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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Meddle]

Put the little Choo-Choo out at Greenfield Village with the other one, or maybe on Belle Isle and give the streets back to the cars.

[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

[casscorridor]

All the problem were foreseen by many of us on DYes, and many others. Dan Gilbert and co selfishly ignored experts and dictated the line be built to their liking.

However, it's not too late to improve the line. Beyond the obvious problems such as its faulty payment system and inaccurate real-time arrivals, a Woodward road diet would be a first step, giving the streetcar its own lane. This would have the added benefit of making Woodward more pedestrian friendly, which in itself could be a boost to both businesses and ridership.

[DetroitGuy423]

However, it's not too late to improve the line. Beyond the obvious problems such as its faulty payment system and inaccurate real-time arrivals, a Woodward road diet would be a first step, giving the streetcar its own lane. This would have the added benefit of making Woodward more pedestrian friendly, which in itself could be a boost to both businesses and ridership.

Agree with this 100%. Give it a dedicated, restricted lane along with the DDOT and Smart busses and most of these problems will go away. Also gives Woodward a road diet and calms traffic.

This article is full of anecdotes. The RTA millage did not fail because of the Q-Line. It failed because of Macomb voters and Northern Oakland County voters that didn't want a tax increase because they didn't see a benefit in regional transit to them. Plus this line has what like 10-years of private money to figure all of this stuff out with the goal of Midtown being built up with new residential developments that will increase ridership.

It's 2 years in, so all of this chatter about writing its obituary is over the top.

[poobert]

All the problem were foreseen by many of us on DYes, and many others. Dan Gilbert and co selfishly ignored experts and dictated the line be built to their liking.

It's a parking shuttle for him. His slaves have to park in far-flung areas and then work 12 hour days 6 to 7 days per week. So I think he's got what he wanted, for all he cares.

[dtowncitylover]

It's a parking shuttle for him. His slaves have to park in far-flung areas and then work 12 hour days 6 to 7 days per week. So I think he's got what he wanted, for all he cares.

Except it's not. Probably a few employees use it. But there's literal shuttles all over downtown. I seriously wish they'd be banned or limited. People need to learn how to walk or take transit.

[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.

[Pat001]

Urban planners have a saying about light rail: They call it "The gift that keeps on taking." That's because when ridership fails to meet projections, taxpayers get stuck paying for operation and maintenance costs for decades to come.