Fall 2009

$5.50

o v e r i n g T h e A r t a n d S c i e n c e o f Tr a n s i t

PO Box 1071
Thomasville, GA 31799-1071
8 5 0 . 5 9 7. 0 3 3 8
editor@tripplannermag.com
INDEX Portland, OR 2, 3, 4, 6, 14, 15, 18, 19,
23, 36
ADA 5, 28, 29
Eastside Loop 33
Alliance for Community Choice 18–40
Portland Streetcar 32
automobile 2, 4, 5, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 20
Westside Loop 33
Boston, MA 4, 6, 28
Presidents’ Conference Committee 11
Mattapan Ashmont Line 4, 6
see also streetcar, PCC
bus 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 23
Rendell, Ed Mayor 28
Buy America Act 2, 32, 33
Richmond, VA 4, 8
cable car 5
Rock Hill, SC 24
Calgary, Canada 14
Rotterdam, Netherlands 24
Canada (Canadian) 11, 12
Sacramento, CA 14
catenaries 5
San Diego, CA 2, 5, 14
Central Business District (CBD) 8, 11,
Mission Valley Line 14
14, 15
MTS 6
Charlotte, NC 33
Trolley 6
Charlottesville, VA 16, 19
San Francisco, CA 2, 4
City of 17, 18, 20
F Market 2, 15, 29, 36
West Main Street 16, 17, 18, 20
F Market Line 4
conductor 10
MUNI 36
Congress 12
San Jose, CA 14 Vol II, No. 2
Czech Republic 2
Savannah, GA 23 Fall 2009
Czech Republic (Czech) 2, 15, 32, 33
Seattle 3
Dallas, TX 14
Seattle, WA 5, 15
Depression 12 Trip Planner Magazine is a registered trademark
light rail 5
Depression, Great 12
South Lake Union 3, 5 of:
Edmonton, Canada 14
Siemens 5, 32, 33 The Scheib Company
fare-free 15
Skoda 2, 6, 23, 32, 33
France Samuel L. Scheib
Sprague, Frank 4, 8
Bordeaux 24 PRESIDENT AND PUBLISHER
sprawl. See suburban
Nice 24
Stadtbahn 5, 14 P.O. Box 1071
Galveston, TX 5, 23
St. Louis, MO 14, 24 Thomasville, GA 31799-1071
General Motors 3, 12
strassenbahn 14
Germany (Germans) 5, 13, 14
streetcar 2–40
Mannheim 24 Trip Planner Magazine was born of the cama-
battery-powered 24
Gomaco Trolley Company 24, 32
diesel 5, 24 raderie and exchange of ideas found at tran-
heavy rail (subway) 6
heritage 4, 23 sit conferences and is intended to enlighted,
Kawasaki Railcars 6, 24
hybrid 24
Kenosha, WI 5 inform, and even entertain professionals in the
like a bus 5
LaHood, Ray 33 field of urban mass transportation. We take a
modern 2, 5, 23, 32
light rail 2, 5, 6, 13, 14, 15, 31
PCC 1, 2, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 26, 28, 30, broad view of transit planning to encompass
Little Rock, AR 4, 24
36 route structure, customer service, marketing
Melbourne, Australia 24
propulsion 5, 6, 9, 22, 23
Miami Metro Rail 31 and printing materials, service efficiencies, con-
trolley 2, 6
motorman 10, 11 tracting, map making and many other related
vintage 4, 23, 36
National City Lines 12, 14
without wires 22 disciplines that make transit better for pas-
National Transportation Database 5
suburban (suburbs) 4, 8, 9, 11, 14 sengers, public agencies, and the built environ-
New Flyer 33
subways 12
New Jersey Transit 6 ment.
Summer Trolley Festivals 2
Hudson Bergen Line 6
Tacoma, WA 4, 18
New Orleans, LA 28
Tampa, FL 4, 6, 24 Trip Planner is published quarterly and mailed to
Katrina 36
TECO Line 6 transit agencies, metropolitan planning orga-
St. Charles Ave. Line 4, 23
Temple University 29
Oakland, CA 24 nizations, collegiate schools of planning, state
Toronto, Canada 12,
Okerlund Associates 18 departments of transportation, Federal Transit
traction trust 2
panagraph 23
traction 8, 11, 12. See also Traction Administration offices, transit manufacturers,
Pearly Thomas Company 23
Trust consultants and other vendors, and other inter-
Pennsylvania DOT 31
Philadelphia, PA 4, 5, 6, 26, 28, 30
transit-oriented development (TOD) 14
trolley buses 6, 12, 15, 16
Covering The Art and Science o f Tr a n s i t
ested parties.
Chestnut Hill 26, 28, 29
trolley jollies 28, 29
Girard 4, 26, 28, 29, 31, 36
trolley wire. See streetcar; propulsion Subsciptions: send an e-mail request to:
SEPTA 4, 6, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31
trucks 10 subs@tripplannermag.com
Allen, Monica (passenger) 29
Tucson, AZ 33
D’Antonio, Steven (service planning)
U-bahn 14, 14–40
28, 29, 30, 31 Trip Planner accepts unsolicited manuscripts
United Streetcar 2, 33
Deon, Pasquale (board member) 29
Chandra Brown 32, 33 and queries. Send hard copies to the above
Leary, Jack (GM) 28
University of Virginia 16, 17, 18 address or email:
Maloney, Richard (Dir. PA) 31
World War I 10
Moore, Faye (GM) 28, 31 editor@tripplannermag.com
World War II 2, 5, 6, 12, 13
subway surface lines 6, 31
planners 11, 13, 15
platform 10
All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in
part without written permission is prohibited.
 Contents
PHOTO: SETH MORGAN

A N AUTHENTIC PCC CAR , LOVINGLY RESTORED, WITH ORIGINAL

FIXTURES, FEATURES, EVEN CAR CARDS, GREETS PASSENGERS IN THE
BASEMENT OF 1234 M ARKET STREET, SEPTA’S PHILLY HQ

Features
A Distinction Subtle & Broad 4
What exactly is a streetcar anyway?
Staff report
The Streetcar in American Life 8
Trucking killed it and the Germans revived it. Here is the history of the streetcar you probably
don’t know.
by Gregory Thompson, PhD
The Space Between 16
Shaping Community with Transit: in Charlottesville, Virginia
by Gary Okerlund, with Todd Gordon
Cutting the Cord 22
Emerging Technologies are producing Streetcars Without Wires
by Steven M. Carroll
Through the Looking Glass 26
It looks like transit, sounds like money, and smells like politics. It must be Philly’s Girard
Streetcar Line.
by Samuel L. Scheib
Streetcar Maiden,USA 32
Portland doesn’t just have modern streetcars. Now they are made there too.
by Arterio Dominguez
Making Modern 34
How to make a modern streetcar in six easy steps. Feel free to try this at home.

From the Editor 2

The Palliative 3
Round Up 36

Trip Planner Magazine

Fall 2009
1
 Streetcar 2.0
The Electric Railway Presidents’ Conference Committee
(PCC) was a sterling success as far as failures go. In the 1930s
this group of American and Canadian transit executives could
see the attractiveness of Fords and Chevrolets to the traveling
public and decided to take bold action to retain passengers. They
created a new streetcar that accelerated and braked smoothly,
was easy to maintain, and comfortable for the passenger. The
design turned heads. Art Deco is a dynamic style whose smooth
lines put skyscrapers in motion; applied to machines of transport,
the PCC cars practically waltzed.
The vehicles were a hit with the public and the design was
licensed to manufacturers around North America and the world.
But the PCCs only delayed the inevitable. The traction trusts,
as the rail companies were collectively known, had long since
alienated the riding public, leaving commuters open to new
means of travel.
After World War II, the entire apparatus of government—
federal, state, city, county—was dedicated to road building. Off-
street parking ordinances were enshrined in zoning codes from
coast to coast and streetcar tracks were torn out en masse and
sent to scrap. The committee may have done everything right but
government policy favored the private automobile and there was
no way the streetcar was ever going to catch up.
Among the great transit-oriented movies (Speed, The
Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, Money Train) Who Framed Roger Rabbit
stands out as a picture that does not just use transit as (ahem) a
vehicle for the action, but as a central part of the plot. A madman
in a hybrid human-cartoon world set in 1940s Hollywood wants
to rip out the Red Car trolley line and build highways as far as the
eye can see. It is a little like watching Valkyrie or Titanic because
we already know the ending (assassination fails, ship sinks)
regardless of where the story goes.
Hollywood loves a sequel and apparently so does America.
Let’s hope Streetcar II: America on Track has a better ending;
it is off to a good start. When the cable car was under going
renovations in the early 1980s, officials in San Francisco wanted
another historic transit service in its place. They came up with
Trip Planner Magazine
2 Fall 2009
the Summer Trolley Festivals in 1983. It was so popular they kept
repeating it through 1987 and later in 1995 opened the F Market
line for regular service using a parade of brightly-colored vehicles
representing the rolling stock of American streetcar cities.
Not only is the F Market extremely popular, but it also
operates along the Embarcadero, formerly an elevated highway
that was blight on the city’s coastline. It is a promising piece of
symbolism that a beloved streetcar superseded a hated roadway.
The next great development in the streetcar renaissance
was the opening of the Portland Streetcar. Street-level rail was
restarted with modern cars in San Diego, but this was with larger
light rail vehicles. By deploying modern streetcars Portland
showed a maturing of this subset of street-level rail, something
that had previously been limited to historic or reproduction cars.
Tacoma, Washington, followed two years later.
The third significant development in streetcar renewal has
to be the opening of United Streetcar in 2006. The company
delivered its first streetcars, a modern design licensed from
Skoda in the Czech Republic, to Portland this year. An American
company whose manufacturing process meets the Buy America
Act, United Streetcar now makes contemporary streetcars more
readily available in the American transit market, which again
emphasizes the maturing of the new streetcar.
There are interesting parallels between the arrival of modern
streetcars this decade and the PCC cars of yore: two sets of
streetcars noted for their sleek, contemporary designs, smooth
acceleration and braking, and quiet operation. The PCC cars
were a Hail Mary pass, caught in the end zone (what would
autumn be without a football reference?). The crowd went wild,
but the extra point went wide right; game over. Sixty years later,
the rules have changed. Streetcars are popular again whether for
nostalgia, for efficient transportation, for economic development,
or for stronger downtowns. Today it is a whole new ballgame.
Samuel L. Scheib
Editor
The Trollop Trolley?
Regrettably, the transit agency name
Round Up from the summer issue
went out before we learned of a new
streetcar system in Seattle. The South
Lake Union Trolley is a real streetcar
line, although this is the colloquial
name. The last word is really “Line”
or “Streetcar” but S.L.U.L. and S.L.U.S.
just don’t have the same ring to it. It
remains to be seen if Seattle will get
a neon sign a la Portland’s “Go By
Streetcar” that suggests “Ride the . . .”
Well, you know.

