PtboQCConvs

The following are culled from the email correspondence between Mark Woolley and his Uncle Paul Bowman, an urban rail fan, who provides insightful commentary on triumphs and foibles in the realm of streetcars and light rail.

August 2021
From: Paul Sent: 2021-08-20

Concerning rail-transit initiatives in North America;

There is no coherent vision or consensus about what a city should be, how it should look and how it should function. Especially post-covid, if there is a post-covid. Not to mention the climate crisis, which screams from every weather-related headline that there is no post-covid normal to go back to.

Rail projects are being proposed and built at the same time the over-built road system, which was designed to force everyone not living in a pre-1950's era neighbourhood in a (rare) city with decent public transit to drive a car every time they leave the house, is being maintained and even enhanced. How can there be both efficient, high-capacity, frequent rail-based transit and a road system designed to make it unnecessary?

Isn't putting rail transit underground just a way of saying the streets belong to people driving cars and everyone else must tunnel like a mole?

An example: the Q.C. project includes a 2-kilometre, billion dollar tunnel so as not to violate a single square centimetre of the 6 lane highway funneling heavy traffic right along through 3 of the most historic neighbourhoods in the city, right on the edge of the walled city. Old Quebec and Parliament hill are honey-combed with underground parking garages. Instead of using the tramway project to totally rethink the city's relationship with the car, the tram will be put out of sight, out of mind, and buried right where it could be most at home, on the streets of very old neighbourhoods.

Ottawa showed the way, of course, by burying their light rail through downtown, even though the buses had reserved lanes for years and there was no crying need to suddenly free up road space. And where it's not underground it will be on an overwide, raised platform taking up so much space that to preserve all the traffic lanes now in place, over 1,500 mature city trees will be slaughtered all along the route, and over a hundred buildings leveled to make the street wider. It will be an overbuilt eyesore blighting every street it passes through.

They're just copying what Toronto and Ottawa are doing in the middle of suburban roads that are already 6 or 8 lanes wide; a charmless concrete slab in the middle of the street instead of European-style, subtle, discrete integration of tracks into existing streets with the least amount of disruption, and looking like they've always been there. Generations who grew up in car-dependent suburbs don't know what a city is, but they're the ones planning these... things.

P

February 2014
From: Paul tramquebec@... Sent: February-04-14

Hello,

That is a truly astounding site and no, I didn't know about it. Did you explore the Peterborough street railway map? It was a far more complete and sophisticated system than I ever imagined. I'd never heard of the CGE test line up behind the old Teachers' College and out to towards Bridgenorth. Or the line to Lakefield. And so much more double track than I'd imagined. Thank you so much for sending that long. It seems all the street railways in Canada are on that site. There'll be many hours spent exploring. I've just begun looking at Quebec City.

Take care be well and keep in touch...

Paul

PS If this streetcar map could be published and made known in Peterborough it might make people starting thinking; and seeing their city in a different light. Especially if someone could photo shop the streetcar lines into contemporary views (as I do mentally whenever I'm there, which is slightly depressing)...

From: Paul tramquebec@... Sent: February-06-14

There are of course towns in Europe with half Peterborough's population who have several tram lines. Some because they were in a country in the Soviet Bloc, which protected them from the Kar-Krazies just long enough, and others in France where the population has fallen (justifiably) in love with their own domestic product built by Alstom, whose modular vehicles have been adapted for cities of less than 50,000. And when a larger city finds its trams are no longer long enough to handle demand, they can just add a standard, prefabricated module fitted out to match the city's trams and slip it into place in a couple of days, converting a 120 person tram to a 160 or even 250 capacity vehicle depending on the requirements and the number of modules needed to satisfy them. When you add to that the exceptionally long life expectancy, low operating cost and very high rider satisfaction, any other kind of surface public transportation become ridiculous, except where you're dealing with extreme sprawl, where small frequent buses need to gather in the unwary dispersed to the nearest rail facility. So now I know where to park the interesting and relevant findings of my daily streetcars, light rail and tramways searches. Of course, the most interesting and relevant for Peterborough are all in French or German (which I can follow well enough to extract basic information from a tram (strassenbahn) video. I'll post them anyway, just in case someone can read and get the gist...

Take care...

Paul

From: Paul tramquebec@... Sent: February-07-14

This can go on the Peterborough site. Of course the local chapter of Ford Nation are doing everything in their power to derail this. I've been following this story for quite some time...

From: Paul tramquebec@... Sent: February-07-14

As far as overview comments go, I prefer to have any statements I make supported with material from the source. With the big streetcar manufacturers, it's easy to go on their site and look up specs and images of their vehicles in use. Every day I google-news streetcars, streetcar (nearly all North America), light rail (mostly North America, some UK, EU, Asia, Australia and Africa), tramways and tramway (nearly all France). For Germany and Austria, I youtube strassenbahn or strassenbahnen, sometimes with the name of the city or region.

Paul  ps. For the moment, anything for which I send you the link, with accompanying  commentary, can be posted on the Peterborough site. A detailed track map of the Peterborough system might blow a few minds.

