- Nicola Freegard
City of Tucson officials will be addressing new issues surrounding major traffic gridlock and Sun Link ridership delays following the first 2nd Saturdays event held in Downtown Tucson since the streetcar’s arrival. Last Saturday’s early evening event was plagued by extended motorist logjams and waits of up to an hour for potential streetcar passengers during 2nd Saturdays’ peak hours. In addition to increasing service during such special events, the City is also aiming to “change traffic flow patterns” at trouble spots along the route.
At what many were calling the busiest 2nd Saturdays to ever be held during Tucson’s normally sleepy summer months, jam-packed streetcars could be seen inching down Congress St. and Fourth Ave. prior to dusk. On Monday, expectations were high for final ridership totals for the weekend, but the released numbers did not reflect the long waits or social media photos and anecdotes from the night.
- Emmy Simpson
Ridership estimates for Saturday, August 9 were just under 6700, compared to Friday’s total of approximately 4000, and dwarfed by the Saturday, July 25 total of more than 25,000 non-paying passengers during the Sun Link’s opening weekend. The three-day total ridership estimate from last Friday to Sunday barely hit 13,000.
City of Tucson Department of Transportation spokesman Michael Graham addressed these figures with the Tucson Weekly, saying “The ridership numbers are correct. As for the delays that occurred last weekend, it appears the root of the problem is the intersection of Congress/Toole/Fourth Avenue. The congestion on westbound Congress is causing traffic to back up on Fourth Avenue and on Congress/Broadway, creating gridlock.”
The intersection in question has long been pointed to as a potential problem for traffic, particularly following the last-minute installation of an additional Sun Link stop at the Centro Garage on Broadway Blvd and Toole Ave. The stop is located below the multi-story Cadence student housing complex, which sits on top popular ground-level merchants and restaurants such as Fed by Threads, GIO Taco, and the nightclub Hi Fi Kitchen and Cocktails. The Centro stop also lies in the shadow the historic Rialto Theatre and Hotel Congress, both magnets for pedestrians and downtown visitors on most weekend nights.
Graham acknowledged the issue, saying “This logjam is not allowing the streetcar to operate at its 10 minute or 20 minute headways, causing the entire streetcar system to come to a standstill.” He added, “TDOT is looking at potentially changing traffic flow patterns and reallocating service hours during the weekend hours when we are seeing a higher ridership demand and higher downtown traffic and pedestrian patterns.”
- Emmy Simpson
Emmy Simpson, whose office at Tierra Antiqua Realty is right in front of the Sun Link 6th Avenue and Congress St. stop, said riders there were able to board the streetcar fairly quickly, as most passengers had met their ultimate destination on Congress St. “People were in a great mood! I saw a lot of smiles and excitement,” Simpson beamed. “The mood was the best I’ve ever seen.”
Tucson Weekly contributor Linda Ray was at Sun Link’s Main Gate stop on University Blvd. around 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, and said that some had been waiting up to an hour to get on one of the streetcars. The cars were passing by, Ray said, but skipping the stop in front of Gentle Ben’s as they had already reached capacity between Main Gate and the Helen St. stop by the University of Arizona Medical Center. However, Ray said, “Once you got on, everyone’s all happy and smiling.”
Overall, Graham was confident these issues would be resolved and affirmed that the City was already closely monitoring the streetcar routes on a daily basis. “From day one, TDOT and Sun Link staff has said that they would continually monitor and evaluate the operations of the system and make necessary adjustments to meet demand.”
This article appears in Aug 14-20, 2014.
All destinations are final, ergo “final destination” is redundant.
Okay, I’m going to go out on a limb here. It is HIGHLY possible, even PROBABLE that the ridership was far higher than reported. Why? Because no one watches, or cares, whether you swipe your card or not when you get on. I have ridden the street car a total of 4 times now. Once there was a little nazi kid (a streetcar employee) who told me that “this card swiper is broken” and that I had to go swipe my card at the other end of the car. I ignored him, and so did everyone else who got on. It was crowded and no one wanted to fight their way across the street car to swipe their card. Then this last Monday I got on to ride to work (U of A) and my card once again didn’t work in the card swiper. I was tired and feeling lazy, so instead of walking to the other swiper I just had a seat. No one was watching, no one cared. Just sayin’ – I’m certain that I’m not the only tired and lazy person in Tucson doing this. Note: in all cases I DID pay a fare, but if they’re counting the riders by the number of swipes, the numbers are way, WAY low.
