The Milwaukee Streetcar Was Pretty Disappointing
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ต.ค. 2024
- It's nice that it kinda goes places, I guess!
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milwaukee native and transit advocate here: unfortunately our city is incredibly limited in its ability to provide and expand transit. the wisconsin state legislature is incredibly hostile towards milwaukee and have rejected several proposed extensions to the hop, despite backing from the city. honestly, its a miracle that we even have the streetcar at all. still, despite all its limitations, it has pretty solid ridership which only continues to increase as more stuff gets built around it. there's been several skyscrapers built along the route in recent years, including the ascent (which is currently the world's tallest mass timber building) and 333 water street, across from the public market. the extension opening next month will have a stop inside the couture, a new high rise apartment and retail building going up on the lake (that stop will also be right across the street from the summerfest main gate). so, the hop may not be much now, but i'm certainly optomistic for its future
Yeah, its usefulness is basically limited to the places it serves, so it's good that there's a lot of construction around it! Plus the connection to a somewhat useful Amtrak line means there is SOME interfacing with other transit, even if there's no effort to integrate the local buses.
@@MilesinTransit The Hop should become more useful come June 2024. Each year in late June/early July Milwaukee hosts Summerfest, billed as the Nation's Largest Music Festival. Summerfest takes place at permanent festival grounds along the lakefront. The north gate is within a half-mile walk from the Couture building stop on the L Line.
The Amtrak Hiawatha line between Milwaukee and Chicago has very high ridership. Milwaukee is a major stop on the Chicago to Portland/Seattle Empire Builder. A second daily Chicago to Milwaukee to Twin Cities Amtrak train (one in each direction) is being developed and service could start by the end of 2024.
Sounds familiar, the Indiana state legislature is also hostile to Indianapolis. They almost banned bus lanes recently, and they banned rail transit a few years ago.
It's so great that the state legislation can hamstring the project at every turn and the project itself gets blamed
Join belt and road get investors or the Chinese to fund it
Three important additional points of context from a native Milwaukeean:
(1) The reason the new second line exists is because the building it goes under used to be a transit center and they would have had to return a bunch of federal funding if it weren’t used for transit.
(2) part of why it’s so slow & weird is because the state legislature edited a law as it was being planned making Milwaukee the only city in the state that can’t have a power company move its electrical equipment on the company’s dime. Because of how that would balloon cost they had to reroute it up a different street, leading to part of it being battery powered AND introducing a bunch more right turns that slow the whole thing down.
(3) the whole thing is a compromise on a compromise due to the state legislature killing a true light rail line, forcing milwaukee to have to figure it out themselves, only getting federal money back through a lawsuit, and only enough for the small segment that exists now.
it's been huge fight just to get what little exists, so in some ways, it's the most spiteful rail line in the country
Man, that sucks that politics killed the system so much... 😭
The story of this is so frustrating. The money that went to build this was given to Milwaukee by the federal government back in 1991 (yes, nearly three decades before the Hop started running). But anti-transit (and, specifically anti-rail) became a religion in Wisconsin, with all the stories about how building a light rail line connecting Milwaukee and suburban areas would bring “crime” to their areas. Wisconsin, under governor Tommy Thompson (former Amtrak board member, incidentally), made a law prohibiting any public funding going to study or build rail transit, which meant Milwaukee could not provide the local match for the federal funds.
Over the next couple of decades, anti-transit forces whittled away at the bus system (which, as recently as the late 1990s, was one of the best mid-size transit agencies in the country, and now has a fleet 40% smaller than it did in 1999), and the county started siphoning off some of the federal grant money just to prevent a total collapse of the transit network. This triggered a battle between the city (which wanted a rail system) and the county (which wanted the money to pay for its bus system), which then led to the county proposing BRT. Eventually, in the early 2010s, the feds put their foot down, split the remaining money, gave some to the city to build the Hop, and some to the county to build their BRT (which launched last summer as the “Connect,” and has a trip time from downtown to the medical center largely equivalent to that of the bus route it replaced).
The Hop route makes essentially no sense. As you note, the 30 bus runs more frequent, and is faster, and, more importantly, actually connects to places. An extension on the east end up to Brady Street and, eventually, the university would be potentially useful (but they’d have to improve both the speed and the frequency to really achieve that). The Lakefront branch makes even less sense, given that it effectively has no destination that it connects to on the west end (in theory, it’s good to connect to the festival grounds and Discovery World museum on the east end).
Spending millions of dollars just to run something on a short route every 15-20 minutes is just insane.
@@legitimatebusinessman5537 Explain how an anti-transit politician can even be allowed on Amtrak's board. God help the US of A.
@@jacktattersall9457Tommy Thompson was long the state’s biggest proponent of intercity rail before he left office as governor in the early 2000s to serve as Bush’s HHS director. That was until intercity rail too became “unpopular” with Wisconsin Republicans after Scott Walker made it an anti-Obama wedge issue in the 2010s, by which time Thompson was trying to get elected to the US senate
@@legitimatebusinessman5537 Also Scott Walker killed a full fed-funded rail route from Milwaukee to Madison for no reason after the cars were already built. Several family members of mine have to commute to Madison and this could have saved tens of tons of CO2 just for our family. This is the type of anti-Milwaukee and anti-transit legislature that you have to work against in WI.
