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use traffic to build up behind it just like home but those cars are faster than the streetcar they ll get where they re going sooner than anyone on foot will anyway probably once you re on the streetcar it s very difficult to get lost you can t stay on it indefinitely though since all riders are required to alight at the union station terminus but nothing stops you from getting right back on opportunities for connections are limited but they do exist the max bus rapid transit system which replicates some of kansas city s former streetcar lines has stops near the line and the 10th main transit center permits transfers to some of ridekc s regular bus routes streetcar service is a bit limited though since they don t have many streetcars to go around on a day like today saturday august 27 when one streetcar is out of service they can t run service frequencies better than 10 15 minutes during my first experiences with the system found it somewhat empty but that may be because kansas city isn t yet a public transit all the time city like toronto is i ve seen reports that the kc streetcar is already exceeding its passenger projections and my experience at 3 40 pm on a saturday bears that out from metro center to union station it was standing room only all the way and even more people boarded there for a trip back north fortunately the streetcars have articulated sections much like the alrvs and toronto rockets i m familiar with so there was always a good place to stand stations library station on a weekday morning my first impression of kansas city s public transportation system in the form of an hourly bus that left from an unshaded shelter on a concrete median outside terminal c of kansas city international airport wasn t exactly the best some of the stops the bus passed during its forty minute trip downtown stuck strongly in my mind because of how unstoplike they were just a pole signed metro stop with a route number a phone number and a website no shelter no bench not even a square of sidewalk if you re talking about barrie ontario circa 1991 that s one thing but it s pretty thin provender for 2016 kansas city with that in mind i wasn t expecting much from the streetcar what i found is that its stations feel like a strange middle ground to me they re not quite stations but they re more than just stops the ones that aren t in their own medians are smoothly integrated into the sidewalk designed so that they re on the same level as a streetcar to allow step free access and built around a central t shaped shelter i say shelter because there s no better word but with no walls and a fairly small roof the shelter that many of them is theoretical at best while waiting at kauffman center during a heavy rainstorm i had to stand on the far side off the actual platform to keep from getting drenched by passing cars that s irritating enough in august but kansas city isn t los angeles or houston or miami for now at least it still gets cold in missouri and snow does fall these stations don t have windbreaks i wouldn t want to be waiting at one during a snowstorm or even just a cold and windy day sure if service was frequent there might be a tradeoff but there are plenty of times where you ll be waiting ten minutes or more for a streetcar to roll by on the whole there s not much eye catching about these stations many of them don t even have advertisements they re each equipped with screens that count down until the next streetcar arrival and have posted streetcar route maps and hours of operation there are bits of public art scattered here and there the one that most caught my eye was a model perched on top of the union station shelter at once a streetcar and automobile and jetliner one would think the wings would make it a bit difficult to run something like that on the streets equipment a closer look at the trailing end of streetcar 802 as you d expect for a 21st century streetcar system the kc streetcar has hit the ground running with modern equipment it provides service with four count em caf urbos 3 model 100 streetcars on their first north american appearance though cincinnati will use them as well and they re already in service in edinburgh belgrade and multiple french and spanish networks they have that clean streamlined european design to them with all the vital equipment hidden away from riders eyes it s almost as if they re whispering along on a cushion of air i do mean whispering too these cars are quiet coming from toronto i m used for the 1970s era clrvs to make my organs rattle whenever i m sitting in a building next to the line in kansas city it took me a while to realize that streetcars were going by and i wasn t even noticing the streetcars are three module articulated vehicles rather like the new flexity outlooks running in toronto but a bit smaller they re about 24 meters long with a rated capacity of 148 when everyone s squeezed in they re numbered 801 to 804 because this is officially the continuation of kansas city s previous streetcar system and the earlier numbers had been used already it puts the smallness of the kc streetcar into perspective though as i wrote this at 12 49 on a saturday morning there were more than four streetcars running on toronto s 509 harbourfront line and it s the shortest one on the system i found the streetcar interiors pretty spartan and i m not sure if this is a permanent thing or just an artifact of the system being so new except for the external sprint wi fi logo on the cars middle modules which also advertises the free wireless access that s been implemented along the line and will eventually be activated aboard the streetcars themselves there are no ads there was the code of conduct posting there to educate kansas citians on how to use their new ride though rules like no smoking or eating and please let people off before you board and do not bring weapons onto the streetcar because that is something that actually has to be spelled out where everyone can see it in the united states the streetcars have a few tricks i wasn t expecting either digitized bells aren t anything unusual bells and streetcars have gone together for more than a hundred years but kansas citians haven t needed to look out for streetcars since 1957 so when necessary the streetcars can sound more like oncoming freight trains that gets attention it made me jump the first time i heard it ease of access and ease of use looking toward the unoccupied control cab in the trailing end of streetcar 803 the kc streetcar is the easiest system i ve ever used for two reasons physically speaking the no step streetcar access makes it a breeze to board and for all other respects it s free absolutely 100 no charge to the people who riding it which is probably a big factor in why it s gone so far beyond its ridership projections already admittedly that s a good way to get people thinking good things in what may be their first experience with fixed infrastructure transit there s plenty of room to move around inside and there are priority seats and wheelchair friendly spaces as you d expect for modern equipment but it s honestly not that comfortable not that comfort is that much of a problem considering how quickly one of these streetcars can do a circuit besides with the articulated sections and the hanging straps there are plenty of places to stand if you can the stop request buttons were a little different than i m used to but i can live with that they re only