Streetcar employees are nazi kids?
What a fiasco. So no one thought to monitor what the addition of high occupancy buildings might do to the traffic flow? Or what increased pedestrian traffic might do? I’m amazed at the lack of planning regarding this whole project.
Oh and I’m SURE those numbers are correct. It’s so unlikely that anyone is just jumping on and skipping the “buy a ticket” part of the ride.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the new streetcar, but the level of incompetency in relation to the streetcar is stunning.
“The intersection in question has long been pointed to as a potential problem for traffic…”
No kidding. It was already a confusing intersection, and then they went and added a dozen businesses, a parking garage, “luxury” student living and HiFi to the mess. I am a streetcar supporter, but not a lot of common sense was implemented in ANY of this. You can’t cram downtown Phoenix into a square mile of downtown Tucson, on roads still more suited to horse and buggy than modern traffic.
No, but they try to act the part.
Michael Graham, how about putting up barricades before the Broadway underpass. If you need to get into downtown, you can take SR210 westbound to get around the logjam. Oh, wait. you STILL haven’t built that roadway…..
They ought to just block off congress to motor vehicles during 2nd Saturday. This will cause more people to use alternate routes instead of Congress. Traffic will either use Tool to get west or they will have to use another way around downtown like 6th or 22nd. If congress is their destination, then this would be the perfect time to park someplace farther away and take the streetcar into downtown. You would still have access to all the garages without using congress.
This whole street car idea should not emphasize transportation — it should emphasize exactly what it is: novelty. If city planners thought more clearly about this, maybe we’d have a beautiful, historic-looking trolley type car merged with a modern design that had fun reasons to get on (like music or other entertainment, maybe space for street performers). Wouldn’t it be rad for it to be like a Burning Man art car kind of thing?
It will never be perfect transportation-wise, so just give passengers more reasons to enjoy the ride, no matter how long. They can take a bus if they want real public transport. The street car ride should be an experience!
the solution is simple. no vehicular traffic downtown for one Saturday a month. Simple.
I wonder how much money was spent on “modeling”? Do they even model pedestrian traffic? The lines at the Mercado , on opening day, were unorganized to say the least. People were jumping in from all sides.
I am downtown about 50 hours a week. What I see is a lack of consistency. I will commonly see two, three, and sometimes four of the trolleys within a couple of blocks of each other. Wednesday at Granada and Simpson there were three of the Trolley cars within 1 minute while I am purchasing my ticket they all go by then the next trolley car comes 30 minutes later. They are supposed to be every 10 minutes and they never are. One Friday I got out of the trolley just before the bridge on 4th avenue and walked the rest of the way. I made it to church and congress before the trolley I was on passed me. Poorly designed system should have looked at what Phoenix did much better operating trolley system.
Maybe it’s just growing pains but I’d be more inclined to think the trolley’s woes are the result of poor to no planning by city officials. I know that’s a provocative concept but we’ve had all sorts of experience with the city poobahs and their lack of foresight.
On all Friday and Saturday evenings, starting at 5pm 4th Ave from University south and Congress, from 4th Ave to Stone should be car-free zones.
It would be so much safer and enjoyable to stroll the streets, grab a bite, do some shopping, catch a show or live band.
C’mon – it would be awesome!
That’s what $197,000,000 buys you, what do expect? It’s Tucson.
I thought this was a stupid idea from the start, considering we could have purchased 394 buses for the same money, and considering there’s nothing steel wheels on rails can do that rubber on pavement can’t. But, that said…
If we have to have tracks, then I am at a complete loss as to why the traffic lights haven’t been set up to grant right of way to the choo choo trains. Seriously, why wasn’t this done? If this isn’t going to be done, then there is literally no point whatsoever in the permanency of the tracks…none.
I am equally confused as to why this doesn’t go all the way to the football stadium.
Christ on a stick!!! They have been in operation for nearly two weeks. I can’t believe it isn’t perfect yet. Obama must be behind this!
