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In transit heaven, the trams rule
Equipped with flat-screen TVs, they arrive on time
PETER KUITENBROUWER
National Post
Thursday, January 18, 2007
For a visitor from Toronto, a ride on a streetcar in Amsterdam (called a tram here) is like dying and going to transit heaven. An electric sign on the platform says the No. 14 will appear at 12:20 p.m. At 12:20, the streetcar -- one of the city's new low-floor models, with plush seats and flat-screen TV -- smoothes to a stop.
We embark on a winding glide through the narrow streets of the historic city, on our own right-of-way: Where we join traffic, no car may pass us or block us. Our streetcar trips the lights green. I change to the No. 12, which pulls up to the same platform after the 14 slides away.
Along with reconnecting with my Dutch roots, I am in Holland (my ticket and hotel paid for by the Netherlands Tourism Bureau) to see whether their streetcars run better than ours. Toronto's electric street railway predates Amsterdam's; ours began in 1892, theirs in 1900. The systems have a lot in common today: We have 196 streetcars, they have 222. We have 150 km of double track for streetcars, they have 200 km. Like Toronto's red streetcars, Amsterdam's blue trams navigate sharp turns in the city centre. Both cities are committed to the future of streetcars.
In terms of service, the two systems could not be more different. Amsterdam's streetcars arrive and depart on schedule. Ours hunt in packs; none come, and then in half an hour six arrive.
So how come their system works? Because, in Amsterdam, the streetcar comes before the car. City administrations have for a century favoured transit, bicycles and pedestrians over passenger automobiles.
Is this lesson applicable in Toronto? Like many in this town, I own an car. Our family ride bikes and transit, but when we go shopping (or to my daughter's gymnastics class) it is easier to drive. It's a lot colder in southern Ontario than Holland, too.
To copy Amsterdam, we have to do what the TTC is doing on 6.7 kilometres of St. Clair Avenue West: take a lane for streetcars only. In Amsterdam, though, such a design would include just one lane for cars and a bike path in either direction.
We would have to switch our priorities, too, and spend tax dollars on transit rather than parking garages and highways. Amsterdam, which gets lots more public money for transit than Toronto, only needs to get 35% of operating costs from the fare box, compared with the 78.5% of operating costs that the TTC extracts from its poor riders' hides.
The infusion of cash explains Amsterdam's 155 shiny new Siemens streetcars, worth $2.5-million each (although Amsterdam had to send every one back to Germany for an eight-week rebuild, to make them more resilient). Also, much of Amsterdam is a construction site in a Herculian effort to punch a new subway line under the canals and through the city centre.
In the past, Amsterdam saw transit as a social service: No one checked your ticket. "You were a fool when you paid for the public transport," agrees Hans van den Berg, spokesman for the transit system, the GVB.
These days, it's the opposite: on Tram 14, the conductor, who sits near the rear (there is a driver, too) studies my GVB 72-Uurskaart, which permits travel for 72 hours. He shrugs.
"Three days," he says. "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is three days. Today is Thursday."
I pay the equivalent of $2.40. Later, I realize he was wrong. When I first used the card, the conductor stamped it Monday 1:15 p.m.; Thursday at 12:20 the pass is still valid for almost an hour.
At any rate, the conductor has made the point: Pay up! This is no social service. Gertjan Kroon, managing director of the GVB, recently told Eurotransport Magazine his system "has to be privatized."
As I lie in bed at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky, addled by time change and unable to sleep, I have this fantasy. No, not about the red-lit women in underwear in the windows on the Oude Zijds Voorburgwal. In my dream, Toronto Mayor David Miller announces: "No car in Toronto may pass a streetcar, whether it is stationary or moving."
Price? Not one cent! Would motorists freak out? Yes! But the streetcars would move. And people would ride them.
"You have to organize something in the traffic," Mr. van den Berg tells me. "It's all about the expectation. You have to manage the expectation of the traveller. If you promise someone that the tram is going to come every 10 minutes, it should come every 10 minutes. People get frustrated when the tram doesn't arrive when you say it will." Amen to that.