Thanks for clearing that up

Brad Sheffield, a consultant at a plan-
ning firm, has a book idea: bureau-
cratic responses to simple questions.
Chapter One comes from an e-mail he
sent with the following question: “Do
you know when we will be receiving
the January-June 2009 DOT payment?”
And the reply: “The funding is being
confirmed as of this week to move the
amended funds into current year that
these agreements can be moved for-
ward for execution through DOT.”

The three stages in a female transit

user’s life
Miss
Ma’am
Please, take my seat
More than one way to pay
CBC reported in April that police in
the Sky Train stations in metro Van-
couver used tasers on fare evaders 10
times over 14 months, including three
occasions involving non-violent of-
fenders. CBC reports: “In one case,
a person ran from transit cops dur-
ing a check for free-riders and ‘the
Taser was deployed as the subject
fled,’ the documents say. Another per-
son who didn’t pay the fare was ar-
rested but ‘grabbed onto the platform
railing and refused to let go … the
Taser was deployed.’” We can’t wait
to see what new strategies will be de-
ployed for red light runners.
Forget digging, take a bus
Andie Rosser was working on getting
Google Transit up and running, but
was getting a few nagging errors that
would not go away. One bus stop er-
ror produced a route going from Tal-
lahassee, Fl, to a coastal town in China
and back. “When I showed it to my
colleague, he took one look and said,
‘It looks like a journey of 5,000 miles
begins with Google Transit.’”
That is a real ad
We didn’t doctor that photo above. In
this case it ran in The Georgia Straight
but was pulled soon after it started
running. General Motors, had a hand
in the demise of streetcars so it is
interesting to note, as of this printing,
GM, like most transit agencies, is
government owned.

Trip Planner Magazine

Fall 2009
3
A Distinction Subtle & Broad
What exactly is a streetcar anyway?

Staff report A SEPTA MAINTENANCE STREETCAR IS FOLLOWED

BY A PASSENGER STREETCAR IN WEST PHILADELPHIA

I It is one of the great ironies of identified with automobiles, “streetcar”

American life that suburban sprawl—a was two words; street cars were the
low-density pattern of development that same genus as rail cars, passenger
since inception. With a nationwide
resurgence in interest in streetcars,
several cities have restored historic lines
is difficult to serve with public transit— cars, and box cars, but a species on extant rails (Philadelphia’s Girard
was created by public transit. Frank unique and easily identifiable. A vehicle Avenue Line, San Francisco’s F Market
J. Sprague built the first successful operating on the street, powered by Line) and many cities have created new
electric streetcar in Richmond, Virginia, electric wires could be only one thing. streetcar systems, whether “heritage”
in 1888. Land developers rushed Things have changed. Today lines as in Tampa and Little Rock that
to build streetcar lines, loss leaders only the St. Charles Avenue Line in use reproduction cars, or modern, low-
for the highly profitable residential New Orleans (1835) and the Boston floor systems as in Portland, Oregon
development built along them. Mattapan Ashmont Line (1929) have and Tacoma, Washington. Still another
In those days before “cars” became remained in continuous operation category is those systems using vintage

Trip Planner Magazine

4 Fall 2009
cars on new tracks as in Memphis,
Tennessee and Kenosha, Wisconsin.
After WWII, as Americans lost interest
in streetcars, Germany imported the idea
as part of their rebuilding effort. They
took a venerable American institution
and made the streetcar longer and
stronger and put it in its own right-of-way
(see Thompson’s story starting on page
8). Stadtbahn was reimported to San
Diego and then other U.S. cities as light
rail transit (LRT), a very different mode
from its long lost brother the streetcar.
The federal government, through the
National Transportation Database (NTD),
makes no distinction between LRT and
streetcar, merging the two into the light
rail column. A separate category may be
in order. After all, NTD still maintains a
cable car category even though there is
only a single city (San Francisco) operating
one and a cable car is fundamentally
different from a streetcar only in the
propulsion system (an underground
cable vs. an overhead wire). Based
on that standard Galveston’s diesel-
powered trolleys have more in common
with northeastern commuter rail than
urban circulation, but Galveston is, for
federal reporting purposes, light rail too.
There are some similarities; both
LRT and streetcar operate on rails and
mostly at-grade (i.e. on the same level as
automobiles), and are usually powered
by catenaries, but diverge rapidly from
there. LRT almost never operates in
mixed traffic, which long ago defined
streetcars, and LRT infrastructure is far
heavier and more expensive to construct.
Compare two recently completed Seattle
projects, the 1.3-mile South Lake Union
Streetcar at $39 million per mile and the
14-mile light rail at $193 million per mile.
Streetcars, whether vintage,
heritage, or modern, are always a
single car, although modern streetcars
are articulated (bend in sections)
and thus are longer. Where streetcar
vehicles cannot have additional cars
attached, LRT capacity is limited
mostly by the length of the platforms
available to the service provider.
In their behavior, the streetcar, at
least in theory, acts more like a city bus THE TECO STREETCAR IN TAMPA,
TOP, HAS SMALL STATIONS AND
than LRT, with stops from a quarter- to
A DEDICATED RIGHT- OF-WAY. IT
a half-mile apart. Modern cars need
SOUNDS LIKE LRT BUT LOOKS
only a platform at the same level as the LIKE STREETCAR. THE OLD TOWN
floor for ADA compliant stops whereas TROLLEY, ABOVE, IS A FIXTURE OF
heritage cars typically have “stations” MANY A MERICAN DOWNTOWNS,
BUT THESE BUSES CAN MUDDLE THE
with a ramp for loading of wheelchairs.
IDENTITY OF STREETCARS.
Absent the station platforms, a lift must
be installed on the vehicle. Philadelphia,
for example, uses its pre-ADA islands
and has lifts on the 1930s Presidents’
Conference Committee (PCC) streetcars.
Trip Planner Magazine
Fall 2009
5
A Distinction Subtle and Broad (cont.)

LRT vehicles are

regional in nature and as
such are capable of higher
speeds than streetcars;
compare a Siemens S70
LRT vehicle with a top
speed of 66 mph to the
Skoda streetcar (used in
Portland), which has a
top speed of 42 mph. In a
tight urban environment,
a streetcar is unlikely ever
to achieve that top speed,
but it is easy to see how
an agency building a new
system may want to take
advantage of that speed,
spacing the stops a bit and
NEW JERSEY TRANSIT’S GLEAMING WHITE CARS OF THE HUDSON BERGEN LINE
acting a little like light rail on the cheap.
MIX BEAUTIFULLY WITH THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT AROUND THEM, BUT THE
Terminology matters, too. Boston’s MULTIPLE CARS PUT THEM IN THE LRT CATEGORY.
Mattapan Ashmont (M-line) is billed as
a High Speed Line, a vestigial use of
a term normally reserved for heavy name for streetcars that is easily vehicles, LRVs. We called Ken Takeda
rail (subways). It is part of the heavy confused with other vehicles. Many at Kawasaki to ask why: “In the request
rail Red Line but runs on PCC cars. systems use buses designed to for proposals, SEPTA wrote ‘LRV.’”
Philly’s subway-surface lines operate look like vintage streetcars and call Having been largely obliterated
in mixed traffic for most of their routes them trolleys. Trackless trolleys (or as a means of mass transportation
and the vehicle is a single, electrically- trolley buses) are buses powered after WWII, streetcars as they have
powered rail car. In the city center the by catenaries, but look nothing been reconstituted are nowhere
SS lines are accessed underground like a streetcar. The San Diego and never the one thing they were
in subways, which is contrary to the Metropolitan Transit System calls its between 1890 and 1920: the
spirit of the eponymous streetcar. light rail system—wait for it—the San dominant form of mechanized urban
Likewise, Tampa’s TECO line uses Diego Trolley. Thirty years ago SEPTA transport. What they are exactly is
reproduction cars that most closely ordered a group of cars from Kawasaki hard to accurately define. At the
fit the historical idea of streetcar, and Railcars for use in its subway- end of the day, precision is elusive.
they run on catenary wires, but have surface lines. The cars are boxy and If asked to identify one, the best we
a dedicated right-of-way and are contemporary, a single car in length, can do is to resort to Justice Potter
not in the street, strictly speaking. powered by overhead wires, and often Stewart’s Pornography Axiom and
Confounding the definition of used in mixed-traffic. They sound say, “I know a streetcar when I see it.”
streetcar, “trolley” is an historical like streetcars but are called light rail

Trip Planner Magazine

6 Fall 2009
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“. . . the spirit of Animal House was in

full flourish.”
 The Streetcar in American Life
Trucking killed it and the Germans revived it. Here is the history of the streetcar you probably don’t know.

by Gregory Thompson, PhD

F From 1888 when

Sprague implemented the world’s
first successful streetcar
Frank

system
in Richmond, Virginia through the
1920s, the electric streetcar sym-
bolized the American transit indus-
try. In cities throughout the country
the press followed the expansion and
financial scandals of the traction in-
dustry, “traction” being the term that
the public then used for streetcars.
Landowners on the fringes of cities
clamored to have traction lines extend-
ed to their lots, thereby making the lots
much more valuable. In as little as 30
minutes and for a nickel fare (a fare the
middle class could afford) streetcars
operating at average speeds of 12
mph could connect lots in the country-
side with jobs and opportunity in the
center. Such relationships stimulated
a huge demand for suburban living,
and to meet it, traction lines expanded
outward in all directions. Population
followed. For the first time in their his-
tories, the horribly overcrowded cities
of America began to empty outward
in the form of new streetcar suburbs,
built on previously empty land around
the city edges. The center cities
from which the middle and working
classes fled changed as well, as de-
partment stores, specialized shops,
corporate offices, financial firms, ho-
tels, theaters, concert halls, and other
less reputable types of entertainment
rushed in to fill the voids left by the de-
parting middle and working classes.
By the 1910s the streetcar had
created a new American city char-
acterized by specialized sections.
Iconic was the fashionable Central

Streetcar A Timeline
1920s Mass production heralds 1936-1950 GM, Firestone, Standard O
age of American individualism City Lines. Buys more than 100 street
a conspiracy in the dictionary
definition sense of the word.
1888 Frank Sprague invents
electric streetcar. Finally, a
good use for electricity!