I live in Milwaukee and this is pretty accurate. Its mostly funded by the Potawatomi tribe/casino which makes it free. The big problem is that if you live anywhere but the small section of downtown you never use it, but hopefully in the future it will go to the airport, miller park, the fiserv or places where people actually live. Milwaukee is a great city if you come back to explore, just not all that great in transit.
Yup the street car was just made to get people to gamble at potawatomi casino, which really sucks, wish it actually took you to more places around the city
The ironic thing is it would be nice if it actually went to the casino 😆
@@packerbrewerbuck wasn't the original plan to have the route end at Potowatomi casino?
@@notkyle6969 I'm not sure. It would have to cross back across the river since it now ends at the Amtrack station
It was useful on a day trip to Milwaukee from Chicago via Hiawatha train. Granted I just rode it to the end of the line because why not. Then rented the bikeshare to ride around on the lake path. The public market was a nice touch to the city.
30 miles south of Milwaukee in Kenosha, WI, there is a heritage streetcar line which runs directly adjacent to the northernmost stop on Chicago's Metra. Its been operating for over 20 years now and just runs a small loop in the downtown area. Most of the cars are old PCC cars from Toronto and they're all painted with different color schemes in honor of a historic North American streetcar line. I think Kenosha is currently the smallest city with a heritage streetcar line in the country. You should come check it out sometime!
I really want to!
Just another scar of Scott Walker’s governorship. Could have been, and was gonna be so much more.
The Potawatomi Hotel & Casino is owned and operated by the Forest County Potawatomi Community tribe. The Potawatomi historically lived around the western Great Lakes and upper Mississippi, though many were forcibly relocated to Kansas and Oklahoma. They are part of a long-term alliance called the Council of Three Fires, with the Ojibwe and Odawa/Ottawa peoples, and a part of the bigger group of culturally-related indigenous peoples called the Anishinaabe that live around the Great Lakes. Nice to see it get ridership and honestly as slow as it is, for a climate like Milwaukee, I'd rather ride that streetcar if I was there in the winter, I can't imagine trying to walk around there in the winter when it's like snowing or raining! And besides the apartments with its extension, the Lakefront station is also close to the Discovery World museum. I hope it continues to expand to create a proper system, one that's fast and frequent, because then this system has potential, especially for more TOD!
My favorite streetcar system of all time is the North Hudson County Railway which originated in the 1860s and lasted until the 1940s. The North Hudson County Railway was a complex streetcar network that connected Journal Square in Jersey City, Hoboken, Weehawken, and Union City. However, a portion of Hudson County is a line of pretty steep cliffs that makes up part of the Hudson Palisades. So how did they get the streetcars down these dangerous cliffs to low-lying Hoboken and Weehawken by the Hudson River? By devising many engineering innovations from a huge and long elevated trestle, viaducts, funicular wagon lifts, and an elevator! Tackling the cliffs this way was an engineering feat, especially for the time. There are still remnants of this streetcar feat, like two former trolley buildings next to the Supremo market on Palisade Ave in Jersey City (one of them is a doctor's office I had to go to...boy do I wish it was still a trolley house), and leftover trolley tracks on Hudson Place in Hoboken next door to Hoboken Terminal.
Those Trolley tracks MIGHT be in danger sadly, with the Hoboken Terminal’s planned massive renovation.
Firstly, I hope one day Miles would do 200km tram network in Krakow. Secondly, I was expecting some Laverne&Shirley references.
I think Miles is too young for Laverne & Shirley refences. 😀
That and Lisbon are among my faves.
Miles should totally ride the Pyongyang trams too
Yup, Brookville Equipment built the BL36PH locomotives for Tri-Rail! Besides Tri-Rail, they've rebuilt PCC streetcars for use on SEPTA's Route 15, and built locomotives used for CTRail and Metro-North Railroad in Connecticut as well as the Staten Island Railway (SIR locomotives are used for work trains and to haul passenger cars in the case of a third-rail outage or clearing snow). But more interestingly, they've built Red Car Trolleys for Disney California Adventure in Anaheim! Yes, the iconic Pacific Electric Red Car Trolley cars live on in a Disney park....kinda. When DCA opened in 2001, the original gate land was called Sunshine Plaza, designed to evoke a sensation as if one were stepping into a California postcard, with California spelt out in big letters, a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge for the monorail, and massive murals depicting CA's mountains. A big metal sunburst stood at the end to reflect solar rays into the area. It even had a replica Western Pacific California Zephyr which housed two restaurants!
But in 2007, an expansion plan for the park was announced, and this included reimagining Sunshine Plaza as Buena Vista Street! Buena Vista Street officially opened in 2012. The big California letters were sent to Sacramento for the state fairgrounds. The Golden Gate Bridge was removed, and the sunburst structure replaced with a recreation of the Carthay Circle Theater, symbolically chosen because it was the theater where Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney's first feature-length animated film, had its world premiere in 1937! The replica California Zephyr was given to the Western Pacific Museum. But more importantly, they added a tramway for the land inspired by the Pacific Electric, although unlike the Pacific Electric, they're battery-operated, so its trolley poles and overhead catenary lines along its route in the land are just there for decoration
Brookville really loves to dip their toes in a ton of different random places, huh?