FoMo Bret Linden:
Good points. Try the bus system during the games. Its great. I use it for all the home games from Hi Corbett/U of A Baseball stadium. Perhaps one of the most effective program the City does. Fast, fair price and they run the buses every 4.6 seconds!! lol
Like anything that’s new, they haven’t worked out all the bugs yet. Its the same reason why I won’t buy anything first generation. I still believe in the streetcar and even detractors have to admit how much Downtown has evolved since the first track was placed. My only hope is the city learns a valuable lesson and addresses it correctly, rather than fall back on tried and failed methods of past projects (Rainbow Bridge anyone?).
Mr. Edge Harvey:
Again all good points. But just think what we would have had if they had not pissed away $230,000,000 and got nothing. Just fat wallets of the “consultants” And projects that never happened. And that we had roads that did not have 4.8 million potholes.
People waited an hour for a trolley? Bloody ‘ell, they could have walked almost the entire Uni- to- Menlo- Park route by then. Just follow the tracks if you’re worried about getting lost … unless you’re a bicyclist, in which case the tracks may kill you (yes, the City knew about this risk before the tracks were put in, yet gave the go-ahead to install them anyway; all the “use caution” signs will not absolve them of malfeasance and reckless endangerment).
I was downtown that Saturday, eventually eating on 4th Ave. I sat on the outdoor patio at Magpies and watched the traffic go by. One of the things that struck me was how often I saw the same cars go by. I wondered if they were cruising “American Graffiti” style or just circling to find a place to park. Anytime a parking spot opened up it was immediately occupied. How much does parking add to the traffic congestion? I imagine that if parking on the downtown street were not free on the weekends we would see less hunting behavior. I wonder about parking at the terminus of the street car. Is there free parking at UMC where we could ditch the car and then ride down to fourth?
Nationwide on newer systems of this nature they seem to be having issues. I emphasize newer systems. Why is that the US has such a horrible ego to not visit countries in Europe and ask questions on how they created such efficient systems? Or better yet, study places such as New York city, Chicago and even San Francisco that have been pretty darn successful with their systems. Years of experience might have given the city planners a heads up about how stupid their thoughts were regarding what I call the “triangle crush” (a.k.a. 4th, Congress, Toole) The only solution that I see coming quickly is to turn Congress into a “pedestrian only” street. But that would mean filling up the parking garages and actually making some money too. Oh, that might not be so bad after all. Or at least shut down traffic into downtown as they do for parades (x-mas for example) or other special events (bar crawl) – oh, that is already a clean solution for second Saturdays. No? Doh.
This is the predictable consequence of having a “light rail” system compete with cars in regular lanes of traffic. That setup cancels the advantages of light rail as a mode of transportation. The other model (as a previous writer notes) is something like S.F.’s cable cars, cute and historic. This system fits neither model.
As many have observed, closing at least part of Congress to cars, permanently, could be a significant step toward rationalizing the streetcar (after the fact).
Yes by all means get the cars off the road. How about stables at both ends to rent a horse. And some jackass for the city clowncil , farley and gihalva to ride.
The stop at the Cadence needs to be removed. Its really screwing things up.
Andreas Hohl: Comparing this to Chicago or New York’s L/Subway system isn’t an apples to apples comparison because they don’t run the train on the actual street taking up a lane of traffic.
The solution is simple: CLOSE CONGRESS STREET TO AUTOMOBILES ON FRIDAY AND SATURDAY NIGHT.
I’ve been suggesting this for years. The intersection is a death trap. Do we have to wait for someone to get killed before we can make a common sense decision here????
There is no reason for anyone to go zipping down Congress at peak times on the weekend nights. That area is a destination at that time, and trying to preserve it as a cut-through-downtown artery is just plain foolish, not to mention dangerous. It’s simply too congested. Adding a pack of idling cars to the mix makes the whole scene very unpleasant.
C’mon folks. Is it that hard to cede ONE LITTLE SPACE to pedestrians??? Close Congress between Toole and Stone on Friday and Saturday nights. Do it before someone gets killed.
Maybe a little less frequency during the day and a little more frequency at night. I live downtown and by the time I wait for a streetcar, I could have walked to my destination faster. I highly doubt the street cars need to run every 10 minutes from 9a-11a and from 1p-4p.