Desire brings back streetcars

They glide with easy authority and monumental grace down the boulevard — icons of an era when gents wore fedoras and city life was quite civilized, indeed. Behold, the mighty streetcar, bound for some splendid destination just around the bend.

But wait. This isn’t granddad’s era.

America has struck up a new love affair with old-fashioned transportation: A fierce loyalty to streetcars has seized the imaginations of city planners, nostalgic neighbors, trolley aficionados and politicians alike around the country.

It is a plucky, steel-wheeled symbol of worth — and charm.

About two dozen U.S. cities and towns have active streetcar lines and about 40 others have streetcar projects in the works, according to the American Public Transportation Association. Meanwhile, a new transportation bill meant to free up $625 million for new streetcar systems across the country is slowly making its way through the legislative process.

Streetcars trundle through traffic in New Orleans, Denver, Dallas and Seattle, as well as in Tucson, Ariz.; Memphis, Tenn.; and Tampa, Fla., among other locales. Some cities use intrepid, original equipment on rail lines as old as the cities themselves. Others have invested in new tracks and striking reproduction streetcars in paint-box colors — the more exotic varieties costing more than $1 million each and imported from around the world.

It doesn’t quite match the days before World War I, when the streetcar’s popularity was on a real roll: There were 45,000 miles of streetcar track in cities and towns around the nation — enough to transverse the country 18 times.

These days, however, a couple of picturesque miles, a clickety-clack ride and a ding-dong bell is enough to do the trick.

New Orleans takes considerable community pride in its three local streetcar systems.

There’s the St. Charles Line: Lovingly restored, mahogany-trimmed, brass-fitted cars rumble along the same eight-block route that has been in place for 150 years, making it the oldest continuously operating streetcar system on the planet.

The city also hosts the Riverfront Line, activated in 1998 after 12 years of planning among eight local, regional and federal agencies.

In April, the old Canal Street Line was brought back into service after lying dormant for 40 years, complete with a fleet of 24 new streetcars especially constructed from the ground up by a team of blacksmiths, carpenters, electricians and mechanics.

Though they’re based on 1920s designs, each car is air-conditioned, with a low-noise braking system and wheelchair lifts to accommodate the disabled. It costs $1.25 to take a spin along the 5-mile route.

“The streetcar has been a part of the social and cultural fabric of New Orleans since the 1800s, when the first horse-drawn cars made their way down St. Charles Avenue,” said Larry Lovell, spokesman for the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp.

“Everything about them is iconic of the city, and New Orleans wouldn’t be the same without them,” he said.

New Orleans has an unabashedly personal relationship with its streetcars.

“If you see me coming on Canal Street, don’t turn in front of me. I have the right of way at intersections,” reads an official public traffic guide from the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority.

The “me” and the “I” in this case refer to the streetcar.

And don’t refer to a ’Nawlins streetcar by any other name. The town gets persnickety about such things.

“Don’t call ’em trolleys!” the city officials advise residents and tourists alike. “In New Orleans, we call our vintage electric rail vehicles ’streetcars’ — never trolleys. No one knows exactly why or when New Orleans made the distinction. In most places, the terms are used interchangeably.”

Indeed, the streetcar has a multitude of names, depending on the region — or such physical variables as the placement of track along the roadway.

According to the American Public Transportation Association, “vintage” trolley or streetcar lines use antique equipment, while “heritage” lines use reproduction cars.

Around the country, the genre also has been widely interpreted as a tram, peoplemover, streetcar circulator, trackless trolley, monorail and trolley bus — which is not a streetcar at all, but a rubber-tired bus masquerading as a streetcar.

In some circles, the term “light rail” includes streetcars, though APTA specifies that light-rail systems generally use a track that is segregated from traffic and therefore travels at a higher speed then the typical streetcar — which has a tip-top speed of about 30 mph.

With such slowness, perhaps, comes safety: According to the National Safety Council, one has a 1,230,975-to-1 chance of being killed on a streetcar in a lifetime. Three persons were killed in streetcar mishaps in 2002, the most recent statistics available.

In contrast, 37 persons died in bus-related accidents, 26 in railway mishaps, 116 in animal-drawn vehicles and about 42,000 in auto accidents.

Streetcar charisma, in the meantime, has attracted robust political interest.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, Oregon Democrat, introduced a bill in Congress last year that champions the streetcar as a prime component of urban “livability,” economy and “green” thinking.

The streetcar, it seems, appeals to the liberal heart.

HR 1315 — The “Community Streetcar Development and Revitalization Act” — would make pilot grants of $15 million per year available to communities to either start up a new streetcar line or refurbish an existing line. The act would allot a total of $625 million from the Highway Trust Fund to be portioned out over a five-year period.

Mr. Blumenauer cited the streetcar system in his own city — Portland — as a shining example of the possibilities, calling streetcar projects in general “a catalyst for development or redevelopment in urban areas … and to connect neighborhoods in a way that is very different from regional rail systems.”

Cars, tracks, trolley wires and a car barn for Portland’s three-year-old, 2.4-mile loop cost the city $57 million. Supporters say it already has generated more than $1 billion in local development.

The Blumenauer bill — backed by five Republicans and 17 Democrats — is meandering through a House subcommittee, and carefully spells out the definition of streetcar as an electrically powered “rail transit vehicle, including modern, antiques or reproductions.”

