 2 miles, so (with waiting time) the streetcar would only be marginally faster than walking. This segment ought to be part of a larger citywide network and be run using accessible modern equipment only, otherwise this is a waste of money.

By: dejv

dejv — Sun, 09 May 2010 21:52:02 +0000

@Woody -

I agree with most of your post except part of “museum track”. PCC’s performance is on par with most of modern tram types, so you can run vintage rolling stock between regularly scheduled runs on general network.