There’s been lots of talk about streetcars in Columbus. This is a case where the romanticism of streetcars isn’t so practical in today’s world.

I read a letter in The Dispatch from someone who was around when the last streetcars were in town, and he rattled off all kinds of practical problems for electric streetcars today’s cities, especially in the Short North and OSU campus where the first streetcars would run. He noted streetcars:

• take up critical lanes of traffic,
• cut down on the very limited parking we have,
• rails are dangerous for bicycle tires and women’s heels,
• the overhead electric wires they run on are exceptionally ugly,
• the 2.8 mile stretch of track, costing $103 million dollars, is outrageous, and
• they can only run on expensive tracks limiting their growth, routes and destinations.

So when you think about it, streetcars aren’t nearly as cool as they might seem at first.

Electric buses can be way cooler

The problem seems to be that folks aren’t thinking out of the box on this. If we considered the next generation of futuristic-looking electric buses, we could acheive all of the good with none of the bad. At Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, they’ve designed the “Superbus,” which looks like something Batman would take to work (if he had to use public transportation). Being on wheels, it can be driven on streets in the city and/or a dedicated infrastructure between downtown and the suburbs, or between cities.

Columbus can finally be a role model

How about instead of us being like other cities with streetcars, let’s be different. Let’s be better! Let’s use our public funds wisely and at the same time, achieve the “cool factor” that we’ve been striving for so desperately. I’d bet that putting something like the Superbus on our streets would increase ridership tremendously, too.

How about it Columbus? How ’bout we ride into the 21st century with some new sets of wheels, and set a new standard for what’s cool in transportation? It might also get us on the radar of the rest of the country, and create some critical business interest in Columbus.

But of course, I could be wrong…

Recent Entries

• Lookee here! I get to be a speaker on a panel
• the bad side of bottled water
• You ever get embarrassed for an entire city?
• Unfortunate fortune cookie ads
• Unusual billboards in Albuquerque
• There’s no getting away from advertising!
• Environmentalism: the new core American value.
• Finally! Cool mass transit somewhere in the US!
• Remember: what you make is not what you sell
• Yellow pages: 1. Trees: – 19,000,000

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 9:22 am and is filed under city life, future planning, streetcars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.