MTA uses less than 7% renewable electrical energy right now.

Recommendation 1. Move Aggressively Towards Renewable Energy Generation
The MTA should move forward with an aggressive schedule of renewable energy use,
development and generation, with an initial phase of 7 percent renewable energy by
2015

http://www.mta.info/environmen.....final3.pdf

Whether or not public transportation uses “renewable energy” is a decision that has nothing to do with the mode of transportation, especially with CO2 certificate and renewable energy trading.

Investing in a system for psychological reasons is just pork. I want cushioned seats in the subway and on city buses like on commuter rail if your going to be porking it away (screw vandalism), before spending it on a billion dollar railfan’s toy.

Anyways, the psychological reason of wanting to see infrastructure at the stop can be met with trolley buses, either a Ground-level power supply with a pickup shoe beneath the battery bus, or a good old high visual contrast view spoiling catenary, or an easy digital “minutes till next bus”/location of next bus system, the MTA keeps using off the shelf GPS solutions from contractors that just want $ and don’t care if the system works or not and management is more interested in powerpoints and the sales rep’s cleavage than about the technical details. Permitting railed vehicles into NYC streets is just anti-transit regardless of mode.

Adding LR/Trolleys isn’t going to magically clear the streets of traffic, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.....he_commons. Its the same reason building a double decker/more lanes on the LIE is pointless. You make more room for car traffic by shifting people to public transit, within a few days of opening the traffic will be just as bad at rush hour as before the extra lanes were added. Any people who choose to take public transit out of necessity due to congestion will just go back to their cars if given the chance (less traffic). A car is a sign of independence, prestige, wealth, ego, power and privacy/private property/private space in the USA. People want to drive in the NYC, they just don’t because public transit is faster and cheaper. If you make the roads faster, cars became faster than public transit, and more people drive clogging the roads up again until the time is the same as public transit.

If getting to work a long distance from your home is impossible, then having work a long distance from your home is impossible. You add transportation capacity of any kind, and more people will get jobs further away that pay more/they like more. If its road capacity, it will shift users from public transit until road and public transit are the same in time. Trolleys/street LR suffer from road traffic. If they take cars off the road, new cars will take those places, and people will just be angry on how slow the Trolleys/Street LR are, and its the same speed as BRT or buses would have been or worse because you can’t get around anything.

Again, what about accidents? What if a Street LR/Trolleys breaks down in the middle of the track/road? How many hours will it take to get a rescue locomotive to the scene? A trolleybus can be pushed to the side by any truck with a bumper, and removed by any tow truck. Any what about dangerous boarding in the street? Street LR/Trolleys don’t pull over. More traffic jams.

The distinction between Subways and ROW LR is blurry. Even LIRR and Amtrak (this one is the functional definition of Light Rail) can be called Light Rail. What about the River Line, subway (long distances between stations, fixed price fare, no paper ticket collection, no bathroom), commuter rail (soft seats, real FRA railroad, single track, 60 mph operation, mostly dedicated ROW), or light rail (not FRA crash compliant cars, short cars, street running but FRAs can also street run, proof of payment fares, low level platforms (but high-level platforms are the exception in North America, we North Easteners are just too used to them))?

Street LR/Trolleys are just insane in NYC. Dedicated ROW should be for subways and commuter rail. ROW LR in NYC is a waste of money since no interconnection and no cost savings with the subway system and creating a new division under the MTA or NYCT to take care of ROW or street LR will cause more corruption and management waste than there already is.

Street LR/Trolleys still have no advantage over BRT or trolley buses in NYC.

so being able to have a renewable energy powered transit system and being able to attract more riders and neighborhood invests are 3 advantages over BRT not 0 like you claim.

also streets have 4 mph traffic because of too many cars, build a trolley and get more people out of their cars.

When have you ever been on a street with catenary wires, and heard someone say that the street was unattractive? The fact is that streetcars are street beautification, pure and simple. All streets look better with streetcars.

Further, there is a reason that people say that BRT is a lead-up to streetcars. It’s because BRT is an inferior product. There is less investment around BRT, and this is deserved, as BRT is less of an investment into a neighborhood.

Psychology or not, BRT buses are less comfortable than trains. Trains run on tracks, and BRT buses run on wheels on bumpy roads. It’s just that simple.

If you can get the right of way, and you can, then you should run streetcars, not BRT. And certainly not a subway. Subways don’t run at grade on streets, so they have nothing to do with street right of way. OK? SBS is a fine system, but it is inferior to streetcars in terms of service and comfort. There’s no reason streetcars couldn’t have off-street payment as well, which is the only thing SBS has going for it, and the only thing differentiating from a Limited Bus.