Golden Age
c. 1830-1880 Horse drawn rail cars first
Decades
1890-1920
urban transit. Steaming piles of horse 1935 Public Utilities Divestiture
Streetcar most
dung ubiquitous metaphor Act requires power companies
common form of 1930s PCC cars debut.
for condition of the to divest transit properties. To
urban Streetcar continues inexorable
American city. congress: a Sprague on both
transportation decline in style and comfort. your houses.

Trip Planner Magazine

8 Fall 2009
 Business District, a vibrant area with specialized sub dis-
tricts wherein were located almost all jobs and activities
that the middle class wished to reach. Poorer groups re-
mained in cheaper, older housing surrounding the new cen-
ter cities. Factories and warehouses also remained packed
around railroad yards. Further out, extending along the
electric car lines, were the new streetcar suburbs. These
CROWDS WAIT TO BOARD CAR 4032 IN PHILADELPHIA, 1918,
were middle and working class bedroom districts, each a
ABOVE. OPPOSITE, THE 1912 SAN FRANCISOCO MUNI CAR
new homogenous enclave catering to a specialized income NO. 1 SEEN IN 1981 IN A NEIGHBORHOOD BUILT FOR IT (PHOTO
and ethnic group. Every day the middle and working class BY AUTHOR).
populations surged into the center on electric cars and
surged outward in the evenings. Wives and children filled streetcar was about 40 feet long and 8 feet wide, riding on
the cars during the middle of the days, and in the evenings two four-wheel trucks (or bogies). Each axle was driven by
and Sundays families used the cars for recreation. For the its own electric motor that was suspended from the axle.
middle and working classes, the streetcar revolutionized Air pressure controlled the braking power. Cars typically had
the American city and the way in which they experienced it. top speeds of about 30 mph. A cabin (“saloon”) in which
The streetcar vehicle evolved to efficiently fulfill the mass passengers rode constituted about two thirds of the length
transit role called for it. By the 1910s the contemporary of the vehicle. Many cabins were divided into a weather-pro-

1960s Almost all 2001 Already the envy of America,

Oil, Philips Petroleum, others invest in National 2003 Tacoma follows
streetcars gone Portland rubs it in by opening the first
et car systems and replaces with bus routes. Only Portland's lead.
from U.S. modern streetcar in the U.S. Tampa Electric Co.
Bucking
launches streetcar;
Trend, SEPTA still
trolleys and electric
has 12 routes and
utilities reunited at last.
194 miles of track
into 70s and 80s.

of Decay Restoration
1980s/90s U.S. into streetcar
1941-1946 20th century transit Again: Seattle (1982), Galveston (1988), Mid-2000s. Mother nature
peak with WWII. Last time Dallas (1989), Memphis (1993), Charlotte streetcar's harshest critic.
government would ever link (1996), San Fran (1995). SEPTA bucks trend, Hurricanes derail trolleys in
SOV commuters to facism. cuts last three true streetcar routes (1992). New Orleans, Galveston.

Trip Planner Magazine

Fall 2009
9
The Streetcar in American Life (cont.)

tected section and an open-air part.

The rest of the length was comprised
of large platforms projecting from both
the front and rear of the car. The plat-
forms, which were lower to the ground
than the cabins, contained large doors
and vestibules from which passengers
could board and alight. The driver,
called a motorman, stood at the con-
trols on the front platform, and the
conductor, who collected fares, stood
on the rear platform. The conduc-
tor communicated with the motor-
man with bells that he (rarely “she” in
1910) could activate by an overhead
cord. Terms like, “platform employ-
ees,” or, “platform hours,” still are
used by some transit systems today
to denote transit operating personnel
(usually bus drivers) and the hours that THE MOTORMAN STANDS ON THE PLATFORM AND OPERATES THE VEHICLE (GIVING
they work serving the riding public. US THE TERM “PLATFORM TIME”) WHILE THE CONDUCTOR STANDS BEHIND HIM

In operation the streetcar was a COLLECTING FARES. OFTEN THE CONDUCTOR STOOD AT THE BACK.

crowd-eater. Coasting into a stop

thronged with waiting passengers, the
streetcar’s gaping rear door beckoned
the crowd to board. As the last passen-
ger cleared the steps, the conductor
gave two quick yanks on the bell cord
to the motorman, who replied with two
loud clangs on the car’s traffic-warning
brass gong affixed to the front. The
car lurched forward, and the conductor
then collected fares as the car swayed
and trundled along to its next stop, of-
ten interrupted by traffic congestion
and furious bursts of clangs from the
motorman’s gong. As passengers paid
their fares, they proceeded forward
into the cabin to find a seat. Those
not finding a seat stood in the aisle
holding onto leather straps hung from
the ceiling, or they stood on the front
platform, from which they ultimately
alighted. Cars from this period were
not fast, but despite the huge crowds
they ingested and disgorged, they
did not lose time at passenger stops.
They truly were mass transit vehicles.
Several factors began the street-
car’s long decline around World War
I. Most immediately, the cost of labor
and supplies more than doubled dur-
ing the war, while streetcar companies
were politically unable to raise the fare
above the accustomed nickel, writ-
ten into charters in the 1890s. Prof-
its turned to losses, and investment
in tracks and streetcars dwindled
commensurately. Companies by and
large stopped extending lines to un-
developed areas demanded by de-
velopers, and service became less
frequent and more over-crowded.
Beginning about 1910 automo-
bile registrations also climbed rapidly.
Auto ownership initially rose fastest
in rural areas, but by World War I au-
tomobiles were widely distributed in
cities, as well. House builders began
shifting their products from clients us-
ing streetcars to clients using autos.
In cities throughout the country de-
velopers by World War I were offering
homes in areas not served by street-
cars, though they still were using their
political muscle to attempt to force
streetcar companies to extend lines
into new territory. By 1925, however,
housing developers no longer cared
whether streetcar companies extend-

Trip Planner Magazine

10 Fall 2009
ed lines into new territory. Street-
cars had become irrelevant to them.
At the same time, motor trucks
cut the tether between retailing and
railroad yards and led to the extraor-
dinarily rapid decentralization of retail-
ing. Horse-drawn wagons were slow
and expensive, and in the pre-truck
era, retailers could not afford to locate
their stores beyond a short wagon
haul away from the giant merchandise
warehouses adjacent to the rail yards.
Almost all retailing was in the CBD.
With the adoption of trucks, however,
retailers of all stripes radically decen-
tralized. The driving force was demand
for free parking from the increasingly
large number of customers who came
downtown to shop in their autos. Re-
tailers quickly learned that the cheap-
In the pre-truck era, retailers could not afford to locate their stores beyond
a short wagon haul away from the giant merchandise warehouses adjacent
to the rail yards. Almost all retailing was in the CBD. With the adoption of
trucks, however, retailers of all stripes radically decentralized.
est solution to the parking problem was
building major branch stores, which
could be easily supplied by truck from
the central city warehouses. By 1925
many venerable CBD-located firms
were opening new stores in the sub-
urbs that were grander and posher than
their original CBD flagship stores. The
new stores all were built around auto
access and free parking. The highly
centralized, streetcar-oriented retailing
regime characteristic of the American
city in 1910 had given way by 1925 to a
decentralized regime characterized by
rampant suburban strip retailing and
free parking. Already planners were
talking about the decline of the CBD.
The combined weight of these
forces pushed down streetcar patron-
age during the 1920s in all but the
largest cities, and even there streetcar
riders became increasingly dominated
by those going to and from work. The
smaller the city, the more rapid was
the loss of streetcar traffic. Streetcar
companies began abandoning lightly-
used streetcar lines and replacing oth-
er lightly used lines with buses. Most
traction industry leaders thought that
streetcars would continue serving the
more heavily-traveled lines, however,
and toward the end of the 1920s they
formed the President’s Conference
Committee to develop a super street-
car to re-equip the “trunk” lines. The
committee was comprised of presi-
dents of various streetcar compa-
nies and had at its disposal the best
electrical engineering talent from the
larger operating companies as well
as from the streetcar manufacturing
companies. The result was the PCC
car, which was unveiled in 1936, and
which is considered today to be one of
the marvels of American industrial en-
gineering. More than 5,000 PCC cars
were built between then and about
1952 for U.S. and Canadian applica-
tion, but despite the car’s success as a
piece of industrial engineering, it failed
to save the American streetcar industry.
In the PCC car the traction industry
sought and obtained a streetcar that
could keep up with autos in stop and
go traffic. The PCC could accelerate
smoothly and silently from a standing
stop as fast as an auto, and it did so
without jerking, an important consid-
eration given that many of the street-
car passengers were standees. It also
could brake to a smooth stop just as
rapidly. Although its rate of accelera-
tion fell off rapidly as it gained speed,
the PCC could reach about 45 mph on
level ground, if given enough time. The
PCC also was quiet. It rode on trucks
with rubber inserts to reduce noise.
Rubber pads even separated the steel
wheel treads from the centers. The car
was streamlined, as well, and looked
as modern as the latest autos. Finally,
the motorman could operate the car
entirely with foot pedals, leaving his
or her hands free to act as a fare ca-
shier. The industry intended to operate
the PCC with a crew of one. Passen-
gers would enter one half of a double
width front door, filing past the driver
to pay fares. They would exit from the
other half of the front door and from
a double width center or rear door.
There were shortcomings in the
PCC design as well. While its control
system provided smooth accelera-
tion and deceleration, it did not permit
smooth running at a constant speed.
When the operator releases the accel-
erator pedal, the car immediately goes
into deceleration mode. In city traffic
this shortcoming is not a problem, but
it is a problem if the car runs on its own
right-of-way where autos are kept off
the track and stations are far apart. If
an motorman wants to operate at a
steady, say, 35 mph in such an envi-
ronment, she would constantly have to
keep pumping and releasing the accel-
erator pedal, which is hard on the con-
trol system and annoying for passen-
gers. Motor burnouts could and did
Trip Planner Magazine
Fall 2009
11
 The Streetcar in American Life (cont.)