High-speed light rail, rubber-tired trolley buses and other streetcar look-alikes would not be eligible for the funds.

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But streetcar appeal affects folks on the other side of the fence.

“Bring back the streetcars!” wrote Paul Weyrich of the District-based Free Congress Foundation in a substantial study on streetcar feasibility. He concluded that streetcars could only enhance the renewed interest nationwide in old-fashioned town centers and traditional neighborhoods.

Mile-for-mile, Mr. Weyrich said, the cost of a streetcar line was half that of light rail.

“We want to be able to ride a mile and smile the while, just as our grandparents did, on steel rails, under electric power. What could be more natural for conservatives than wanting something good we used to have and have lost?” Mr. Weyrich noted.

But not everyone finds the streetcar appealing — or practical.

Only five rush-hour passengers boarded the new early-morning run of a $40 million tourist trolley system in Charlotte, N.C., which hoped to woo commuters with new, earlier hours this month.

“It is a novelty at first for the tourist. People at conventions may use it, but not commuters who have to go to work,” resident John Popienek told reporters who had assembled for the inaugural ride.

By midmorning, tourists and conventioneers were happily rumbling back and forth along the line. Undaunted city officials, meanwhile, insist the commuter business will eventually pick up.

Still, there are more trolley aficionados than not around America.

Last year, the Federal Transit Administration and two local transit authorities met in the District to investigate an ambitious 33-mile trolley system through four quadrants of the city to relieve traffic woes and urban isolation.

The groups agreed to start small with a 2.7-mile line on existing rail tracks in Anacostia, beginning at the foot of the John Philip Sousa Bridge and ending at Bolling Air Force Base with an eye toward bolstering the economy of the oft-neglected district east of the river.

There have been positive results.

After an environmental assessment, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority was given the green light by D.C. officials and a neighborhood planning board to pursue the project with $8 million for streetcars and $5.5 million to buy and prepare the land itself. Groundbreaking is scheduled to be held in a matter of weeks.

Proud of the former title of a traditional “streetcar community,” Anacostians are pleased and proud to be the first area residents to receive “this new technology,” said D.C. Council member David A. Catania, at-large independent.

The District itself has a rich streetcar history. Many beloved lines crisscrossed the city — bound for such spots as Glen Echo Park with its fine ballroom and sparking pool in the shady Maryland suburbs. Streetcars were a fixture in the District from 1871 to 1962, when city officials mournfully retired the last familiar green-and-ivory cars after Congress voted to replace the system with a fleet of diesel buses.

Down in Arkansas, in the city of Little Rock, the brand-new River Rail Streetcar line is scheduled to begin operations Nov. 1, rolling along two miles of downtown property right in traffic — “just like in Little Rock’s old days,” said a spokeswoman from the Central Arkansas Transit Authority.

Built at a cost of $16 million, the line will use replicas of the streetcars that ran in the city between 1920 and 1947. A planned second route also will include a stop at the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library.

San Pedro, Calif., opened its 1.5-mile Red Car Line last year, using two replica cars and a 1907 car from the old Pacific Electric trolley system. The whole thing cost a modest $7 million, or about $4.7 million a mile.

In transportation terms, that’s considered a pittance compared with a roadway built through a similar urban area, which typically costs $20 million a mile. Roadways in New York City and its vicinity cost $333 million a mile, according to recent research from the University of Southern California.

Streetcars tend to inspire thrift and invention.

Along with its cable cars, San Francisco, for example, has the “Market Street Railway,” which uses century-old streetcars to ferry locals and tourists alike through a major commercial district, with passing shop windows right at eye level.

To keep costs down, devoted volunteers ferret out and lovingly restore derelict streetcars themselves for the line, which was built over a highway destroyed in a 1989 earthquake.

Ithaca, N.Y., meanwhile, is one of the smallest towns with a trolley: Its 1905 fleet of locally restored cars with donated electric motors travel up the town’s steep hills, described by one enthusiast as “more than a ride. It’s a theatrical event.”

Boasting brilliant yellow cars that roll along contentedly at about 10 mph, Tampa’s TECO Line streetcar system is just over 2 miles long and has 11 stops. The citizenry love the little line, and a modest expansion is planned.

Streetcars present myriad strategic alliances for communities bent on bettering themselves without breaking the bank.

Most contemporary streetcar towns obtain federal monies for their initial construction and startup costs, then use ridership revenue, private donations, corporate sponsorships and heartfelt community fund-raisers to maintain the line.

Tampa’s TECO Line, for example, used state and federal money alone to construct the $32 million line. Annual operational costs of about $1.3 million are met through voluntary donations, advertising and income generated from honorary “naming” of cars, stops and routes by well-heeled individuals.

The old streetcar has come to embody a kind of forward-thinking harmony between a town and its residents.

“They bring out the good in people,” said New Orleans spokesman Mr. Lovell.

“In our case, historic green cars whiz along the original St. Charles Avenue line and new, modernized air-conditioned red cars smoothly sail up Canal Street after a 40-year absence,” he said. “New Orleans relies on the streetcar for transportation, for tourism, and for economic revitalization — and it evokes a nostalgia that ties our modern-day progress to our important, historical past.”