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While far afield from Columbus, it demonstrates the adage "build it and they will come." CW Nevius writes in the San Francisco Chronicle about a streetcar line that San Francisco built 25 years ago.
I used the MUNI 'F' line to get to work back-in-the-day even though they used the antiquated PCC Cars and a bone-rattling streetcar from Milan, Italy (circa 1928). I believe they could discontinue the historic streetcars and they would still have the same ridership numbers, maybe sans a few tourists.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/05/BADT1251IF.DTL
Twenty-five years ago, San Francisco put a fleet of quaint vintage streetcars on the train tracks along Market Street. Today those cars are still running on the F-line, which rolls down Market, past the Ferry Building, and up the Embarcadero to Fisherman's Wharf. They are beautifully restored, eye-catching tourist attractions, and a lot of fun.Unless you are actually trying to get somewhere.
"In the afternoon when I am trying to go home, they get so packed they don't even stop," said Tamela Lamboglia, who has been working at Pier 39 for more than 24 years. "I've started to walk all the way to the Ferry Building."
The streetcars, sometimes called "museums in motion," have committed the cardinal sin of public transportation: They have become too popular.
For example, Monday afternoon at Fisherman's Wharf, around 2:30, I climbed on car No. 1053, a green and silver model that ran in Philadelphia in the 1940s. It was pretty full when I got on, but at the next stop - right at Pier 39 - hordes of tourists clambered aboard. After several calls to get people to move to the back of the bus, the driver announced that we were now aboard "an express to the Ferry Building." Sure enough, we shot past passengers waiting at subsequent stops as if they were invisible.
"I see them pass by people every day," said Pete Ingargiola, who works at an information booth at Pier 39. "It's too bad, because the price is right and the cars go where everybody wants to go. They need more cars or bigger ones, or something."
Here is the money quote:
The reasons are logical once you get past the old-timey look of the cars. For starters, by a quirk of the layout of the tracks, the line - which begins in the Castro, runs down Market and then travels to the wharf - hits many of the top destinations in the city."It covers an "L" that essentially covers the key corridors of San Francisco," True said.
But there is also an undeniable aura to the cars themselves. Laubscher insists that, "sad to say," some of the riders on the vintage cars won't ride buses.
This is why streetcar could work in Columbus, the streetcar line would connect many of the destinations that people want to go to on equipment that people view more favorably. Build this first Streetcar line and then build the extended Light Rail system.
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