happen when PCCs ran in such environments. The PCC

trucks also were designed to provide a smooth ride on track
rigidly embedded in concrete; they give an uncomfortably
bouncy ride on open railroad track, which is designed to
“float” in a bed of gravel under the weight of moving trains.
Despite adopting the PCC car, after World War II

P HOTO: GREG THOMPSON

the American transit industry continued replacing its
streetcars with buses. By the end of the 1960s vestigial
streetcar services remained in only a handful of U.S. cit-
ies where streetcars had some speed advantage over
buses, such as operating through lengthy tunnels, in sub-
ways downtown, or on long stretches of private right of
way. Toronto remained the sole city in Canada and the
U.S. that continued to operate a very heavily-patron-
HEAVILY-PATRONIZED QUEEN STREETCAR LINE IN TORONTO
ized, large, traditional streetcar system in city streets. IN 1974, ABOVE. WHEN MIXED WITH AUTO AND TRUCK
Whether streetcar loss was inevitable is hotly de- TRAFFIC STREETCARS ARE SUBJECT TO DELAYS FROM DOUBLE
bated. The traction industry had ceased influencing the PARKED DELIVERY TRUCKS AND LEFT-HAND -TURNING AUTOS.
growth of cities around 1914-1917, when the auto took PLANNERS IN MANY GERMAN CITIES DECIDED TO SEPARATE
away that role. The traction industry also became un- STREETCARS FROM AUTO TRAFFIC, LEADING TO A NEW
CONCEPT: LIGHT RAIL (BOTTOM).
profitable, and around 1920 it began losing passengers,
at an increasing rate as the 20s progressed. As a con-
called National City Lines to purchase transit operating
sequence, the industry had difficulty financing track and
companies around the country. The purpose was to scrap
car renewal. The Depression accelerated patronage and
streetcar systems and replace them with buses built by
financing difficulties. Congress further compounded the
the General Motors subsidiary, Yellow Coach. From then
financing crisis during the 1930s, by requiring those elec-
into the 1950s National City Lines purchased streetcar and
tric utility companies that owned transit systems to divest
bus transit systems around the nation, and it continued to
themselves of the transit systems. This action deprived
operate many of its holdings into the 1960s. It eliminated
the industry of another source of capital for renewing itself.
streetcar and electric trolley bus service on most but not all
In this environment General Motors and other
of the systems that it purchased. It also outfitted all of its
automotive interests financed a holding company
systems with new GM buses. National City Lines provided
staff management services for its operating properties and
provided financing for buses and garages, as well. It is true
that many U.S. transit systems were not bought by National
City Lines; yet, they were converted from streetcar to bus,
P HOTO: FRED M ATTHEWS, 1972

as well. It also is true that most Canadian transit systems

were municipally-owned, but save for Toronto, all converted
from streetcar to bus or electric trolley bus. National City
Lines supporters point to these facts and state that NCL
injected desperately needed capital into the transit industry
and kept it going in private hands for another couple of
decades; its detractors state NCL replaced viable electric

Trip Planner Magazine

12 Fall 2009
streetcar systems with an inferior mode. In the author’s the emptiness of the vehicle.) The new German streetcars
opinion, the national interest would have been served by would be comprised of large capacity vehicles strung to-
modernizing parts of many streetcar systems at the end of gether in trains. Each car would have one to two double-
the 1920s, but doing so would have required municipalization width doors. Passengers would buy their fares at vend-
and capital infusion from higher levels of government. Even ing machines or at kiosks and would not have to present
then, given Canada’s experience, it is uncertain whether the fare when they boarded. Roving bands of inspectors,
streetcars would have been modernized. It is safe to
say, however, that in the absence of such government
takeover, the American streetcar industry could not have
maintained itself. If National City Lines had not happened,
some other combination of liquidators would have.
Fortunately, this is not the end of the American street-
car history. The social protest movements of the 1960s
helped foster a revolution in the transit industry. Dur-
ing that decade the transit industry was municipalized
with federal and in some cases, state aid. The possibil-
ity of obtaining capital for building rail systems became
real. At the same time citizen movements, such as those
dedicated to preserving neighborhoods by stopping in-
ner city freeways and others to reducing air pollution,
came together in some metropolitan areas with the idea
that surface rail systems could help with urban revitaliza-
tion. Thus was born the light rail movement. Its model
was not the American streetcar, not even the PCC car, but
a new concept coming out of northern European cities.
When faced with rebuilding their war-ravaged cities af-
ter World War II, German transit planners contemplated a
future urban world dominated by the automobile. Should
their streetcar systems be rebuilt? Many decided, yes, but
they rejected the American objective of the PCC, which
was a jack-rabbit like vehicle that was intended to blend
in with traffic. Instead, they reasoned that streetcars and
autos needed to be separated. Streetcars would be given
their own rights of way. There would be less emphasis on
lightning-quick acceleration and more on achieving unim-
peded movement. There also would be a lot of thought
given to getting streetcars through stops thronged with
hundreds of passengers without encountering the infuri-
ating boarding and alighting delays experienced by large
volumes of passengers so typical of American bus transit
systems. (In America, passengers had to pay the driver, a
system whose efficiency increases in direct proportion to

Trip Planner Magazine

Fall 2009
13
The Streetcar in American Life (cont.)
checking a percentage of the passen-
gers at random, would enforce the
fare regime. Thus, passengers could
board at any door. When a three-car
light rail train glided into a station, typi-
cally six to twelve double-width doors
would fly open, allowing a waiting
crowd of a hundred or more passen-
gers to be absorbed in a few seconds,
while just as many passengers got off.
What the Germans achieved was not
a modern streetcar, but a hybrid of the
streetcar (“strassenbahn”) and a rapid
transit train running through subways
(“U-bahn”). It was a new mode of
transit unlike anything that previously
had existed. In short, the city railway
(“stadtbahn”) was a surface-version of
a short subway train, silently snaking
through pedestrianized urban centers,
ingesting and disgorging hundreds of
passengers at strategic stops placed
a quarter to half mile apart in the cen-
ters, and then running at speed on
private lines with more widely-spaced
stops to other major activity centers.
This was the rail transit concept ad-
vocated by activists in the 1970s, but
they met resistance from the American
transit industry, most of whose leaders
stemmed from the National City Lines
era. Initial success in implementing
the idea came in mid-sized, rapidly
growing metropolitan areas, first in Ed-
monton in 1978, followed by Calgary
and San Diego in 1981, and Portland,
San Jose, and Sacramento in 1986-87.
The regions that have made best use
of the German light rail model have tai-
lored it to the American reality that met-
ropolitan areas continued their path to-
ward decentralization in an unrelenting
Trip Planner Magazine
14 Fall 2009
manner over most of the last century.
Planners in the most suc-
cessful applications have conceived
of their light rail lines as a tool in re-
structuring the bus system to serve
suburban destinations, while the light
rail lines serve the CBD and some im-
portant suburban destinations. Plan-
ners have pulled much of the bus
service out of the CBD, terminating it
instead at suburban light rail stations.
Bus routes are made much shorter
with fewer duplicative bus miles, and
they take train passengers to impor-
tant suburban destinations that are not
on the rail lines. Light rail stations also
are designed as places where passen-
In America, passengers had to pay the driver, a system whose
efficiency increases in direct proportion to the emptiness of the
vehicle. (In other words transit works better when fewer people
use it.)
gers will be able to transfer between
bus routes, thus achieving intra-sub-
urban transit mobility. This approach
to system design reflects recognition
on the part of planners that region-
al transit patronage is proportional
to the number of jobs that are eas-
ily reached by the transit system, and
that as much as 97 percent of regional
jobs are found in suburban locations.
In some areas with integrated
bus and light rail systems, planners
are promoting the creation of denser
housing, commercial, and employment
centers adjacent to light rail stations.
Plazas and pedestrian walkways in-
terconnect the various parts of such
development, known as Transit-Ori-
ented Development. Some planners
suggest that the mere construction
of a light rail line will cause TODs to
spontaneously spring up around light
rail stations, but that possibility seems
doubtful. It now is well known that the
quality of a transportation investment
that makes land more valuable for de-
velopment is improved accessibility
to population and jobs. Accessibility
of most parcels in the American me-
tropolis to employment and population
already is so high through the auto-
mobile/highway system that the small
incremental accessibility coming to a
parcel by virtue of a light rail station
opening adjacent to it would have neg-
ligible impact on development. On the
other hand, building light rail lines into
edge-city-type auto-oriented develop-
ment, and then retrofitting that devel-
opment to make it possible to walk
between its various pieces and light
rail stations, does appear to be yield-
ing patronage results, as evidenced
by San Diego’s Mission Valley Line.
Regions following these concepts
with success include San Diego, Port-
land, St. Louis, and Dallas, among oth-
ers. Light rail lines in these regions
account for a small percent of route
miles but thirty to sixty percent of the
total transit traffic measured in either
passenger miles or unlinked trips. At
the same time, passenger traffic per
capita is growing, unlike systems with
bus lines focused on the CBD (where
passenger decline is severe), and op-
erating expenses per passenger or
passenger mile remain below indus-
try norms for similar sized regions.
More recently some groups advo-
cating densification of American cit-
ies are promoting revival of the classic
American streetcar. To date they have
had more success in doing so in form
rather than in function. Typically, genu-
ine old American streetcars have been
found and refurbished or replicas have
been constructed for such services,
but a modern Czech streetcar now is
being manufactured in the Portland
area for such use. Most applications
run cars around tourist-oriented track
loops organizations have built in the old
downtown areas that planners are at-
tempting to revive. Streetcar drivers act
as fare cashiers, and service generally
is infrequent and slow. Although there
are exceptions, such services typically
do not function as part of the regular
transit system; most tourist streetcars
do not, for example, replace pre-exist-
ing bus routes or serve as a tool around
which bus service in a sector of the city
is restructured, as is typical with light
rail. Exceptions include Portland’s
streetcar (using Czech vehicles), which
does a nice job connecting two inner
city neighborhoods with the downtown
and a university. Two other exceptions
include a similar type of service using
the same type of vehicle, just opened
in central Seattle, and San Francisco’s
F line, which although primarily a tour-
ist-oriented ride, evolved from a tradi-
tional trolley bus. The Portland service
works well in part because much of it is
in a fare-free zone, and the remainder
uses the self-service proof-of-payment
Sponsors
system, so boarding and alighting oc-
curs through all doors. There is heavy
demand for the San Francisco ser- Our sponsors make this publica-
vice, but cumbersome and slow fare tion possible. Please consider
collection hinders its usefulness. In these companies for your prod-
the author’s view a modern streetcar uct and service needs. And
similar to the Czech technology offers tell them you saw them in Trip
promise, but that promise will not be Planner Magazine.
fully realized unless planners achieve:
• Applications that have high
passenger demand (linking down-
towns, major activity centers, and/
or urban-scale neighborhoods);
• Applications that are able
to serve high passenger demand
faster, more cheaply and clean-
ly (and more quietly) than buses;
• Fare systems that allow pas-
sengers to enter and leave through all
doors and that can board and alight
scores of passengers in seconds;
• Integration of the service with
the bus transit system, and if applicable,
light rail service, achieving service im-
provement, productivity improvement
and cost reduction in the process.
Dr. Thompson helped develop light
rail systems in Edmonton and San Diego.
He is a professor of urban and regional
planning and his book, The Passenger
Train in the Motor Age: California 1910-
1941 was published in late 1993 by
the Ohio State University Press. His
major research interest is studying the
role of public transportation in auto-
dominated societies, both historically
and in the present day. Currently he
chairs the research subcommittee of
the Transportation Research Board’s
Committee on Light Rail Transit.
Trip Planner Magazine
Fall 2009
15
 The Space Between
Shaping Community with Transit: in Charlottesville, Virginia
C Charlottesville, a small city
in central Virginia with a population
of 40,000, has been home to three
presidents, Madison, Monroe, and
most famously Thomas Jefferson.
He founded the University of Virginia
whose Rotunda graces the pages of
humanities textbooks, post cards,
and prints, and draws tourists from
around the world. The jam band The
Dave Matthews Band got its start a
mile away in the popular downtown
Trip Planner Magazine
16 Fall 2009
by Gary Okerlund, with Todd Gordon
where students and townies mix
along the successful pedestrian mall.
These two signature destinations
fic congestion, extensive surface
parking, and small and disconnect-
ed land parcels. West Main is adja-
are linked by West Main Street, a cent to an Amtrak Station and is also
low-density, pedestrian-unfriendly, served by a good local bus system,
auto-oriented corridor, a pair of including a popular rubber-tired “trol-
diamonds strung together with twine. ley,” but congested traffic makes bus
While the West Main corridor service unreliable and choice rid-
could be an active and healthy link ers continue to drive their own cars.
between Charlottesville’s two most With a vision of a more vital, ac-
thriving areas, it remains constrained cessible, and pedestrian friendly West
by the narrowness of the street, traf- Main Street, a grassroots effort began
 THOMAS JEFFERSON’S WOLD FAMOUS
P HOTO: BRAD SHEFFIELD