From: Mark

To: Paul tramquebec@.... Sent: Fri, 7 Feb 2014

I was wondering about adding the proposed lines that you were talking about before Christmas to the dataset. It seems like we’d need some sort of reference material to support adding that data. As I recall :

one proposed route went from Hunter and George, across the bridge then a zigzag – Rogers/Douro/Armour – up to a loop at Nichol’s Oval park

the other route went from McDonnel and George, west to Reid, north to Chemong briefly the onto Wolsely and finally Benson reaching the Normal School/Teacher’s College at it’s terminus (presumably another turning loop). Do you have any idea where to find that information. From my perspective it came from your copious memory.

From: Paul tramquebec@... Sent: February-07-14

To: Mark

During the 50's I quizzed all my parents' friends who'd grown up in Peterborough in the early years of the 1900's, about anything and everything they could recall about the street railway system. I recall that even 25 years after the end of service, many still had a sense of wonderment, loss and betrayal about the sudden shutdown of a service everyone loved and used. Those people are now all gone, but I seem to vaguely recall supporting documents, perhaps unearthed while I was at university or during the time I was teaching in Peterborough, between '69 and '75. Perhaps it was in files of Ontario Hydro during the period when Sir Adam Beck was promoting the modernation and expansion of all of Ontario's electric street and interurban railways. That was a lifetime ago. Without supporting documents there's no way I'd want to put anything on line. But 'someone' told me track had been laid in Ashburnham in preparation for an extension across the new Hunter Street bridge, but it was never used, perhaps because the final cost of that bridge was double the estimate and there was no money to install the track. Although the bridge was built to support track and streetcars. And perhaps the line out McDonnell and up Reid came from the Ontario Hydro files. Wonder if they're online. Ontario Hydro planned to expand the system to parts of town without service, put on all new Birney cars built in Ottawa (they went to Guelph, Kitchener/Waterloo and Windsor instead, I found out by going through equipment rosters) and double track more of the system to increase frequency, etc. As for the line to Lakefield, I had heard it existed but didn't really believe it to be true until you sent me the electric railway maps.

From: Paul (tramquebec@...) Sent: February-08-14

Edmonton, Hanover and Vancouver; the type of interconnexions that can exist with streetcars:

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/wants+Hannover+German+city+delighted+take+unpopular+streetcar+Edmonton+hands/9483545/story.html

Apart from the fact that streetcars have never rolled on rubber tires (cautionary example of how bullshit can creep into even the most seemingly well-intentioned article) this is mildly interesting but sort of gee-whiz and not really helpful as it lacks specifics and detail. Also the word 'obsession' betrays the author's negative bias...

The Konservosaurs and their well-funded backers are sure to reflexively poo-poo anything that threatens the viability of the tar-sands, which seem to be Canada's only raison d'être at the moment...

The sordid reality of lrt/streetcar politics in this country; the catatonic element prevails...

What's on the market...

http://www.alstom.com/transport/products-and-services/trains/tramway-citadis-compact/

And let's not forget the Peterborough-Toronto link; GO Transit's one-size-fits-all double-deckers hauled by stinky, noisy deisels are dépassés...

http://www.alstom.com/transport/products-and-services/trains/regional-train-coradia/

From: Paul (tramquebec@...) Sent: February-11-14

what a wonderful thing to see streetcar tracks being laid in the 21st century. What silly pretexts people find to oppose this. what are they thinking?

From: Paul (tramquebec@...) Sent: February-18-14

Subject: Comparison...

Report from Calgary... and from Atlanta...

Who's behind the consistently negative news about streetcars and light rail in Harperland?

From: Paul (tramquebec@...) Sent: February-18-14 “Will Toronto ever be a great city? Will any city in Canada ever put transit ahead of automobiles? Does anyone even care anymore?" Until Toronto learns to put transit first, it will never be a great city.

From: Paul (tramquebec@...) Sent: February-19-14

Planning for a future with more (rail-based) transit. Note that in Europe, trams can hop on and off a regular passenger and freight railway line for intercity travel; no need to change modes or build duplicate infrastructure. Rails are rails...

From: Paul (tramquebec@...) Sent: February-19-14

Planning for a (different) future. Cities that aren't doing this don't have one...

From: Paul (tramquebec@...) Sent: February-19-14

Planning for a different future... (Houston)

vs. inability to conceive of a different future... (Kitchener-Waterloo)

From: Paul (tramquebec@...) Sent: February-19-14

Meanwhile, if Mississauga had a sane city as its neighbour to the east, this would link up with the Eglinton light rail via Pearson Airport. Hurontario-Main LRT Project Moves Ahead

From: Paul (tramquebec@...) Sent: February-21-14

The agency tasked with revitalizing Toronto’s waterfront says the 2.4-km section of the Gardiner Expressway east of Jarvis should be replaced by an 8-lane boulevard.

"And while they're at it, make the Gardiner redundant by electrifying GO and tripling frequency with flexible, self-propelled railcars in trains of variable length..."

From: Paul (tramquebec@...) Sent: February-22-14

How to create a permanent public transportation infrastructure (see slideshow)...

From: Paul (tramquebec@...) Sent: February-22-14

Subject: Road collapse leaves 8-metre wide sinkhole at tunneling site - Ottawa - CBC News

Hi,

People seriously unaware of the basic concept try to put STREETcars UNDER the street. HAha... sigh...

March 2014
From: Paul (tramquebec@...) Sent: March-11-14

And why use an old file photo of a Toronto streetcar to illustrate a rather banal tram accident (although tram accidents are so rare as to be anything but banal) in Rotterdam, during what is a period of such manufactured tension? Distraction?

back to Peterborough

back to Quebec City