They did the new incline railway cars in Chattanooga. And other projects for Disney
Such a shame considering (like most other US cities) the network they had. Especially being a more distant satellite of Chicago they had not only the normal array of street cars but also a roster of different Interurbans ferrying people too and from the Windy City and places between.
My personal favorite of these long dead Interurbans is the Electroliner. A pair of streamlined fixed trainsets that traveled hourly between the two cities. It would start at a terminal in the heart of Milwaukee before leaving hourly to Chicago. It would do a bit of street running out of Milwaukee before getting up to 90 MPH on interurban tracks. When it got to Chicago it would switch from trolley poles to third rail power, and go around the Chicago Elevated Loop and head back to Milwaukee.
The Electroliner was SO cool!!
satellite of chicago?
Omaha is building its own streetcar modeled after Milwaukee and Kansas City opening 2027; complete with features such as being within 4 blocks away from the BRT that goes way farther and the 15 bus, which directly serves almost the entire route with the same frequency while going way farther as well.
The Juneau in Jackson/Juneau is named after Solomon Juneau, one of the founding fathers of Milwaukee alongside Byron Kilbourn and George H. Walker. Solomon Juneau's cousin Joseph Juneau founded the city in Alaska. Solomon Juneau was the first of the three to come in 1818 where he founded Juneautown. In competition, Byron established Kilbourntown west of the Milwaukee River, and made sure the roads running toward the river did not join with those on the east side, and this is why there are a large number of angled bridges that still exist in Milwaukee! Kilbourn also distributed maps which only showed Kilbourntown, implying Juneautown did not exist. Walker claimed land to the south of the Milwaukee River where he built a log house in 1834, and this became known as Walker's Point.
When it comes to Milwaukee's original streetcars: In 1860, Milwaukee opened the first line of its original streetcar using horse-drawn streetcars like other cities did. It wasn’t until 1890 when Henry Villard, a New York multi-millionaire, and Henry Clay Payne created a company called the Milwaukee Electric Railway Company. In the first year of operation, the electric system provided 28 million rides, he says. A couple decades later, the number had ballooned to 132 million. It only cost a nickel to ride the original streetcar system and at one point, it boasted of 190 miles of track! Milwaukee's last original streetcar line closed in 1958. Milwaukee also once had an interurban called the Electroliner which connected it with Chicago, designed to operate with high platforms, sharp curves, and narrow clearances of the Chicago Loop, to run at speeds of 80 mph (130 km/h) or more on the North Shore's main line, and to use city streets to downtown Milwaukee!
Locals complain that it doesn't go anywhere and you make a fair point about the bus, but I visited with my wife and two small children last summer and the HOP was extremely convenient for us. Busses can be confusing for tourists, whereas the HOP is fool proof. When we were there it was getting quite a bit of ridership as well. With the addition of the L line and if they can extend up to the convention center/Fiserv it will really be a great service for visitors - especially if it stays free.
If it were a streetcar trying to be light rail then it would be horrible, but I feel like the HOP knows what it is and does its job well.
There's no denying it's pretty useful for tourists staying downtown - but it really should be more frequent given how short it is, and I'm not really sure if we should be investing millions of dollars into short, tourist-oriented transit lines.
@@MilesinTransit as I understand, this initial route was originally designed to encourage ridership of young professionals re populating the central business, entertainment, and lakefront areas towards use of transit. This also explains the new short loop extension to a major development. Serving the Amtrak station was designed to both get people to those interurban trains for daily commutes as well as get travelers visiting Milwaukee to popular places where they could spend money.
A look at the master plan for light rail in Milwaukee suggests that the system could ultimately be quite useful as a core transit system to various neighborhoods which would both be useful to locals as well as visitors, encouraging people to get beyond the center city. Unfortunately, such expansions have been too long held up.
One of the most obvious of these disappointments is evident in what was to be a simple, relatively short, expansion to the convention center just a few blocks north of the terminus by the intermodal Amtrak/Greyhound station. There was a strong effort for that to be ready in time for the covid denied Democratic National Convention four years ago, which was to be held at their convention center. Of course, this year Milwaukee is hosting the Republican National Convention. And attendees (some of whom might even be staying in Illinois and taking Amtrak who would have found the shuttle useful) will still have to skip a few blocks down if they want to jump on the Hop.
The thing is, locals complain that it doesn't go anywhere and then vote for politicians, local and state, that refuse to support any expansion. It can't go anywhere useful if you don't spend the money to make it go anywhere useful!
The biggest problem with the Hop, is as you said, it parallels a more efficient bus route.
Potawatomi casino got a screaming deal to etch their name in the system... 1 year of free paid ridership, for their name to stay there for 10. The street car is currently unfunded, but forced to run because Milwaukee took a huge pile of federal money that they'll have to pay back if they ever stop running it. When Potawatomi's year of free ridership ended, they were supposed to install pay boxes, or get new sponsors, but no one wants to sponsor it, Milwaukee couldn't afford the pay boxes, and the already low ridership would have been devastated if you had to pay to take it instead of the 30. Yet, they keep planning on adding extensions. The apartments on the lake were supposed to be built and open by now, but some sort of scandal kept them as a giant hole in the ground for a long time.
The battery powered section is because that's where really rich land owners managed to fight off the pantograph poles as destroying their property values, forcing the battery section to exist.