ROTUNDA GRACES THE CAMPUS OF

THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, TOP.
CLOSED TO AUTO TRAFFIC IN 1976,
CHARLOTTESVILLE’S PEDESTRIAN
MALL, BOTTOM, HAS BECOME THE
CENTERPIECE OF THE DOWNTOWN, AND
A VIBRANT PROMENADE FOR SHOPPING,
DINING, AND ENTERTAINMENT.
BETWEEN THEM, WEST M AIN IS
THE FAMILIAR ASPHALT STRAP OF
COMMERCIAL DEBRIS COMMON TO
AMERICAN CITIES.
P HOTO: OKERLUND A SSOCIATES

in 2003 to explore Charlottesville’s transit

future. The citizens involved in this ef-
fort wanted to determine if better transit
could not only make access to the down-
town and university easier, but also extend
the success of those areas to West Main.
The result was a “Summit on Transpor-
tation and Transit,” a City of Charlottes-
ville sponsored event in the fall of 2003.
The Summit brought top transit ex-
perts to Charlottesville to give an objective
assessment of the city’s transit needs and
opportunities. The results of their work
focused on West Main Street, where a
P HOTO: OKERLUND A SSOCIATES

strong transit link between downtown and

the University could improve economic
development, job accessibility, neighbor-
hood vitality, and environmental protec-
tion. The Summit panel concluded that
Charlottesville should explore the devel-
opment of an urban streetcar system for
West Main, a small electric rail system that
would be an appropriate scale for the cor-

Trip Planner Magazine

Fall 2009
17
 The Space Between (cont.)
AS PART OF THE PRESENTATION
SHOWN TO THE COMMUNITY, THE
TEAM USED PHOTO SIMULATIONS
LIKE THIS ONE, WHICH JUXTAPOSES
A MODERN STREETCAR VEHICLE
(PHOTOGRAPHED IN TACOMA,
WASHINGTON) WITH THE NEWLY
BUILT HOME OF THE LIVE A RTS,
A COMMUNITY THEATER IN
DOWNTOWN CHARLOTTESVILLE.
Trip Planner Magazine
18 Fall 2009
ridor. While, if realized, Charlottesville
would be the smallest city with such a
system, the summit panel argued that
the population of the community mat-
tered less than the existing and poten-
tial health of the corridor. It was agreed
that downtown and the University have
the density to support a streetcar sys-
tem and that the West Main Street cor-
ridor could also evolve to that level with
proper encouragement and investment.
While the Summit left organiz-
ers with optimism, greater focus, and
the fresh and energizing new idea for
a streetcar system, the newness and
lack of public familiarity with modern
streetcar presented major barriers.
With Portland, Oregon starting con-
struction of the first modern streetcar
system in America only 4 years prior,
the public still thought of streetcars
as historic relics. An important di-
mension of this educational com-
ponent is to recognize that it is less
about choosing a transit system and
more about choosing the type of
community and quality-of life that
the public wants, and implement-
ing transit to support that choice.
Following the recommenda-
tions of the summit, a number of orga-
nizations teamed up to further promote
the streetcar concept. These groups
were: The Alliance for Community
Choice in Transportation (ACCT, a local
non-profit promoting walkability and
bikeability), the City of Charlottesville,
and Okerlund Associates Urban De-
sign, with financial support granted by
The Blue Moon Fund (a private founda-
tion). The strategy of this team was to
promote the streetcar concept from the
ground up, by educating neighborhood
associations and community groups,
and to promote the idea as a demon-
stration project that could eventually
become a larger, regional transit system
with associated transit-oriented devel-
opment. This strategy was helped by
the timing of other city efforts, includ-
ing a $6.5 million allocation for a Down-
town Transit Center (since completed)
and a $1.5 million allocation for bus
transit and pedestrian improvements
along West Main Street, as well as re-
cent key policy initiatives such as the
approval of a new city-wide zoning or-
dinance promoting increased densities.
 The promotion of a West Main
Streetcar began with what the involved
groups termed a Technical Preview, a
chance to gather information from tran-
sit engineers with streetcar experience
without undertaking a full and final de-
sign of the project. For this task, ACCT
and Okerlund Associates hired consul-
tants who had previously worked as
project engineers on the construction of
the streetcar system in Portland. This
task resulted in a conceptual streetcar
route, street section designs, and plan
of next steps, as well as a greater un-
derstanding that a streetcar for Char-
lottesville was, in fact, a viable option.
The next step in the streetcar
effort was to organize trips in the fall
of 2004 for key Charlottesville decision
makers and community leaders to visit
existing streetcar projects in Portland
and Tacoma. Participants in these trips
included city councilors, university of-
ficials, heads of non-profits, real estate
developers, and local media, among
others. The trips allowed these lead-
ers to experience streetcars in per-
son, meet with people involved in the
planning of these now-successful sys-
tems, and see the development and
community-building effects of street- A STRETCH OF SEVERAL BLOCKS
cars. While prior to the trips, some KNOW COLLECTIVELY AS “THE
had concerns about overhead power CORNER”, THIS COLLECTION OF
wires and integration of the street- SHOPS AND RESTAURANTS IS A BUSY
car with traffic, these concerns were GATHERING PLACE THAT EXISTS
greatly smoothed by this first-hand ex- WHERE CHARLOTTESVILLE MEETS
THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF
perience. Secondly, participants were
VIRGINIA GROUNDS.
able to see how convenient life in a
Trip Planner Magazine
Fall 2009
19
 The Space Between (cont.)
transit-rich region can be (no automobiles were
used at any point during the transit site visits).
Following the Technical Preview and
Streetcar Site Visits, ACCT and Okerlund Asso-
ciates developed a comprehensive educational
presentation to explain the streetcar concept,
among a range of transportation options, and the
explorations that had already been done toward
such a system for Charlottesville. In the form of
a report, report summary, and graphic presenta-
tion, this educational package was presented to
neighborhood associations and non-profits, and
at community events in an attempt to build broad
public support for a streetcar on West Main.
Site visit participants were able to see how convenient life
in a transit-rich region can be (no automobiles were used
at any point during the transit site visits).
Through these efforts, the idea of a West Main
Streetcar became somewhat accepted, at least
in concept. People liked the high-quality, high-
visibility transportation option, and to a lesser
extent, saw that a streetcar could encour-
age quality infill development along West Main
Street. However, the West Main Streetcar still
lacked real leadership, a clear path from con-
cept to construction, and a source of funding for
what is, admittedly, an expensive proposition.
In order to better explore the details
and steps necessary to building the system, a
Mayor’s Streetcar Task Force was appointed
in 2006. The group was tasked with determin-
ing the next steps to assess the feasibility of a
streetcar corridor as an element of a regional
network and a stimulant for enhanced economic
development opportunities along the corridor.
The recommendations of this group were pre-
sented to the city council. Later, a scope-of-
Trip Planner Magazine
20 Fall 2009
work document was prepared and presented to
the city council to determine specific steps, re-
sponsibilities and costs to move forward, involv-
ing a partnership among the city, development
community and the non-profit sector. At this
time, the project remains at this step, waiting for
funding and a public mandate to move forward.
This project represents a unique pub-
lic-private partnership between ACCT and the
City of Charlottesville. Past transit projects in
Charlottesville and in other communities across
the country have been derailed or significant-
ly delayed due to lack of political champions
and public outreach. This project emphasized
public involvement and political champions in
the beginning of the planning stages. A public-
private partnership was proposed to guide and
fund the next effort that would include the city,
development community, and private sector.
Due to currently less-than-full interest by
decision-makers in supporting the entire effort,
and economic pressures on the non-profit and de-
velopment communities that were asked to match
funding, the effort is on hold. The project is far
from dead, but our experiences in Charlottesville
show that even the best laid plans can go awry,
or at least be delayed. As with any major invest-
ment nothing is guaranteed; Caveat emptor.
Gary Okerlund is an architect, landscape
architect, and urban design consultant,
is principal of Okerlund Associates in
Charlottesville. His urban design plans and
publications include Shaping Community
with Transit, Transit-Oriented Communities for
Northern Virginia, and Public Improvements
on Main Street for the National Main Street
Center.
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 Cutting the Cord
Emerging Technologies are producing Streetcars Without Wires
by Steven M. Carroll

W We tend to think of streetcars as operating on a fixed

guideway. The majority of the world’s streetcar systems, how-
ever, move between two of them, the unobtrusive rails in the
ground and the power lines that run overhead and always in sight.
The streetcar design philosophy is founded on simplicity
and minimizing costs, blending with existing and new neigh-
borhoods. Negative impacts to utilities and existing street in-
frastructure are minimized through the use of shallow track
slab construction, and projects are designed for ease of con-

AT THE A MERICANA AT BRAND IN GLENDALE, CA, THE

MONEY SAVED ON OVERHEAD WEARS COULD APPARENTLY
BE SPENT ON LAVISH APPOINTMENTS FOR THE STREETCARS
THEMSESLEVES.

