Two years in, Detroit’s QLine falls far short of expectations

[313WX]

https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/t...HomeTopFeature

[401don]

They wanted curbside and they got it.

[Junjie]

They wanted curbside and they got it.

Yep. Shocker. Poor service generates low ridership.

Extensions with dedicated right of way would help. But the fundamental problem of running in mixed traffic through downtown is baked in at this point

[Danny]

Oh Oh! Gilbert, you better do something about your choo choo trains. Or your investors will be pounding at your door with lawsuits galore.

[dtowncitylover]

My surprised face. -_-

[Scottathew]

I've used the system about once a week. Here are the issues:

- Track obstructions or train issues cause the entire system to come to a halt
- Trains compete with car traffic and have to stop at all the traffic lights
- For short trips, walking is often faster
- For medium range trips, biking is faster
- For nearly all trips, taking the DDOT 4 or the SMART 461/462 is faster
- The in-station technology does not accurately predict train arrival [[this is something SMART does really well in some of its new bus shelters, example 9\Woodward)
- The fare boxes don't work half the time, which denies paying riders a bus transfer, which results in an increased cost of $1.75 when they transfer to a bus
- The service area is too small

Rail doesn't make sense unless you grade separate it or give it dedicated roadway with signal prioritization. It would have been much better if business leaders worked with DDOT and SMART to implement BRT with the follow characteristics:
- Dedicated right of way
- Signal prioritization
- Center of road\median platforms
- Pay on the platform [[not the bus)
- Service from the river to Pontiac
- Super-frequent service

All of that could have been accomplished for less than the small stretch of qLine that we have.

[detmsp]

There's also way too many stops. Cutting the number of stops in half would speed things up quite a bit.

[DetroitSoldier]

I ride it frequently and have never had a bad experience. I think once we waited 5 minutes for a car blocking the tracks. Thats about it. While it is not perfect, it is convenient and affordable.

I ride from downtown to the VA hospital or from Wayne State to work downtown. Sure it is not as convenient as the 53 bus. But if it makes suburban riders and tourists feel better, then Im all for it. The fixed nature of a train gives new riders confidence because they can see where it is going, compared to busses that are quite confusing for many. Its not my opinion, but it is one i hear often in my line of work.

[Atticus]

They wanted curbside and they got it.

Exactly. Classic case of the business owner thinking “I know better than the experts”.

Back in the design phase, the planners and MDOT engineers told them to build it with a median running operation, but the business owners thought “they knew better”, and needed curbside. The businesses had the money and political influence, so they got their way. And look how it ended up.

[O3H]

An example of cars and public transit mixing nicely together

[K-slice]

Steve Neavling has been on an anti-streetcar mission since the first day it was proposed. This piece is, like most of his articles on the subject, mostly his personal opinions supported by anecdotes and not much else.

I frequently rode the Q line to commute over the least year and my experience was mostly positive. Like all transit there will be delays and issues with the vehicles, but most rides were smooth and quick enough.

There is certainly more work to be done though. Dedicating lanes permanently around LCA would be a good start, as would better marking the tracks as no parking areas and eliminating some of the problematic street parking on Woodward.

To be successful long term though an extension is what's needed. Dedicated lanes all the way to 8 mile and another line down Michigan and Jefferson. Opening up those corridors would make the line infinitely more useful and spur further economic development.

[JonWylie]

Steve Neavling has been on an anti-streetcar mission since the first day it was proposed. This piece is, like most of his articles on the subject, mostly his personal opinions supported by anecdotes and not much else.

I frequently rode the Q line to commute over the least year and my experience was mostly positive. Like all transit there will be delays and issues with the vehicles, but most rides were smooth and quick enough.

There is certainly more work to be done though. Dedicating lanes permanently around LCA would be a good start, as would better marking the tracks as no parking areas and eliminating some of the problematic street parking on Woodward.

To be successful long term though an extension is what's needed. Dedicated lanes all the way to 8 mile and another line down Michigan and Jefferson. Opening up those corridors would make the line infinitely more useful and spur further economic development.

