Regarding the article on the streetcar in Tucson,

It boggles my mind. Shakespeare’s famous line: “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, does NOT apply to mass transit! It is a miracle, I say! Take a bus that only a small percentage of people ride; remove it’s go-on-any-regular-street-flexibility-tires and replace them with can’t-go-anywhere-except-where-there-are-expensive-tracks-steel-wheels; then tear up the streets and put down horribly expensive(!) bicyclist killing tracks and: Voila! you have a Disneyland ride that clean, successful people will flock to!!!!
Humans are daft. This is the internal thinking of the typical person: “Buses are dirty and mundane. Streetcars are exotic and sexy! Lets drive downtown and ride the streetcar around. Weee!”

Well, I don’t know about alfalfa, but allow me to project what I sense about life along the streetcar route from the University to downtown. I don’t think it has sunk in yet to motorists that every ten minutes there is going to be a 25 MPH trolley lumbering along in front of them that they cannot pass and makes stops every ¼ mile or less. Imagine that the grid-lock that occurs now on Park from 1st to University Blvd. extending back to Drachman and the amount of time it might take to exit your parking deck. Is it going to become so aggravating for cars on 4th Ave. that customers go somewhere else more accommodating to shop. I don’t envision people driving to a parking deck somewhere, waiting and riding the trolley to the Co-Op and back for a few vegetables. I suspect the 4th Ave. merchants have been mis-informed, if they’ve been informed at all, about what will play-out on their street.
zz has not flipped out and come all over with concern for cars. Bicycle riding has taught me that you can’t avoid what you can’t see so imagining a negative vibe scenario might bring about the urgency I think is appropriate to this situation. My main interest is maintaining the level of safety for cycling on this route. The city hasn’t shown even casual concern about it and I’m not getting anything from other groups, either.
I read the link above and I don’t think adequate preparation has been made for the alternative modes of access that will have to be used to keep this area viable.
I read other links to this blog that warn of taking account of multimodal needs at the time of streetcar constuction is far more prudent than at some later time. It avoids unnecessary lapses in commerce and safety and general economic upheaval. So, if we are so into doing things that other cities do, why don’t we pay attention to their advice.
This city seems to base its vision on “Build it and they will come”.
The reality of that scene depicts them coming alright, backed up for miles on some country lane.