22
struction. Streetcar THE GALVESTON STREETCAR,
stops are simple LEFT, RUNS ON DIESEL WHILE

and are spaced THE TROLLEYS AT THE GROVE IN

L.A., BELOW, RUN ON BATTERIES
relatively closely
AND PURE FUN.
together (much like
local bus stops),
in support of its
role as a pedes-
trian accelerator.
Most street-
cars operating in
the U.S., whether
vintage (origi-
nal authentic vehicles), heritage (built
to resemble original vehicles) or mod-
ern state-of-the-art vehicles, are pow-
ered by an electric overhead wire, also
know as a trolley wire that carries be-
tween 600 and 750 volts of direct cur-
rent (DC), versus alternating current
(AC) most people are familiar with in
their everyday lives. Examples of these
three types of vehicles include the Pearly
Thomas Company vintage streetcars
used on the St. Charles line in New Or-
leans, the Birney replica streetcars pro- as it also requires substations to convert commer-
duced by Gomaco Trolley Company for Tampa’s cial AC power to DC power and poles with mast
system, and the modern streetcar or European arms to support the wire. Other considerations in-
tram style vehicle built by Skoda for Portland. clude the visual impact of the many poles and the
To transfer the power from the wire to the ve- spider web of wires needed to support and sus-
hicle, a spring loaded pole or a panagraph extends pend the system, and the need to protect metal
from the vehicle and makes contact with the trolley utilities from the corrosive effects of stray DC
wire, a piece of bare copper approximately one-half current associated with these types of systems.
inch in diameter. Although this power distribution To avoid these impacts and reduce the cost
system is much simpler than one typically associ- of implementation, one well-established system
ated with light rail systems, the cost off installing in Galveston and one recent new start in Savan-
such a power distribution system is still significant nah have chosen to use streetcars with an onboard

Trip Planner Magazine

Fall 2009
23
 Cutting the Cord (cont.)
electric generator powered by either
a diesel or gasoline engine similar to
current hybrid cars. Alternative wire-
less solutions are rapidly gaining at-
tention. Two battery-powered vehicles
systems are operating in California:
at The Grove in Los Angeles and the
Americana at Brand in Glendale. Both
of these complexes are large shop-
ping, dining, and entertainment desti-
nations. Streetcar and light rail vehicle
suppliers around the world, similar to
bus and automobile companies are
exploring alternative ways to power
their vehicles and reduce environ-
mental impacts and visual blight.
Three categories of alternative
technologies are either in operation,
research and development or the
testing phase. These include way-
side, on-board energy storage and
on-board power source technologies.
Wayside technologies require ex-
ternal infrastructure to provide power
to the vehicle. The one wayside ex-
ample currently in use is a surface-
mounted contact rail—a third rail, if
you will—which utilizes a rail between
the running rails that is energized only
when the vehicle is above it; the re-
mainder of the time there is no pow-
er to the rail. This system requires
a significant wayside investment in
addition to the cost of the on-board
vehicle technology and is only in rev-
enue service in Bordeaux, France for
a short segment in an historic district.
Within the on-board energy stor-
age technology category, there are
three types of devices: batteries, ultra
capacitors and flywheels. In addition
Trip Planner Magazine
24 Fall 2009
to the two examples in the U.S., two
historic districts in Nice, France are us-
ing battery technology. This system is
combined with an overhead wire for
the remainder of the line and the bat-
teries are charged from the overhead
wire. This system has been in revenue
service since November of 2007. Ka-
wasaki also has a similar technology
under development and in demonstra-
tion in Japan. In the U.S., the Gomaco
Trolley Company received a contract
in August 2009 to retrofit a vintage
streetcar from Melbourne, Australia
with battery technology for a client in
Kingston, New York. Two other U.S.
cities, St. Louis and Rock Hill, South
Carolina are also considering this
technology for use in replica Birney ve-
hicles similar to those built for Tampa
and Little Rock. Similar to the system
in Nice, the system proposed for St.
Louis will use a combination of battery
and overhead wire segments. Rock
Hill is still in the planning stage and
could choose to go with just a battery
or a combination similar to St. Louis.
Ultra capacitors are another form
of on-board storage device capable
of storing energy generated during
braking. This device is not intended
for use as an off-wire power source,
but it has been demonstrated off-wire
for a distance of approximately 0.3
miles. There are several suppliers and
a four year trial has been completed
in Mannheim, Germany. Flywheels,
similar to ultra capacitors, store en-
ergy generated during breaking. This
technology is not in revenue service,
but is in demonstration in Rotter-
dam, Netherlands and has operated
off-wire for approximately one mile.
In the on-board power source cat-
egory, there are only two systems in
use: fuel cells and fuel/electric hybrids.
Fuel cells charge batteries which drive
electric motors. This technology is still
in research and development, and cur-
rently only being demonstrated with
buses at Alameda County Transit in
Oakland. Fuel/electric hybrids utilize a
diesel engine attached to a generator
that powers electric motors. There are
a number of examples of these types
of vehicles in revenue service including
the Galveston and Savannah systems.
So, if you want a streetcar, but
you’re not sure you want or can af-
ford an overhead power distribution
system, there are a number of alter-
native technologies being evaluated
and demonstrated. However, current
proven options are generally limited
to on-board storage and on-board
power source technologies or a com-
bination of the two. Another key factor
is supplier interest. Before suppliers
will make the investment in research
and development, they have to feel
there is a large enough market for the
technology. With the high level of in-
terest in alternative energy sources
and green technology, wireless may
be the future of rail technology.
Steven Carroll is a Vice President of Rail/
Transit for HDR, Inc.with over 32 years of
experience planning, engineering, construction,
and operation of rail freight and rail transit
projects. HDR is a multidisciplinary planning
and engineering firm with over 8,000 employee
owners and 158 offices in the U.S. and Canada.
HDR is a recognized leader in the field of
streetcar planning and engineering, and has led
or supported over two dozen streetcar projects
in the past six years.
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Through the Looking Glass
It looks like transit, sounds like money, and smells like politics. It must be Philly’s Girard Streetcar Line.

by Samuel L. Scheib

P Philadelphia is home to over 118

miles of bona fide, in-the-asphalt, ex-
posed streetcar rails, the greatest quantity
in the country. Many are not in regular use
but they are left in place and uncovered
and, like a strip tease, leave open the titil-
lating possibility that regular streetcar ser-
vice will return. On route 15, the Girard
Avenue Line, it has. The green, silver and
cream PCC cars hit the rails September 4,
2005 after a 13-year absence. Ridership is
high, the city is happy to finally have these
rolling museums back in service, and the
area around Girard is slowly revitalizing.
For the Southeastern Pennsylvania Trans-
portation Authority (SEPTA) that operates
the route things could not be much worse.
Philadelphia was one of America’s
great streetcar cities. An order of Near-
side streetcars acquired between 1911
and 1913 represented the “largest sin-
gle group of standardized cars ever ac-
quired by any property anywhere in the
world.” Philly once had the longest and
the shortest streetcar routes in the world,
the 25.5-mile round trip route 23 from
downtown to Chestnut Hill and the 1.5-
mile round trip route 62. At its peak in
1911, the city boasted 3,999 streetcars
on 678 miles of track (by comparison, to-
day SEPTA has 1,360 buses in its fleet).
As of 1965, Philadelphia still had 480
PCC cars, the most of any American city.
But in Philly, as elsewhere, the street-

