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What’s in a transit name?

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Is this light rail or streetcar?

What’s the difference between a streetcar and light rail? What qualifies as BRT versus merely priority bus? One problem with contemporary transit planning is that there’s really no solidly defined answer for those questions.

Originally the term light rail was invented to describe streetcar systems that had express service characteristics. So light rail was really just rapid streetcar. But even the most express light rail systems often run slowly along on surface streets at the downtown end of their route, which muddies the waters.

Furthermore, transit agencies around the country name their lines whatever they want. For decades Philadelphia called one of its light rail lines a high speed trolley. Meanwhile, Tacoma, WA runs a short streetcar line that uses the exact same rail vehicles as Portland’s famous streetcar, but Tacoma calls it light rail.

The situation is even more muddy for buses, since terms like BRT and priority bus are relatively new. Indeed, communities buying off on the concept of BRT only to see it scaled back has become such a continuous problem that Congress is now considered adopting standards that bus lines must meet in order to be called BRT.

So this is a fairly big problem.

I do think there’s a fairly easy, practical, and common sense answer available, however. Does your line run in a dedicated transitway or not? If so, it’s rapid. If not, it’s local. Here’s a handy table describing this system, which is how I’ve personally been mentally sorting transit systems for years:

This does leave two problems unresolved.

First, how do you sort a striped transit lane? The bus lane on 7th Street in Gallery Place is obviously vastly inferior to a true busway, but surely it counts for something.

Second, what to do with transit lines that have different characteristics along different portions of their length? One of the main selling points of both LRT and BRT is that they’re very flexible, and can built to fit the needs of the community. Thus it’s pretty rare to find a line that operates in the same sort of running way for its entire length. Many use a dedicated transitway for part of their length, then mix with traffic elsewhere.

But at the very least, the above table can be useful as a way to generally describe many transit systems. So I think it’s useful.

February 28th, 2012 | Permalink
Tags: BRT, bus, lightrail, proposal, streetcar, transportation



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