In their defense, all the poles do look something atrocious and dated.
To me it seems like this is a line that's an ok foundation in preparation for a much larger trolley network. It's got apartments near it and everything, but it really just doesn't have the frequency to give it that extra kick and make it feel worthwhile. A vanity project seems apt. I'd prefer it be there than not though tbh, at least the infrastructure is built out and the system has plans for expansion. Milwaukee is also getting a solid BRT line in the near future as well, it'll be a cool little network someday if they keep up this pace.
It looks like the three-mile streetcar was built because a federal transportation grant was carved up among road and transit projects, and between the city and the county. The city got $54M, and streetcar infrastructure cost $18M per mile at the time.
One missed opportunity in the video: after the pan came back up, I wanted to see the breakneck pace on a speedometer app. Would it be single-digit?
I visited MKE last summer without a car and didn't take the streetcar once (I know for shame!). I did however take the 30 bus many times, to the Pabst House, Harley-Davidson Museum, even back from the Rave Eagles club one night but whenever I asked Google for the best route, it never suggested the Hop!
"Please, watch your step while boarding or exiting the streetcar".
I've been in Milwaukee for 6 months back in 2019, and The Hop was my only transport from Marshall Street to Marquette. Such a good memory😭
I'd ride it on a bad weather day but it's not something that would make me want to visit Milwaukee again. It's always great to see Nathan. Thanks for sharing!
I am convinced that street cars such as the hop, the Kansas city one and cincinatti one is to get tourist around downtown. No need for actual commuters that is why it can take its time. The hop feels like it is designed for people who take an amtrak to Milwuakee to not have to get on a bus.
Actually, there are quite a bit of commuters that use the HOP, in particular people who work downtown (especially the third ward) that enjoy free transportation vs. paying for the bus. It's also used quite a bit by students and people who go out drinking. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights are quite the interesting riding times.
I drive for Uber and Lyft during those times and often pass empty Hop cars. What is your definition of full or well used?
The Hop is close to the Milwaukee School Of Engineering but doesn't go all the way through. I hope it's being used by students there but am not totally sure.
I AGREE. I can't wait for the day that Milwaukee will have its own commuter rail system as well as perhaps a subway.
my practical experience from living in this city is that you take it when it's there and you don't feel like walking. It's like a transient moving walkway instead of an actual streetcar. When you use it and view it that way it's actually not that bad lol
3:26 I love how the destination blind says “BURNS”. I’m like ‘Yeah, this is a Miles in Transit video, Burns are guaranteed’
It is definitely disappointing, as it could be so much more effective, but I think having streetcars visible is good for Milwaukee. Would like to see the street car at least go to the Fiserv Forum and Bayview neighborhood. An airport extension would be amazing.
Well at least they have a streetcar because most American cities ditched them years ago
building a useless streetcar for aesthetics is basically as bad as not having one
@@cooltwittertag5:38 Nathen said it's pretty well used. So it's not useless, plus you can expand it.
@@trainandmore I suspect the bus would be just as well used, if not more, if it were also free to ride.
@@trainandmoreYou CAN do a lot of things, but most of the cities that implemented these streetcars seem to have no real intentions of larger networks. These things are purely there to claim “we have urban rail transit” and that’s it. Pretty sad and really no better than good articulated buses.
@@bahnspotterEUbut then people would just complain about it being a bus and not a trolley. Boston's Blue Hill Ave planned expansion which appears to have used trolleys at one point in time, but currently and in the future use buses. Or getting rid of the trackless trolleys here for regular buses.
You can't make everyone happy, either people will complain it's not a trolley or people will complain that the trolley is useless.
Will you visit Seattle for the east link starter line opening?
Or even once the complete 2 line opens next year (hopefully)? Besides riding a train across a bridge that has in the past collapsed into the lake will provide a frisson of terror that will make the ride even more thrilling. And there will be the extension to Lynnwood and a new Rapid Ride also open that might be interesting to check out.
I'm planning on waiting for the full thing to open - the starter line doesn't seem all that exciting to me!
@@MilesinTransit fair enough
The extension also serves the Summerfest grounds which are super active through the summer, as well as the Art Museum. Worth the extensjon imo
You should do a video on the atrocious drop of pick up for rideshare and shuttle busses for Summerfest and the RNC. Making everyone go up around and down for pickups and drop offs while competing with the idling shuttles and busses was a real nightmare. And the checkpoints for the RNC can’t take as much as an hour and forty five minutes to traverse. Closing down the whole downtown has been a real pain in the kiester for people living in near Fiserv Forum or the Baird Center.
I used the hop a lot when I went to MSOE. Going to the amtrak station was nice and easy and free! Wish it went to the airport at least.
This is my new favorite channel 😭 I grew up in Milwaukee and lived there my whole life until I recently moved to DC and having to learn how to use public transport here in DC was so hard I felt like an idiot 💀💀
Thank you! Hopefully the learning process was worth it.
Hilarious that it’s sponsored by a casino that’s not on the actual route. I’m wondering if the battery section was to accommodate a NIMBY that complained about a few overhead wires “lowering property values”.
Wow! Cool to see other small streetcar systems. I’ve enjoyed using cincinnatis small loop a lot, it’s been pretty fast and gets signal priority in many places as far as I can tell
I'm sorry that this is literally the best (i.e. only) light rail system in my home state 😞
On the plus side if you ever get to Green Bay the National Railroad Museum is pretty neat!