Yeah just marking off the lane would be a good start. The much larger issue than the lane placement is the number of streetlights on Woodward. The Qline has to wait at dozens of streetlights in just 3 miles. Figuring that out would cut time down substantially.

[313WX]

Regardless of whatever type of way one feels about the author of the article, the bullet points they listed about the Q-Line can't be disputed:

• Ridership has reached record lows, falling far short of expectations.

• The cost to operate the streetcar has ballooned, and the QLine is recovering less than 10 percent of its expenses from fares.
• The streetcars are often delayed, blocked by illegally parked cars, emergency vehicles, car crashes, snarled traffic, delivery trucks, and roadwork.
• QLine leaders made a number of exaggerated claims and have not yet succeeded in connecting the streetcars with buses or other regional transit as promised.
• The QLine is much slower than advertised, averaging 8.3 mph.
• One of the main reasons voters and suburban leaders are rejecting a new regional transit system is because they don't want to subsidize the QLine as part of it.
• Streetcar operators told us they're frequently overworked, exhausted, and denied lunch breaks.
• The streetcars were involved in 46 accidents from 2017 to 2018.

[Canadian Visitor]

I'm no expert on local Detroit transit.

But I do have a couple of comments here as someone who lives in the North American city with the most streetcars, and road-based lrt.

First, don't conflate issues.

Toronto has side-running, of a form, on 2 lines.

On Queen's Quay on Toronto's Waterfront, the LRT operates on an exclusive ROW on the south side of the road, between the pedestrian/cycling space and the roadway.

It mostly works well, except for periodic idiot who drives on the tracks, and sometimes into the tunnel too.

But, it is in an exclusive ROW.

However, Toronto also has Roncesvalles which operates as a mixed-traffic line, more or less curbside on the east side of the street.

More or less in that at stops, the curb occupies the right-hand lane and becomes a streetcar station, but in-between stations, parking is permitted to the inside or right of the tracks.

There are tons of different design options, all with pluses and minuses.

Full grade separation [[not subject to traffic lights) is very expensive. Don't expect private interests to cover that.

That doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered, but I don't think that was realistic for Q Line.

There are other design choices. Calgary's C-Train has an exclusive ROW at grade w/roads, w/grade-level crossings. But uses railway crossing type signals and barriers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMgApTbrOAM

More separation and priority is certainly helpful to a successful service, but it can be made to work with less of those, provided you have really good frequency.

[Honky Tonk]

The good news is in 12 short years this albatross goes around the CODs neck.

[Bigdd]

The good news is in 12 short years this albatross goes around the CODs neck.

AND,.... costing 11 TIMES as much as buses,.... and being far less flexible [[in avoiding stalled / parked cars, or detouring to a new hot-spot like a casino or a mall),... the COD will have little choice but to scrap / sell the street cars and pave over the rails,... just like we did in the mid 1950's.

Perhaps then,.. with the Q-Line scrapped, [[and perhaps Detroit further along a come-back).. the other counties will finally be willing to enter into a regional transit scheme.

[JBMcB]

I rode the Q-Line for the first time last Saturday. After taking the kids to a DSO children's series concert, we took it downtown for lunch.

The ride downtown was pretty busy, but the train was almost empty on the ride back to midtown. Downtown in general seemed to be less busy than I would have expected, especially with a Tigers game that afternoon. Even with the somewhat low ridership, they were running quite a few trains, and we never had to wait more than a few minutes at a station.

The main issue I see with the Q-line is the noise. Something in the wheel/motor compartment was vibrating something fierce, and it was causing the whole side of the train to vibrate as well. At full speed you had to raise your voice quite a bit to talk to the person sitting next to you. This happened on both trains we took, though it was worse one of them. This is *not good* Something is seriously wrong with the motors or wheels.

[JonWylie]

I rode the Q-Line for the first time last Saturday. After taking the kids to a DSO children's series concert, we took it downtown for lunch.

The ride downtown was pretty busy, but the train was almost empty on the ride back to midtown. Downtown in general seemed to be less busy than I would have expected, especially with a Tigers game that afternoon. Even with the somewhat low ridership, they were running quite a few trains, and we never had to wait more than a few minutes at a station.

