jfrey40535 wrote:Umblehoon wrote:How much money do you expect the 15 to bring in outside of daily commuters? Do you expect many people to flock to this city to ride an historic trolley? How many tourists will want to transfer from the BSS to the trolley at Broad & Girard (subquestion: have you seen that intersection?), or anywhere else along Girard? I doubt enough tourists will ride to cover the cost of running even one car per week.
I wasn't specifically referring to the 15, but consider if we had trolley loops in Center City and University City that were geared towards short downtown trips and visitors. They could be run during the summer only.
When you're downtown, look at all the different bus companies running tours throughout the downtown area. Not too long ago (well ok 20 years), we had trolley tracks all around olde city, Independence Hall, Art Musem, etc. Some of that should be in place specifically for tourists.
We already know people go bonkers when the PCC-II's are chartered in University City. The college kids would love it. SEPTA has no clue how to make a buck off something. The tourist bus companies can do it, why can't SEPTA get the city to pony up some money to bring some of these tracks back and have SEPTA operate it? It would be great for tourism, and great for those of us who live here. Its such a waste seeing those tracks on 12th Street doing absolutely nothing. We should have kept PW 8534 just for a downtown excursion route. And if it was too expensive for SEPTA to operate, the city should contract PHILADELPHIA TROLLEY WORKS to operate it.
I hate having to drill into my 2 year old son's head that those purple trolley buses are NOT TROLLEYS. Its sad to hear most tourists say "Lets go ride that trolley"....its not a stinkin trolley people!
I wouldn't really advocate either using the one remaining Peter Witt, or having Philly Trolley Works operate the system. 8534 is a historical artifact, I'd rather see it in a museum sitting static than running and being torn up on SEPTA's system. Admittedly the best option would be occasional operating sessions on SEPTA for excursions (even non-railfan oriented ones wherein the trolley were simply run on one of the 'tourist loops' for a day), or operating in a museum, but to have it being torn up every day by SEPTA's regulars would be horrible. Also, 8534 is not ADA compatible, so there might be some difficulty in getting it running on that line on a regular basis. We happen to have 18 ADA compatible 'historical' trolleys which would be perfectly at home on tourist loops which could be operated throughout the city. The PCC IIs would be ideal for such duties, as they're Air Conditioned, fully ADA Compatible, as well as smaller than a conventional PCC and have a flavor which few modern LRVs achieve. Really I shudder at the thought of those PCC IIs ending 10-20 years of service on the Rt 15 looking totally destroyed, at least operation on a tourist loop would be slightly easier duty.
jsc wrote:I really think that the goal of a trolley loop in west philly ought to be to get people circulating around the neighborhoods without having to drive and it ought operate on fairly short headways (10 min or so) and cost less than $2/ride. There are more and more buisnesses in west philly but they're mostly clustered on commercial streets that are spread apart. More and more people that have discressionary funds to spend on things like dining out are moving in as well and a loop that was marketed the right way could be very successful all year long, not just during the summer.
Between the two of these posts the University City Historical Trolley idea seems to be rather well fleshed out. They're the ones who are behind the University City trolley days, and it seems that if they can convince SEPTA to operate the service they'll have an extremely good circulator for the University City/West Philadelphia area.
http://www.uchs.net/Streetcars/trolleyloop.html
I don't know how much traffic 11th & 12th sts would generate..I would think that more people are trying to travel east-west than north-south. Centercity doesn't really have the tracks in the right place for a successful tourist loop.
There are many hotels and such between Bainbridge and Noble Streets in Center City. Also the possibility exists of running a trolley from 12th and Bainbridge up to the Zoo via 11th St and Girard. There's a busway on Chestnut and Walnut Streets which could really use improvement. Adding rails down the streets with a mountable curb separating the bus/trolley lanes from the traffic lanes would make the tourist trolley much more useful. A trolley could be run from 4th or 6th and Chestnut to 41st and Parkside, serving Independence Mall, the Convention Center and associated hotels as well as the Zoo all on one route. If there were a way to use the City Subway Branch running from roughly 13th and Noble to 27th and Pennsylvania then it'd be possible to link the Zoo, the Art Museum, the Franklin Institute, the Convention Center, and Independence Mall, thereby rendering buses like the Phlash totally useless.
In addition to the University City and Center City/Zoo tourist trolley routes it'd probably also be a good idea to run a Chestnut Hill tourist trolley from Chestnut Hill Loop to Germantown Depot. Such a service would nicely supplement 23 Trolley service during times when it is likely more people would be out shopping on Germantown Ave.