The museum is good and should be paired with the amazing auto museum (I spent 3 hours at the auto museum). I made the bad decision to visit the rail museum on the coldest day in winter though and a lot of it is outdoors.
Good to know!
Well there's Kenosha's streetcar
It would be sweet if there was rail travel from Milwaukee up to Green Bay to get to the rail museum...
Reminds me of the Cincinnati streetcar in form and free entry, but that thing was bumping when I was there one weekend a couple summers ago. Used to be a really great city before the interstate highway.
I didn’t know assault streetcars is a thing now
I rode The Hop when in Milwaukee for my first time, late last year. It isn't a bad starter streetcar system, but I hope it's expanded a lot more in the future.
Now I need to google(per a different comment I saw) to see if the rumor is true if Hop will be expanded more, in the future? Like itd be nice if Hop was expanded to have a northernmost stop closer to North and Farwell(an area with a lot of stores and restaurants/bars), or for the route to run closer to 3rd St/MLK and the Fiserv arena. I'm guessing long term expansions like that will occur with the Hop, down the road.
Btw i did take one MCTS bus(think it was route 30) south from the North/Farwell area to Burns Commons(the northernmost Hop station), and boarded The Hop to get all the way back to the Milwaukee Amtrak downtown station. On a day when the weather wasn't as cold, I wouldn't have minded the walk between North/Farwell to Burns Commons. Which i think is something like 2/3rds to 3/4ths of a mile south.
You to work well together 😊keep showing us your travels
Miles,
The townhouses in the neighborhood you were walking in to get to catch The Hop the first minute of this video is *exactly * the street I lived on back in 2002-2004. All those buildings you passed by were there when I lived there, so they're not new.
Hopefully, you got a chance to enjoy Milwaukee's "Fashionable Eastside" before catching The Hop.
I wish the line could be extended to the Milwaukee County Stadium. That's where I think the line is needed.
Except Milwaukee County Stadium hasn’t existed for 24 years now. But assuming you meant Miller Park/American Family Field/whatever, that wouldn’t really be a good place for the line to go. Unfortunately, the stadium is too out of the way, and you don’t spend millions of dollars on a fixed-route transit system just to serve a sports complex that gets used for 5 hours a day, 80-90 times a year. There would be literally zero ridership for the vast majority of its operating hours out there.
@@legitimatebusinessman5537 OH!!!!! It never occurred to me these situations!
Understanding why this thing exists requires some knowledge of the perpetual war that the Republican state legislature is in with the city of Milwaukee. The city obtained funds to build a light rail system a while back, but the state blocked the funds from being used for this purpose. Someone sued saying it was discriminatory and the City got part of the funds which was used to build this system. Now that it exists, the hope will be to expand it to be more useful.
Lived in the dorms in Milwaukee for schooling and used the HOP and overall was a good experience as someone who has never ridden a tram. Pretty slow car, but felt great to be in the cityl than stay in the dorms. This is wishful thinking, but I wish the HOP gets expanded to the Wisconsin Center or recently renovated The Avenue mall. Who knows if the tram station will fit in Wells St or Wisconsin Ave.
i thought this line was cute when i visited, but more extensions would be nice. Plus, Milwaukee at the very least deserves light rail or a subway station that has high frequencies and is much faster than a streetcar. Milwaukee is a very underrated city imo, kinda like st louis. (crime stigma)
I really gotta get to St. Louis one of these days.
Just don’t drive a Kia or Hyundai here!
Great video but PLEASE keep the maps on the screen for longer 😂😂
Noted!
It might remind you of the Atlanta streetcar, but it reminds me of the OKC streetcar. All very serious and useful transportation systems!
This is one of those, we did it because why not type of things. Presumably the hope they keep expanding it.
I remember the light control sucking back when I lived down there. I’d sit at a red for like 5 minutes after the street car goes past. I’m not against the light rail integration, but I didn’t think it would be so slow and obtrusive. I could walk most of the way to the third ward in the time it takes to track down a stop and wait for the giant snail.
Right? The Ward is so small it’s easily traversable and probably only hindered by the light rail.
Oh god it's so slow whyyy. One of the cases where if they don't fully commit to it they honestly should've just put up some bus lanes and have level boarding. Cheaper and probably faster than this moving sidewalk alternative
Is this fast for a streetcar? It seems agonizingly slow
Rail in general is always a plus though, same with pissing off cagers stuck in traffic lmao.
@@NEPATransitnTravelhow does it do that when it literally shares the road with vehicles at many points and crashes into them frequently? You’re in traffic on the light rail too.
Grew up in northern Illinois. My mom and her friend used to take the bingo bus to Potawatomi Casino. Which makes me wonder about the viability of bingo buses as outside-the-box transit options. 🤔
Have you thought about visiting the DC streetcar? It's probably not as interesting, but it's connected directly to Union Station so if you ever have a layover at WAS it might be a thing to do. Awesome video as always!
I've been on it before, but it was before I started making videos - that's another pretty bad one honestly 😂
Nice thought, however, hopefully it's a long layover. 😲
DCA is 15 - 30 minutes from Union Station, meanwhile, despite rail connections, IAD and BWI are too far for a quick jaunt into DC proper.