Trip Planner Magazine

26 Fall 2009
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Through the Looking Glass (cont.)
car fast became a relic. As soon as
automobiles entered city traffic they
began blocking the path of streetcars;
soon engineers adopted the opposing
view that streetcars were interfering
with the progress of the automobile.
In a 1924 essay titled “Philadelphia’s
Traffic Problems and Their Solution,”
J. Borton Weeks wrote of the fric-
tion between streetcars and autos:
“Surface railway cars in the busi-
ness district of a great city constitute
a great economic waste. Every inch
of usable space on the downtown
streets is of high value. . . If the car
tracks were removed and auto bus
lines instituted, the bus would stop,
as it does in London, flush to the
curb, unloading and loading its pas-
sengers directly from the sidewalk
and still leaving two open lanes of
travel, with complete safety to the
bus users. With existing conditions,
the street car today, the instant it
stops, completely blocks at least
two of the three lanes of travel.”
By the 1990s, Philadelphia was a
member of a very small club. The City
of Brotherly Love, Boston and New Or-
leans, were the only cities with original
streetcar lines in regular service and
Philadelphia still had much of its sur-
face streetcar track in place. The last
of Philly’s surface streetcar routes, 15,
23, and 56, were suspended—osten-
sibly temporarily—in 1992, ironically
at about the same time the rest of the
country was catching the streetcar bug.
Later that same year the SEPTA board
made an agreement with then Mayor
Ed Rendell to restore streetcar service
to those routes after resolving a budget
crisis. It could not have taken long for
SEPTA to get used to the money it was
saving by operating buses, roughly $2
million per-year per-route. Streetcars
did not enter service again until route
15 was reinstated at the end of 2005.
The Girard Streetcar is a fascinat-
ing story of nostalgia colliding with
politics. A group of active and vocal
citizens known as Trolley Jollies was
intent on seeing streetcar service re-
turned to the three lines suspended
in 1992. Residents of Chestnut Hill,
a cute turn-of-the-century streetcar
suburb at the end of route 23 with
wine shops and other boutique store-
fronts, went so far as to charter a 1947
PCC car to take them to a September
1997 Philadelphia City Council spe-
cial hearing on the status of the three
lines. The journey to the meeting did
not augur well for streetcar service:
even the police escort was powerless
against the delivery truck parked on
the tracks. At this three-hour meeting
citizens leaned on their transit agen-
cy and at the end of it, then General
Manager Jack Leary announced SEP-
TA’s plan to restore the Girard Line.
From SEPTA’s perspective, route
15 is a better bus route. The streetcar
is an anachronism: motorists initially
did not realize they needed to stop for
streetcar passengers exiting the cen-
ter-lane vehicle into traffic; people liv-
ing along the route are upset that they
have lost some parking spaces to make
room for the train; tall service trucks
frequently tear down the wires that
power the vehicles. “On-time perfor-
mance for trolleys is about 10%,” then
General Manager Faye Moore said in
our May 2007 interview (although a
more current figure is 60%). “Cars
block the lane and the trolley can’t
get through.” Automobiles are not al-
lowed to use the streetcar lane save for
one crucial exception: when making
unprotected left turns. That is a little
like saying, “I don’t smoke much, only
when I party,” and you are Paris Hilton.
Worst of all, the Girard Line was
reconstituted on pre-ADA infrastruc-
ture in an anno ADA America. Here is
how Steven D’Antonio, manager of city
service planning, describes the prob-
lem: “The islands where people stand
were there from the days when streetcars
were common. They are very narrow and
we have to serve people in wheelchairs
in the middle of a small island. The bus
route [of 15] was completely ADA com-
pliant, but [for the streetcar] about a
third of the stops had to be discontin-
ued because there is no safe place to
accommodate loading and unloading.”
Moreover, the wheelchair lift retrofit-
ted on the 60-year-old cars is a sched-
ule killer. The lift “is very time consum-
ing. The driver leaves his seat out the
front door, walks to the back, uses a key
to lower the lift, and loads the wheelchair
which goes on sideways, taking some time
to maneuver in place. He then goes back
inside the front door, walks to rear through
the crowd to get the wheelchair and secures
it in place before going back to his seat and
driving away. Sometimes the next car is
right behind and there is no way to pass.”
It can take ten minutes to load one chair.
SEPTA, however, is at a real disadvan-
tage in arguing with the public about this
route because it is so productive, carry-
ing 3.2 million passengers in 2006. Of the
true American streetcars (see Round Up
page 36 for a complete list) only the F Mar-
ket Line (5.1 million trips) is busier. SEPTA
board member Pasquale T. “Pat” Deon said
at a press conference when Girard was
launched, “Returning streetcars to Route
23, let alone Route 56, depends on the suc-
cess of Route 15. The real issue for us is the
financial viability of running these trolleys.
If the ridership is great on [route 15], then
TROLLEY JOLLIES LEAVE
I think it would bode well for us to look at THEIR CALLING CARD ON
the other lines.” A Trolley Jollie seeing the A BUS STOP IN CHESTNUT
ridership on Girard may conclude that route HILL, ABOVE. A
23 streetcar service is imminent, hence the STREETCAR MAKES ITS
stickers seen all around Chestnut Hill read- WAY ALONG THE 19TH
CENTURY INFRASTRUCTURE
ing “Where is the Trolley SEPTA Promised?”
OF GIRARD STREET,
Ridership numbers in a great tran-
BELOW. I N THE CENTER
sit city like Philadelphia can be mislead- OF THE OPPOSITE PAGE,
ing. Girard was a streetcar line, then a bus DELIVERY TRUCKS BLOCKED
line, then a streetcar line again, but “route STREETCARS FROM THE
15 never went away,” says Mr. D’Antonio. EARLIEST DAYS.
“Only the mode changed.” Route 15 op-
erates between an elevated rail and a sub-
way line, through transit dependent neigh-
borhoods, and is five blocks from Temple
University and its 34,000 students. They
would have to coat the handrails with swine
flu syrup to keep people from riding it.
“The trolley-jollies want the trollies,”
said Ms. Moore, “but they don’t ride them.
Our riders say they want to get to work on
time.” Interviews with route 15 passengers
confirmed this. Monica Allen was typical,
 Through the Looking Glass (cont.)
Automobiles are not al-
lowed to use the streetcar
lane save for one crucial
exception: when making
unprotected left turns.
That is a little like saying,
“I don’t smoke much,
only when I party,” and
you are Paris Hilton.
Trip Planner Magazine
30 Fall 2009
waiting on an island in front of a Rite Aid:
“The trolley is okay, it looks nice, but the
buses are usually more on time.” A street-
car operator who requested anonymity put
it more bluntly: “Most of the passengers
don’t care if it’s a bus or a trolley. If you pulled
up in a horse and buggy people would get
on it.” In fact, ridership was higher on route
15 in 2004, the last year it was bus-only.
In restarting streetcar service SEPTA
worked to prevent a gaping wound from
opening in the budget. The original plan
was to bid for modern, low-floor cars but
they decided to renovate the PCC cars
as a less expensive alternative. Still, the
restoration cost of a PCC car was $1 mil-
lion, compared to $600,000 for a new bus
and per-vehicle-mile maintenance costs
are $4.88 compared to $3.01 for buses.
These come on top of the requirement
that SEPTA maintains both the rails and
the road within 18 inches of any track,
even where trains are no longer running;
any place a pothole opens near the rails,
SEPTA—not the city of Philadelphia—
fixes it. And of course, the 15% FTA
spare ratio prevents keeping extra buses
in reserve for problems with a streetcar.
This author rode route 23 its entire
length, following the tracks that would be
a Chestnut Hill trolley. Having the longest
streetcar route in the world again would
make for lousy bragging rights. It is pain-
fully slow, so much so that it became a
one-way trip. The ride back on the train—
and there is heavy rail parallel to the length
of route 23— was faster and more com-
fortable. That 23 is the busiest route in the
SEPTA system is politically problematic for
the agency, because in the minds of some
(a vocal “some”) high ridership makes a
good candidate for streetcar. The city of
Philadelphia insists on having the service
while refusing to give SEPTA what it needs
most to make it effective: a dedicated right-
of-way for streetcars. Again Mr. D’Antonio:
“When the agreement was signed the
city agreed to help with enforcement [of
cars on rails] but hasn’t come through.”
What is particularly frustrating for staff
at SEPTA is that this is not an agency THE TWO FACES OF GIRARD AVENUE. ABOVE LEFT AN HISTORIC MARKER
that has abandoned streetcars on the STANDS IN FRONT OF NEWLY RENOVATED HOMES, THE EXCEPTION, WHILE
whole. There are still number of trolley FURTHER DOWN THE ROAD, WINDOWS ARE BOARDED UP IN THE MORE COMMON

routes—called subway-surface lines—
in active service: routes 10, 11, 13, 34
and 36 operate on the street for over
80% of their length. When she was
at SEPTA, Faye Moore said there was
“talk from city hall about putting trol-
leys down Market Street to the water-
front. Guess what? That’s the same
route that was used in 1915 and that
is why we built the subways, to get
the trolleys off the streets.” The sub-
ways cover that other 20%. “Ironi-
cally,” says Mr. D’Antonio, “these
subway-surface lines are able to
get on-time in the most congest-
ed part of the city, the downtown.”
Philadelphia’s streetcar trajecto-
ry has been unusual to say the least,
saving stock and track when other cit-
ies were trashing them, canning three
lines when other cities were building
new ones. U.S. transit agencies have
tended to over-predict demand on rail
projects to disastrous financial results.
Miami underestimated the cost-per-
passenger for its Metro Rail at $1.73
compared to the actual of $16.77, an
872% difference. D.H. Pickrell stud-
ied ten systems, including Miami, and
APPEARANCE. OPPOSITE, DOWNTOWN IS CLOSE BUT TOO FAR FOR VISITORS TO
MIND ROUTE 15. ON GIRARD THE STREETCAR IS TRANSPORTATION NOT TOURISM
found lowest per-passenger cost was
twice the projection, and the typical
cost 4 to 5 times as high. All other
transit agencies have to build public
support for rail long before the steel is
ordered. SEPTA’s problems with routes
15, 23, and 56 have been the oppo-
site: citizens with a voice in the halls
of power were, and are, screaming
for streetcars, ridership was very high
from day one, and the transit property
had to be brought along, kicking and
screaming, to operate the damn thing.
This is Wonderland and the white rab-
bit is checking on-time performance.
When Girard reopened in
2005, SEPTA was under a state DOT
mandate (Act 3, Act 26) to have a 50%
farebox recovery ratio (farebox here in-
cluding all revenue). Considering the
constant demands for service and the
added expense of the streetcars, it is
easy to understand SEPTA’s reticence.
Faye Moore spoke longingly of wanting
an LRT for Philadelphia similar to New
Jersey Transit’s enviable Hudson-Ber-
OR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT.
gen, then coming on line, but a capital
project like that would have knocked
the farebox ratio completely out of
whack. However, according to Rich-
ard Maloney, SEPTA director of public
affairs, a new Act 44 of 2007 eased that
standard, putting in place a series of
performance measures by mode that
would be compared with peers and
corrective action taken if necessary.
Politics is the art of the pos-
sible, and much becomes possible
in transit when citizen activists and
city leaders are demanding more of
it. This civic energy in favor of tran-
sit could be directed at other rail proj-
ects where buses are not an effective
mode. Citizen activists and an ac-
commodating government have ap-
plied pressure on the transit agency
to run a mode not in its or its custom-
ers’ best interest. If those activists
can make a “bad” project happen,
imagine what would happen if they
were enlisted in support of the good.