The main issue I see with the Q-line is the noise. Something in the wheel/motor compartment was vibrating something fierce, and it was causing the whole side of the train to vibrate as well. At full speed you had to raise your voice quite a bit to talk to the person sitting next to you. This happened on both trains we took, though it was worse one of them. This is *not good* Something is seriously wrong with the motors or wheels.

I think they really need to clean out the tracks. There is so much debris in them that is probably causing a lot of noise and vibration

[Zacha341]

Where did you park your car? Is there a lot nearby at the New Center end?

I rode the Q-Line for the first time last Saturday. After taking the kids to a DSO children's series concert, we took it downtown for lunch....

[dtowncitylover]

Where did you park your car? Is there a lot nearby at the New Center end?

There's multiple side streets that have free parking available.

[LongGone06]

the COD will have little choice but to scrap / sell the street cars and pave over the rails,... just like we did in the mid 1950's.

Had to be in New York for business last week. Took the Air Train from JFK to Howard Beach and switched to the A train, which took me directly to downtown Brooklyn. By far the best way to navigate that city. Thankfully, they did not adopt the pave over/use buses mentality in the 1950's.

[Bigdd]

Had to be in New York for business last week. Took the Air Train from JFK to Howard Beach and switched to the A train, which took me directly to downtown Brooklyn. By far the best way to navigate that city. Thankfully, they did not adopt the pave over/use buses mentality in the 1950's.

Sure,.. and when I'm in DC I use the subway almost exclusively. And when in Shanghai,.. the mag-lev is AMAZING for getting to the airport in 8 min [[at 270 mph) in luxury,.. instead of creeping through gridlock traffic for 45 in the back of a cab.

BUT,.. those actually go from someplace where people ARE, to where they want to be,.. and they do it faster than the alternatives.

The Q-Line doesn't do either those things. It's really just a place for downtown employees to expand their lunch circle. They still had to drive or take a bus to get to work.

[Honky Tonk]

Sure,.. and when I'm in DC I use the subway almost exclusively. And when in Shanghai,.. the mag-lev is AMAZING for getting to the airport in 8 min [[at 270 mph) in luxury,.. instead of creeping through gridlock traffic for 45 in the back of a cab.

BUT,.. those actually go from someplace where people ARE, to where they want to be,.. and they do it faster than the alternatives.

The Q-Line doesn't do either those things. It's really just a place for downtown employees to expand their lunch circle. They still had to drive or take a bus to get to work.

I remember when I used to go to Montreal riding the subways to get to where I was going. People there couldn't understand why I was so geeked out over owning a car. But their system actually worked. Remember the Detroit trolleys? You're not going to get the Blight Rail to work running it in traffic no matter what you do, curbside, median, whatever. Cut down stops? You cut down usage. Run lights? You can't even be serious with that one. Close off Woodward? You've closed off a percentage of outside [[read 'burbs) money coming in. About the only thing that's still working as planned is the People Remover.

[JBMcB]

BUT,.. those actually go from someplace where people ARE, to where they want to be,.. and they do it faster than the alternatives.

The Q-Line doesn't do either those things. It's really just a place for downtown employees to expand their lunch circle. They still had to drive or take a bus to get to work.

To be fair, it's also used by WSU students and people who live in midtown to get downtown. However, compared to airport or daily commute traffic, that's a relatively small number of people.

[iheartthed]

Sure,.. and when I'm in DC I use the subway almost exclusively. And when in Shanghai,.. the mag-lev is AMAZING for getting to the airport in 8 min [[at 270 mph) in luxury,.. instead of creeping through gridlock traffic for 45 in the back of a cab.

BUT,.. those actually go from someplace where people ARE, to where they want to be,.. and they do it faster than the alternatives.

The Q-Line doesn't do either those things. It's really just a place for downtown employees to expand their lunch circle. They still had to drive or take a bus to get to work.

Actually, the NYC subway line was the catalyst for development in many of the city's neighborhoods. You could argue that the Q Line is doing the same. For the first time in a century there are high rises being developed north of Mack Avenue.