While I appreciate the aesthetic pleasantry of streetcars, I hate pretty much everything else about them. From the jerky, lurching ride to the simply terrible on time performance records, there’s a lot not to love. Quite frankly I can not imagine a worse form of transportation (except perhaps harnessing a team of blind monkeys to pull me down the street on a sled).
Streetcars are eternally getting stuck in traffic, so then they get all bunched up, which means there are more people waiting for the next car, it takes longer to load all the people who’ve been waiting, then the cars get slowed down even more, then there’s even more people waiting, even longer loading; it’s a ridiculous cycle of inefficiency.
It also drives me crazy that when stopped behind traffic at a red light, streetcars have to wait for the light to turn green, then move ahead the few meters to the stop to let people on/off, and by the time everyone is on the light has gone back to red. It would be so much better if the streetcar stop was after the intersection (I know that’s never going to happen because of traffic-flow issues, but it would improve the passenger experience by, oh, a million-billion times). I once waited at Yonge Street on the Dundas car while the light cycled through three times waiting for everyone to get on; the light changed back to red, then more people came off the subway and the light change back to red again, then more people came again!! Aaaargh!
I live for the day when I no longer have to deal with the crowded-front/empty-back and every other obnoxious hassle that is TTC streetcars.
Oh yeah, and it costs almost three dollars to ride!
Streetcars: Ask anyone, I’m the biggest advocate of public transit there is; if it were up to me, private cars would be illegal. But my love affair ended the minute I had to depend on you everyday to get to work. You are ineffective and inefficient. There’s no real hope for change, you are officially “Dead to Me.”
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(Please note, none of the above applies to the Spadina streetcar, which by virtue of having its own right-of-way, is actually fantastic. All streetcars should have their own right-of-way, but they don’t, so they suck).