Trip Planner Magazine

Fall 2009
31
Streetcar Maiden,USA
Portland doesn’t just have modern streetcars. Now they are made there too.
S Skoda is a legendary firm dating
from 1859 that has made weapons,
brewing equipment, bridge parts, air-
planes, and automobiles (now a sepa-
rate division owned by Volkswagen).
Today the Czech company makes
steam turbines and condensers, but
the few Americans who are aware of
Skoda probably know the company
because of its transit products. Eyes
popped in 2001 when the Portland
Streetcar opened, powered by shiny,
sleek, and quiet Skoda T-10 tram cars.
Portland wanted a modern system
like those in Istanbul, Prague, Helsinki
and so many other Continental cities,
but all the railcars used in those places
were built in Europe. The Buy America
Act says, “All of the components of the
Graphics Division
Sales Support:
866.528.2175
www.pride-enterprises.org
“Your Trip Planner Magazine Printer”
by Arterio Dominguez
[manufactured] product must be of U.S.
origin” (661.5), except for buses and
other rolling stock “if the cost of com-
ponents produced in the United States
is more than 60 percent of the cost of all
components and final assembly takes
place in the United States” (661.11).
The German company Siemens
has a plant in California to make light
rail vehicles for the American market
because of Buy America, but they do
not make streetcars. The Gomaco
Trolley Company in Iowa makes heri-
tage (reproduction) cars, but no one in
the United States was building mod-
ern cars. Portland requested, and FTA
granted a waiver for non-availability
and like so many Czech exports be-
fore—composer Antonin Dvorak, Pil-
• Transit Schedules
• Route Maps
• Fare Guides
• Pamphlets
• Brochures
• Newsletters
• Guide Books
sner Urquell beer, Semtex plastic ex-
plosives—Skoda came to America.
Twenty miles outside Portland in
Clackamas, Oregon, Chandra Brown,
vice president of Oregon Iron Works
was surprised by the news. “I heard
there were no modern streetcars be-
ing built in the United States and I
thought this was ridiculous. Street-
cars were invented here. I thought:
we could build this.” In 2005 Oregon
Iron Works decided to look into it.
Oregon Iron Works is a diverse
company, building boats, bridges,
space launch complexes, and hy-
droelectric machinery, among other
things, but is always looking for new
opportunities, the next generation
of products. Renewable energy is a
new product market and wave PORTLAND CELEBRTES THE ARRIVAL OF THE FIRST U.S.-MADE MODERN STREETCAR
energy devices, for instance,
are one product OIW is look-
ing into; streetcar too fits into that
green revolution in manufacturing.
It can be difficult for a foreign
manufacturer to break into the Ameri-
can transit market; because of Buy
America the transition is most effec-
tive with a U.S. manufacturing plant
like Siemens’ noted above or Cana-
dian New Flyer’s bus factory in Min-
nesota. By teaming up with an es-
tablished American company, Skoda
could eliminate headaches, expenses,
and a steep learning curve. For their
part, OIW had the capabilities to build
a streetcar, but not to design one.
Through a new subsidiary called
United Streetcar, OIW inked a deal somewhere. But it was an experiment. excited to see a [modern] streetcar
with Skoda whereby the Czech com- The frame, the boggie, the bod- built in the U.S.” says Ms. Brown. “We
pany licensed its already well-known— ies, and the roof were made by United have cities coming out to see the fac-
“beloved” is Chandra Brown’s word for Streetcar, and they handle final assem- tory in addition to going to Portland
it—streetcar design to United Street- bly as well. The propulsion system to see them in operation.” Portland
car but the Americans would use the comes from the Czech Republic, but is expanding its streetcar service with
Skoda-built propulsion system. This because of Buy America “most of the an Eastside loop in the works. United
way the streetcar meets Buy America [other] components had to be replaced Streetcar has an order for six cars for
and Skoda Electric sells more units. with American-made components so that portion and is building seven units
Secretary of Transportation Ray we were really building a new industry,” for the Westside loop. They also won
LaHood was on hand for the unveil- Ms. Brown says. “Those products were an RFP for seven streetcars for Tuc-
ing of the first car in Portland on July not here. This is a whole new product son, “and we are looking to Charlotte,
1, 2009, a red and blue number that is line for tons of other companies across Miami, and others for selling cars.”
indistinguishable to the average pas- the U.S.” In the past, seats might The maiden voyage of that first
senger from the wholly Czech-made have come from European companies, modern American streetcar is a home-
predecessors (testing will continue un- but that would not work now. United coming of sorts. Unlike the automo-
til October when the car goes in active Streetcar had to find American sup- bile, the streetcar is an American in-
service). In fact, it is quite different be- pliers to send seats, windshield wip- vention. The prodigal son returns and
cause of the supply chain. The first car ers, headlight covers, handrails, etc. as the market expands, we can expect
was a prototype, an imperfect word The rise of United Streetcar means modern streetcars to be coming home
because it was delivered and used the U.S. market will be seeing more to places it has never been before.
rather than relegated to a showroom modern streetcars. “People are so

Trip Planner Magazine

Fall 2009
33
Making Modern
How to make a modern streetcar in six easy steps. Feel free to try this at home.

6
The streetcar has a low floor to allow easy entrance/exit. Due to the low floor
there is no space under the car to place the major electrical components. Conse-
quently, they are placed on the roof, along with the 6 HVAC units and the pantograph.

34
4The streetcar is a three body, double-
articulated vehicle. The three individual body
shells are connected together via articulation
joints. Each end body has a large fiberglass
front piece attached to the metallic structure.

Trip Planner Magazine

Fall 2009
 5
After the vehicle body is assem-
bled, the electrical wiring, major
electro-mechanical and outfit-
ting components are installed.
There are almost ten miles

1
of wire in every streetcar
United Streetcar starts with the
design and manufacturing of the
welding fixtures. Each segment of
the roof, like the example shown,
will have its own fixture (“fixture for
midroof,” etc.). Once a fixture is
built, it can be used 500 times. Typ-
ically one fixture would be used to
complete an order for, say, 20 cars.
But if the order were larger, a 100
or so, they would build additional
fixtures to facilitate the process.

3
The truck
assemblies (or the
“bogies”) are the vehicle

2
propulsion systems. The
truck assembly includes
the axles, the gear boxes,
the suspension, the
motors, the friction brakes. The major body sub-assemblies are
welded together to create the individual
body shells. The three body shells are
the main structure for the new car.

Trip Planner Magazine

Fall 2009
35
 Streetcars
There are essentially three functions a streetcar can
fulfill: transit, economic development, and tourism. None
of these are mutually exclusive; Portland has a system
that has generated enormous investment in development,
is useful to tourists as a downtown circulator, and is
a popular form of public transportation for Portland
residents (a famous neon sign on one downtown building
implores, “Go By Streetcar”).
The cities represented in the streetcar table below
vary widely from suburban southern communities to high-
density northeastern cities to the up-and-coming transit
hubs of the northwest. In fact, each streetcar system
is so different from the others that they are difficult to
compare. For example, San Francisco’s F-Market line
and Philadelphia’s Girard Street Line are both in dense,
older cities and use extant lines and vintage PCC cars,
but the F-Market line goes through the most important
tourism and employment areas of the downtown, is very
popular with the public, and readily supported by MUNI.
By contrast, the Girard Line is in a rough area of West
Philly on the fringe of the downtown, and disliked by both
the riding public and its operator, SEPTA. The success
of Girard is entirely due to its connectivity to the greater
system; it operates between an elevated heavy rail line
and a subway line.
There are, however, some basic conclusions that can
be drawn. Population size and density are significant
factors for high ridership; looking at the 2005 ridership
(the most recent year for which we have complete data*,
except for Katrina-stricken New Orleans, for which per
capita was figured with 2004 numbers) the streetcars with
ridership over 1 million trips are in dense urban centers,
although Tacoma’s population is one of the smallest in the
data set, but has the third highest per-capita ridership.
Connection to the greater transit system is also important
as the Girard example shows.

Began Per Mile cost % in

modern dollars mixed
Streetcar systems service (millions) Line Miles Type of Car traffic
New Orleans 1835 na 13.0 Vintage 25%
San Francisco-F Market Line 1995 na 4.2 Vintage 60%
Portland Streetcar 2001 11.9 4.8 Modern 95%
Tacoma Link 2003 50.3 1.6 Modern 30%
Boston Mattapan-Ashmont 1929 na 2.6 Vintage 5%
SEPTA Streetcar 2005 na 8.5 Vintage 100%
Tampa-TECO Line 2003 21.0 3.2 Heritage 0%
Memphis Main Street Trolley 1993 3.8 10.5 Vintage 5%
Little Rock-River Rail 2004 7.8 3.4 Heritage 85%
Galveston, Texas 1988 1.9 6.8 Heritage 100%
Kenosha 2000 3.1 1.7 Vintage 15%
Seattle Benson Line 1982 4.8 2.1 Vintage 0%
Charlotte Trolley 1996 8.0 2.0 Vintage 0%
Dallas-McKinney Avenue 1989 1.9 3.6 Vintage 100%
2003-2004 numbers are for Girard Street, route 15 when operated by bus. In Sept.
2005 route 15 switched to streetcar.
Trip Planner Magazine
36 Fall 2009
 sit
an
Boston -
Red Line

Tr
SEPTA - Girard

San Fran. F-Market Line

New Orleans

Tacoma

Kenosha Memphis
Portland
Dallas-McKinney

Ec
Ave.

on
Seattle Benson Line (suspended 2005)

.D
Little Rock River Rail

ev
Tampa TECO

.
Charlotte Trolley
Tourism
2005 Per
capita
2000 pop 2003 trips 2004 trips 2005 trips 2006 trips ridership
484,674 6,340,217 8,919,686 Hurricane Katrina 18.40
776,733 5,050,008 5,061,882 5,555,980 5,134,829 7.15
529,121 1,872,133 2,191,097 2,587,033 2,964,576 4.89
193,556 266,793 794,582 884,895 885,553 4.57
589,141 Not available 1,958,872 Not available 3.32
1,517,550 2,957,672 3,298,728* 2,862,718 3,252,416 1.89
303,447 503,698 519,564 565,002 520,270 1.86
650,100 1,562,396 1,010,442 891,968 919,638 1.37
183,133 - 44,457 154,745 154,432 0.84
57,247 54,335 40,566 47,706 37,024 0.83
90,352 67,556 58,913 60,386 52,936 0.67
594,210 403,590 398,580 374,327 Construction 0.63
540,828 Not available 330,041 175,329 0.61
1,240,499 not available.

Trip Planner Magazine

Fall 2009
37
 No problem can withstand
the assault of sustained thinking.
- Voltaire

See samples of our transit thinking at thinkcreative.com/transit