I wonder how many different ways people have tried cut and cover over the years. I'm talking here of the horizontal part of the project, not the vertical. It seems like you usually have one, or maybe two, moving work sites, and they go block by block removing the street, and replacing it behind them at some point. Any business near the sites is choked off from foot traffic for a while, even if the site isn't in front of their door yet.
Is it more or less disruptive if you do a checkerboard pattern instead? Instead of n months of construction around your favorite coffee shop, would it be better to have n/2 months of construction now, and n/2 months of construction in July? Maybe that depends on where you are on the street. If, for instance, you start at both ends, then the businesses in the middle of the cut have construction sites boxing them in for almost twice as long as anyone else does. Or maybe that just means more people of means mad at elected officials.
The problem is the street overall is blocked off for the duration. Sure it looks like only one block is stopped, but in reality people who have to travel that block are backed up all the way, and so they will look for alternate routes for the duration.
If you could build the entire thing in 2 weeks (per year) people would be happy with a full road closure - they would all take vacation for those two weeks. This is for the entire city - close all roads to non-emergency traffic for two weeks, fix them all up - everyone not involved in road work or essential services would just go on vacation. You cannot do this of course, but that is what people really want.
I thought about that too. The problem with trains is that they always need to run in the primary direction of traffic. So you can't really build them on cross-streets and avoid disrupting the main thoroughfares. Otherwise you'd often end up with a train to nowhere. The main exception being when traffic is curved, going around some obstruction that the train can cut across.
I recall when South Lake Union got its trolley, one of the things they pointed out was that property values next to a trolley drop, but property values 1 block away go up more. Everyone wants to be a couple blocks from transit, not living above it. So even if you avoided the main road going parallel to it, you're probably tearing up even more desirable real estate and commercial zoning.
Is it more or less disruptive if you do a checkerboard pattern instead? Instead of n months of construction around your favorite coffee shop, would it be better to have n/2 months of construction now, and n/2 months of construction in July? Maybe that depends on where you are on the street. If, for instance, you start at both ends, then the businesses in the middle of the cut have construction sites boxing them in for almost twice as long as anyone else does. Or maybe that just means more people of means mad at elected officials.