Hopefully speedier rail connections to downtown in the future. 👍
@@adlad75 If you think the rail connection from DCA into central DC takes too long, I don't really know what to tell ya!
@@MilesinTransit, Oh no, I wasn't saying that DCA to downtown takes too long, but factoring in time it takes to ride the DC streetcar and get back to the airport (working off the layover scenario as mentioned above), it would require a nice looong layover. 🤓
I think I remember them voting about getting a museum ship or the streetcar
I wanted the ship
When they allow the city to build tracks south and north and to Waukesha it's going to be a good system to use definitely 😊
The chime is Toronto haha. The UP Express uses (used) the same chime for next stops.
Cute streetcar system. Haha
I'll have a layover in Milwaukee on my way to Saint Louis this August. I doubt I'll have time to ride the Hop that trip, but I might go to Milwaukee another time just for that purpose.
Streetcars like this one, which are slow, run entirely or mostly in mixed traffic, and don't have signal priority, are basically just really expensive buses. They provide no benefit to the actual transit user above what a bus running on the same route would, at a significantly higher cost for the government per passenger mile.
I guess they may work as a real estate play, giving a sense of permanence that a mere bus route lacks, but from an actual transit standpoint, it would make more sense to run more or better buses or pony up a little more for an actual light rail line that is at least partly separated from street traffic.
Right?? Just make a bus line
You put it very well. While I enjoy these, I often think of these streetcars as vanity projects.
6:06 was I just blessed with Miles' bostonian accent?
This one was intentional, unfortunately!
The Hop looks like a cute little system. The only legacy tram I’ve been on in the states is the Seattle Streetcar which I hope pulls through its current trials. Like most of these attempts, they have the potential but lack frequency and speed as they’re all stuck in traffic which is not ideal. However, I have to give props to the city of Milwaukee for actually investing in it and extending it. I think once they build the new line, it’ll become a bit more popular.
If they go through with connecting the two Seattle Streetcars, it'll make for a nice crosstown line!
Fun Fact: the Dallas streetcar, though far more useful, uses the same trains, and they are uncomfortable beyond belief. Literally feels like its going to shake your teeth out. I had to take ibuprofen the second time I used it for the headache it gave me.
Side note: a moment of appreciation for Dallas, Texas having an Amtrak line, 3 different commuter rail services, 4 grade-separated light rail lines, a modern streetcar, and a heritage streetcar. God I love DART light rail. You should do a riding-the-whole-system video for it
This is something I've filmed but not edited! Someday I'll get around to it!
That probably was from flat spots on the wheels.
Awesome video!! The Milwaukee streetcar seems to have a lot of potential if expansions were focused on increasing reach out of downtown rather than the density of the network. The KC streetcar is a good example of an Obama administration streetcar that's become increasingly popular through time, especially with extensions to the Riverfront and UMKC. I can't wait for a future video of KC and hopefully St Louis too !!
Thank you! I do wish these things took the bus networks more into account...isn't the extension in KC still going to be doubling a bus line that goes further?
The stretch on E. Ogden Ave. between N. Van Buren St. & N. Franklin Place/N. Farwell Ave. was cleared in the late 1960's/early 1970's for a never built and incompleted Park East Expressway. All empty land for over 25 years. Developed in the mid to late 1990's.
When The Hop streetcar don't operate, M-Line riders have to rely on Milwaukee County Transit System Routes 15 & 30 to/from Downtown Milwaukee.
Routes 15, 18 & Green Line to/from Milwaukee Public Market
Route 57 to/from Milwaukee Intermodal Station
L-Line is the Lakefront/Downtown Loop. Only operate on Sundays. Will go to 7 days a week in the near future.
I take videos of The Hop Streetcar every now and then.
I ride it as well to help the ridership.
Have a nice day/night.
"puncsh da streetcaar"*
* **dots and graffiti apply**
The housing you mentioned was done in the late 90s and early 2000s. It was built to fill in the area that was cleared out decades ago when they wanted to connect a freeway between I43 and the lake (thankfully that never happened and the downtown elevated spur was torn down). There was no talk of a streetcar, and it had nothing at all to do with any development. I don’t really see the point of the Hop lines, they really could have done way better. It’s just an interesting test platform, and maybe somewhat useful to connect the Intermodal station with the downtown.
That's so sad, I really thought the housing was built for the streetcar!
More miles!!!
Dang, when was you in Milwaukee!?
After he did the lake michigan ferry vid
@@TravelsByTransitNow I wanna know when he'll pull up to Chicago again in the future?
@@dangelohartley5977 prob not a lot, he doesn't have a ton of Chicago vids
@@dangelohartley5977 it's mainly East coast
I randomly end up in Chicago sometimes, but usually just as a layover.
As a Madison citizen, I’m honestly pretty jealous of the hop. It’s not bad and it’s free. I think it’s meant to be a test for the city and future public transit projects
Came back to say: the Hop route actually makes a lot of sense* transit-wise *if* there is a lot of intercity and commuter traffic through Milwaukee Intermodal station. When the Hop was being planned, there was an expectation that 1) there would be a lot of intercity trains west to Madison as extension of the Chicago service to the south, and 2) there would be a commuter train from Kenosha and Racine ("KRM") that connected to Chicago's Metra. Both of these things were killed off after the election of Scott Walker, greatly reducing the utility of the line for transit. While those things might happen eventually, they've been delayed by decades.