mounted on poles which means that every once in a while they re horizontal what threw me about them was that it wasn t easy to tell whether or not they worked once i pressed them i m used to a stop request button sounding a tone immediately but the kc streetcar looks to have gone with waiting until the automated stop announcement has been made for the next station before sounding the request noise i figure it s the request noise at least because i didn t hear it all the time the only consistent one sounded more like the sweet cuppin cakes version of strong bad since the system is so new and there aren t that many in the area st louis metrolink clear on the other side of missouri is the closest rider education looks to be one of the agency s big priorities still it was a bit surprising when before departing union station the streetcar operator spoke to everyone aboard the streetcar giving a brief overview on how to ride even if it made it seem more like a theme park ride than a legitimate piece of public transportation infrastructure it was a welcome thing conclusion kc streetcar 801 look at all its majesty one of the big factors in early 20th century urban development was the streetcar suburb a neighbourhood opened up by a newly built or expanded streetcar line feeding into the central city hell a lot of them were built by streetcar companies to ensure future business since they were designed with the expectation that people would be making their way on foot when they weren t riding the rails these neighbourhoods are human scaled and many remain prosperous today hell in toronto most of them still have their streetcars what kansas city is trying to do feels like a 21st century inversion of this using a streetcar to rebuild a downtown and why not it s worked elsewhere when i talked about hollow cities at the beginning of this piece i was thinking specifically of kansas city a downtown doesn t feel right when it s got so many empty buildings when it s littered with parking lots when street life seems confined to a mere strip rather than something that spreads through the whole it s not that surprising though look at a map downtown kc has the look of a psychological island surrounded by the river and the highways and those highways weren t built on empty land there are big rips in the urban fabric there but the streetcar might be the thing to sew them together again whether the streetcar s expansion plans reach fruition or whether it never goes any further than this that s always the struggle isn t it previous tunnel visions the docklands light railway the detroit people mover seattle s link light rail portland s max light rail the seattle center monorail bay area rapid transit san francisco s muni metro phoenix s metro light rail the kenosha electric railway vancouver s skytrain the toronto subway and rt the los angeles county metro rail the chicago l the montreal metro posted by phoebe barton at 13 02 no comments labels streetcars transit tunnel visions usa monday august 22 2016 things you should totally read 1 recently i realized that i was only reviewing things so that i could criticize them not only is that unhelpful seeing as how a lot of these things are works of short science fiction older than i am it s unhealthy constantly seeking out things you don t like only has negative effects psychologically and physiologically so in the spirit of being more helpful and more healthy i ve been inspired to start out this irregular series looking at current bits of fiction that i think are good and worth your time my own bits will be brief because i d rather you spend your time with the authors onward of peach trees and coral red roses by mina li i m not too familiar with li s work in fact this was the first thing of hers i d read but when she brings skill like this to the page i m certain it won t be the last this is a fantasy story that i felt did a thought provoking job at not only inverting the typical fairy tale princess setup but weaving deeper meanings into it i don t know if they were intended by li or it s just a result of me bringing myself to the table but good stories aren t inert they start internal conversations of peach trees and coral red roses had my brain chugging for a while afterward so it s successful in that regard plus i know things i didn t know before like the notions of good fortune associated with peach trees and bamboo it s a worthwhile story that broadens your horizons and this is one of them it s free to read at kaleidotrope so i suggest you do it the last by premee mohamed when i was in high school in central ontario they made us read canlit so much canlit stories about people in the cold north woods in the windswept prairies in the frozen arctic people alone and struggling with the angry environment at every turn if i d had stories to read like premee mohamed s the last i would have enjoyed it a lot more this story is so very canadian drippingly meltingly so i mean it is a story about cowboys that wrangle sentient icebergs i read this on my smartphone browser and couldn t put it down it has a fine polished edge and a cold heart much like an iceberg in fact this will definitely be on my aurora nomination list for next year because it is that good mohamed is another author i expect to go far in the years ahead runtime by s b divya finally people are realizing that novellas can stand on their own runtime is one of the first standalone novellas to come out of tor com publishing and in the low word count constraints of the form s b divya has created a future that feels real alternatively gleaming and grimy hopeful and hopeless it pivots around marmeg an eighteen year old cyborg who upgrades herself with rebuilt parts rescued from behind dumpsters and can write fresh code in minutes and her struggle to win a punishing rough country footrace it s rich with the technical crunchiness that you might expect from an analog story coupled with a good human core the characters were well built and the world felt like a logical extension of the present day rather than a logical extension of say 1977 i read this one as a physical printed copy and i suspect that heightened my like of it even more but read it however you want to this one is definitely in the running for a hugo and it ll be on my nominating list next year posted by phoebe barton at 15 52 no comments labels fantasy review science fiction newer posts older posts home subscribe to posts atom about the sophont what writes here phoebe barton hamilton ontario canada giant queer trans sf game writer typewriter guardian transit enthusiast mind poisoner view my complete profile search this weblog posts that have come before 2018 1 january 1 2017 4 december 1 november 1 september 1 march 1 2016 6 august 2 tunnel visions the kc streetcar things you should totally read 1 june 2 april 1 february 1 2015 5 june 1 april 1 march 2 january 1 2014 23 december 1 november 1 october 1 september 3 august 1 july 1 may 2 april 2 march 2 february 4 january 5 2013 66 december 1 november 2 september 7 august 11 july 14 june 10 may 18 april 3 2012 263 october 5 september 14 august 31 july 31 june 30 may 31 april 30 march 31 february 29 january 31 2011 365 december 31 november 30 october 31 september 30 august 31 july 31 june 30 may 31 april 30 march 31 february 28 january 31 2010 365 december 31 november 30 october 31 september 30 august 31 july 31 june 30 may 31 april 30 march 31 february 28 january 31 2009 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