In transit heaven, the trams rule
Equipped with flat-screen TVs, they arrive on time
PETER KUITENBROUWER
National Post
Thursday, January 18, 2007
For a visitor from Toronto, a ride on a streetcar in Amsterdam (called a tram here) is like dying and going to transit heaven. An electric sign on the platform says the No. 14 will appear at 12:20 p.m. At 12:20, the streetcar -- one of the city's new low-floor models, with plush seats and flat-screen TV -- smoothes to a stop.
We embark on a winding glide through the narrow streets of the historic city, on our own right-of-way: Where we join traffic, no car may pass us or block us. Our streetcar trips the lights green. I change to the No. 12, which pulls up to the same platform after the 14 slides away.
Along with reconnecting with my Dutch roots, I am in Holland (my ticket and hotel paid for by the Netherlands Tourism Bureau) to see whether their streetcars run better than ours. Toronto's electric street railway predates Amsterdam's; ours began in 1892, theirs in 1900. The systems have a lot in common today: We have 196 streetcars, they have 222. We have 150 km of double track for streetcars, they have 200 km. Like Toronto's red streetcars, Amsterdam's blue trams navigate sharp turns in the city centre. Both cities are committed to the future of streetcars.
In terms of service, the two systems could not be more different. Amsterdam's streetcars arrive and depart on schedule. Ours hunt in packs; none come, and then in half an hour six arrive.
So how come their system works? Because, in Amsterdam, the streetcar comes before the car. City administrations have for a century favoured transit, bicycles and pedestrians over passenger automobiles.
Is this lesson applicable in Toronto? Like many in this town, I own an car. Our family ride bikes and transit, but when we go shopping (or to my daughter's gymnastics class) it is easier to drive. It's a lot colder in southern Ontario than Holland, too.
To copy Amsterdam, we have to do what the TTC is doing on 6.7 kilometres of St. Clair Avenue West: take a lane for streetcars only. In Amsterdam, though, such a design would include just one lane for cars and a bike path in either direction.
We would have to switch our priorities, too, and spend tax dollars on transit rather than parking garages and highways. Amsterdam, which gets lots more public money for transit than Toronto, only needs to get 35% of operating costs from the fare box, compared with the 78.5% of operating costs that the TTC extracts from its poor riders' hides.
The infusion of cash explains Amsterdam's 155 shiny new Siemens streetcars, worth $2.5-million each (although Amsterdam had to send every one back to Germany for an eight-week rebuild, to make them more resilient). Also, much of Amsterdam is a construction site in a Herculian effort to punch a new subway line under the canals and through the city centre.
In the past, Amsterdam saw transit as a social service: No one checked your ticket. "You were a fool when you paid for the public transport," agrees Hans van den Berg, spokesman for the transit system, the GVB.
These days, it's the opposite: on Tram 14, the conductor, who sits near the rear (there is a driver, too) studies my GVB 72-Uurskaart, which permits travel for 72 hours. He shrugs.
"Three days," he says. "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is three days. Today is Thursday."
I pay the equivalent of $2.40. Later, I realize he was wrong. When I first used the card, the conductor stamped it Monday 1:15 p.m.; Thursday at 12:20 the pass is still valid for almost an hour.
At any rate, the conductor has made the point: Pay up! This is no social service. Gertjan Kroon, managing director of the GVB, recently told Eurotransport Magazine his system "has to be privatized."
As I lie in bed at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky, addled by time change and unable to sleep, I have this fantasy. No, not about the red-lit women in underwear in the windows on the Oude Zijds Voorburgwal. In my dream, Toronto Mayor David Miller announces: "No car in Toronto may pass a streetcar, whether it is stationary or moving."
Price? Not one cent! Would motorists freak out? Yes! But the streetcars would move. And people would ride them.
"You have to organize something in the traffic," Mr. van den Berg tells me. "It's all about the expectation. You have to manage the expectation of the traveller. If you promise someone that the tram is going to come every 10 minutes, it should come every 10 minutes. People get frustrated when the tram doesn't arrive when you say it will." Amen to that.