*The Hop route is proof that streetcars should try to minimize the number of turns in the route. Turns greatly reduce the average speed of the route and make it feel like the route doesn't go as far as it actually does.
Yeah I have noticed a lot of light rail systems use the same announcement chime.
I believe it’s the standard legacy Siemens chime. There’s also a newer Siemens chime used on SF Muni’s LRV 4 (Siemens S200SF) rolling stock.
i will always appreciate the brookville liberty's for just being silly
Tacoma WA has a similar new downtown streetcar but I like it because Tacoma is on a big hillside so it can make the walk a bit easier. And bus fare includes a trolley transfer. Wish the time line for extending it wasn't 20+ years though...
It's an interestingly-shaped line because of the topography! That's a pretty unique one.
Regarding transit signal priority in Wisconsin...supposedly some state lawyers or attorneys office interprets our state law on emergency vehicle pre-emption as meaning that buses or other vehicles cannot have priority devices. Therefore, they believe things like TSP are illegal. It's also holding back potential state DOT initiatives on snowplow priority and other potential projects.
Of course any traffic signal engineer knows priority and pre-emption are two completely different systems which work very differently. There is legislation being proposed now that would state the difference between TSP and EVP and allow snow plows to use signal priority systems. If passed, I believe that will blow a hole in the lawyers argument which claims TSP = EVP.
That is so insane
Wait, I'm sorry, what?! I literally never do TH-cam comments (just a lurker) but as an urban planner who has worked for a transit agency, this beggars belief. I just...HWAT?? That's one of the most nonsensical anti-transit-improvements arguments I have ever heard in my life. I am so sorry you have to deal with that! Metro Transit in the Twin Cities, while it does have many challenges, is at least not held back by this and is doing TSP for many bus lines, in addition to the signal preemption (not just priority) for most of the Blue Line LRT and parts of the Green Line.
@gordymoore4606 well...I didn't say it was holding anyone back from implementing TSP 😉
You are rite it doesn't go to the casino but it does only say
POWERED BY %$%$##€##.
I am in Milwaukee Native They have also announced they plan on extending it even more
Miles, have you ever done a run on all the NJ Transit streetcar/tram routes ? You have the 'Newark Subway' one that runs about 4 miles, the short loop to the NJPAC and the Bergen-Hudson Light Rail routes.
The Newark Light Rail isn't exactly a streetcar. I mean the line that goes to Broad Street Station (not just NJPAC) is basically a streetcar, but the Newark City Subway part is effectively light metro and much, much older since it opened in 1935. The Broad Street Station line was meant to be the first part of a Newark-Elizabeth Link. The HBLR is also only street-running for pretty much Essex Street in the downtown JC segment while the rest of it is grade-separated and uses old rail right-of-way.
An NJT light rail compendium is really something I should do at some point!
Thanks, guys. I would be interested if you could visit the St Louis Delmar loop.
Oh yeah, that would be a fun one
@@MilesinTransit Indeed. I am particularly interested in tram #03 and the additional two trams in the workshop, all originally W2 class Melbourne trams (I think they all came via Seattle, before they removed their tram lines). Thank you again for the great video!
Weird streecar system. Portland Streetcar also has their yard under a freeway.
Actually, the Lakefront streetcar line makes a lot of sense. It serves not only the 44-floor Couture apartment tower, but the Summerfest/festival grounds, Discovery World, the Milwaukee Art Museum with the flapping wings on top, and the Betty Brinn Children's Musem. Granted you have to walk to all those from the Couture stop, but they're all less than a half-mile walk. Veterans Park where the Harley Festival and other events take place, is closer to a mile walk.
Note: The City of Milwaukee owns the streetcar and Trans Dev operates it under contract. The Milwaukee County Transit System and the HOP are separate transit systems.
At some point the city plans to start charging a fare, likely $1. So far, noting has been said if our MCTS WisGo stored value/weekly or monthly pass cards will also work on the HOP. Nor has anything been said regarding transfer privileges between the two systems. I live in Shorewood, just one block north of Milwaukee.
I think it'd be more useful if the "new line" served more of the network - either you happen to be at one of the very few stops it serves and it's coming in a time faster than walking, or you have to transfer.
You have to check out the TIM in Tradition (Port St Lucie). It’s a very unique experience.
Huh, that does look interesting!
Ahhh we love when transit agencies cop to their streetcars being vanity projects by having them double the routes of buses that already exist (:
Something Philly gets right is that the 11 is the ONLY transit on Woodland! The 36 is the ONLY transit on Elmwood! If you make the streetcar an integral part of the transit network, people will use it. (Of course in Philly it helps that the trolley routes are long and go directly downtown via a tunnel, but still...)
Brookville has built a few different locomotive varieties for Metro-North.
When are you going to make the trip out to Southern Arizona and look at Tucson's transit services?
I'm not sure! They have a streetcar, right?
@@MilesinTransitIndeed they do; I've seen it but not ridden it but I've laid eyes on it (irrc, also because it was fairly infrequent). Tucson is pretty cool and imo underrated, probably due to the related biases that places like St. Louis, Mliwaukee, etc. deal with.
@@MilesinTransit Yeah its a pretty short loop, but it connects a lot of the major activity centers. There's also a bus service that overs most of the city, but its not frequent enough.
@@MilesinTransit Also a historic mixed-use Amtrak station that still gets some service
My first thought when the streetcar approaches - ah, no dots. Which 5 seconds later was followed by a comment about the lack of dots! I have to thank this channel for giving words to my own complete distaste for dots.
It is a pretty lame streetcar though - but at least it is running. I've lived in St. Louis for almost 2 years and I have yet to see the infamous Delmar streetcar in the wild. I've gathered enough information to learn it was clearly an idea to look cool in the eyes of the 'overlord of the loop' but with absolutely no idea what transit is supposed to do b/c that was the brainchild of people who only drive cars.
St. Louis's metro is really good though. I liked being able to park for free near the air force base and being able to avoid driving into downtown (I was visiting from Indiana so it was convenient) and the day pass was a decent value if going the whole way. It is also great they don't cheat tourists coming from the airport unlike some other cities such as Brisbane, Sydney, and New York City.
@@calvincoolidge1207 the metro is decent, I've used it before I moved to St. Louis for conferences. I'm just annoyed at the lack of the metro west of 170 and for most of the county. I see it when I drive into the city and it just makes me sad.
Looks like we got a comedy duo here. :)
A streetcar full of desire
Being from Europe it's weird that this little system doesn't seem all that useful and is quite short, in Europe and the UK systems like this are built to serve and link together high density residential areas, city centres and major transportation hubs such as airports, mainline train stations etc. Your weird zoning laws also stifle your cities, in the UK and the rest of Europe those modern apartment blocks will probably have had some retail space incorporated to allow local convenience stores to open along with cafes, barber/hairdressers etc. which helps make areas walkable, which in turn brings in more footfall for transit.
Light Rail is ALWAYS a disapointment. Only good thing about Light rail is if you can ride your bike alongside the entire way. (easily outpacing the train)
What is up with so many American cities having these streetcars that only run a short route downtown? I’ve wondered that for a long time because it seems like too many cities for it to just be coincidence
i assume it's because it's cheap and they can say the have light rail, even though it's useless
There was also a grant system called TIGER in the Obama era that really encouraged these types of lines! At one point I knew why these were always the types of things that got funded, but now I can't remember...
You’re right, it’s not a coincidence. It’s a copy-paste urban design to attract and assuage real estate capitalists. Usually, it’s a part of a plan to spur “development” and “revitalization” in mid to large urban areas. It’s a part of a gentrification ploy.
That’s why when you look at it through the lens of human utility (what’s best for the majority) it’s nonsensical. You can only make sense of it when you get to the root of it, which is that it’s meant to facilitate the profits of capital, particularly real estate capital. And then, it moves from being nonsensical to being diabolical.
Why did you call it in the title that it was disappointing if in the end you say it was pretty good?.. btw the fact that the street car route is quite limited is due to a big number of NYMBYs in the city.
That's a fair complaint - I think it exceeded our expectations, but our expectations were so low to begin with that it didn't mean much. And especially watching back when editing this, "disappointing" felt like the most apt way to describe it. But I do acknowledge that it's one of the better modern streetcars!
What are dots? I've heard you mention it a couple of times. I'm in the uk so maybe we don't have dots?
It's when a transit vehicle has an ad wrap on it that covers up the windows! They put little dots in the wraps so you can "still see out" but you really can't see out well at all.
@@MilesinTransit ah that explains it. Thanks 😊
Petition to put dots on the Hop so Miles has to come back and punch a streetcar.
4:03 Metro-North's BL20GH locomotives used on their branchlines were also built by Brookville, and they have also rebuilt some freight engines for freight railroads
Idea ! Summer fest to Intermodal Station , to AMFAM , State fair Park to Brookfield Square to Waukesha 🎉💡💡💡💡💡
Have You Ever Been To A Waymo Driverless Vehicle Before And I think is from San Francisco
No, never!
The Milwaukee residents cope and try to say the streetcar is a success and practical. Good that people from the outside can look at it and see it’s a joke.
As someone who has ridden the Brookville Libertys,the Dallas ones are awful. It doesn't help that they are the prototype cars and two out of the four cars are apparently out of service. I don't know how it is with the other cities but the Dallas ones are the worst ones I've ridden on.
The Dallas ones are definitely the worst, but some of their bad tendencies carried over to Milwaukee too.
What are some of their bad tendencies?
That casino should have a free shuttle between at the end of the tram to get there every 20 minutes
nathan is right... the trains need to rest
No, all the housing was built because we tore out a useless freeway spur. It wasn’t because of anticipation of the streetcar.
Dallas has an earlier version of these streetcars which, because of the inexplicable battery section and infighting between the city and DART over maintenance, and the most unreliable turds of rolling stock in North America.
THEY'RE SOOOOOO BAD I HATE THEM
All that housing was there before the streetcar was approved
Y'know you really wish that American cities would actually be trying to make a tram like actually good when they pour all this money into building it in the first place. Like if Odense, a small Danish city of 182k people can get a 9 mile long tram line in fully dedicated lanes and signal priority, with trams that are actually larger than buses, then so can North American cities!
Before 1K views club :o
Love your channel 😊
They would have asked for OKC streetcar review