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National Streetcar Conference in Los Angeles
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Thursday afternoon at Los Angeles’ historic Orpheum Theater, myself and 250 others attended the National Streetcar Conference. Sponsored by Reconnecting America, The Seaside Institute, and a local Los Angeles City Councilmember, the conference brought engineers and other experts from around the country together to discuss bringing back streetcars to America’s towns and cities. (For more coverage, see BlogDowntown and Streetsblog LA).
Streetcars, trolleys, or trams were a familiar part of cities and towns in America before World War II. They are making a comeback, however, in places as diverse as small Kenosha, Wisconsin to Portland, Oregon.
Streetcars, unlike their close cousin light rail, are designed for “place making” (as one panelist called it) as much as they are about “through” transportation. Streetcars help create walkable, sustainable, and attractive communities. They help integrate people with other transportation resources like intercity rail (Amtrak or commuter rail), rail transit, car-sharing, or bicycling. They allow people the option of having only one or no cars in their households and using them far less often and otherwise encouraging “transit-oriented development”.
What impressed me most, however, was how much local businesses and residents were involved in the planning and financing of their streetcars. In the various case studies that we went over, stakeholders elected to assess themselves special fees to pay for a part of construction. And given innovative construction techniques such as using a very light sub-base for the track structure (therefore no underground utility relocation is necessary) and running in existing streets and mediums, construction costs are very low, in the range of $10 to $25 million per mile.
Are streetcars a good idea for your community?
Dennis Lytton
Member, NARP Board of Directors
Posted by NARP
Tags: dennis lytton, streetcars, transit-oriented development,Off-Shore Attacks on Light Rail
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
“What’s going on here is a battle between commuters who want to get to work and a bunch of people who don’t want to look at trolley cars while they play golf. If the public understands that’s what this fight is about, then the Purple Line will be built.”
—Ben Ross, president, Action Committee for Transit (Montgomery County, MD)
This quote, one of the more effective rebuttals to anti-transit advocacy that I’ve seen, appeared in a July 13 Washington Post article about a strange web site fighting the Purple Line. The Post reported that “the site’s owner is listed as a company based in the Madeira Islands off the coast of Portugal that allows clients to register Web sites anonymously…State tax records shed a little more light: Its founder is a board member at Columbia Country Club in Montgomery, whose 100-year-old golf course would be bisected by the transit line.”
Perhaps the Columbia Country Clubbers should visit Newton Massachusetts, where the Woodland Golf Club, founded in 1896, has long coexisted first with steam and diesel-powered commuter trains and, since July 4, 1959, with the Riverside branch of MBTA’s Green Line.
Next to the above article, The Post ran a nice report on plans for streetcars in Washington, DC, with a map showing potential linkage (at Silver Spring) with the Purple Line. Some trolley cars could even enter service late next year, said the headline.
—Ross Capon
Posted by NARP
Tags: light rail, nimbys, streetcars, transit,The Changing Transportation Construction Market
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
The growth in transit and Amtrak (and Greyhound) ridership has consequences for the transportation construction market.
As we have argued for months, it should mean good, new jobs for people building growing transit fleets and expanded train systems that America needs. One happy example is near Portland, Oregon, where United Streetcar LLC, a new subsidiary of defense contractor Oregon Iron Works, is building trolley cars for the city. Paul Weyrich highlighted this on July 6, 2007, the week after the firm got the contract. See also a Portland Tribune report from Jan 26, 2007.
The many transit bond issues which voters approved in November should mean still more transit jobs.
But the flip side of this is reduced demand for automobiles. Financial Times’ Lex column noted Nov. 6 that “the median American car is now 9.3 years old, 50% older than in 1990, which is an odd statistic given how easy it has been to buy a new one – until recently that is. The rate at which cars are scrapped should track sales in the long run but car sales have managed to exceed vehicles being retired by a third on average since 1990.” Part of the reason for that increased median car age, ironically, is an increase in the quality of cars sold.
The decline in car sales began earlier in the spring due to rising gas prices but in October hit levels not seen since World War Two, with General Motors down 45% compared with October 2007. The decline is only partly due to temporary issues. It also reflects growing awareness that greater reliance on public transportation saves money for households. People are increasingly willing to take advantage of pedestrian-friendly development patterns, and smart developers are building more. And more people are actually thinking about their environmental footprint. Lex: “Even if Detroit’s Big Three see their market share stabilize at 48%, down from 75% two decades ago, there may be demand for about 6.5m Detroit-made vehicles against 9m in 2006. That may only leave room for a Big Two.”
I can’t resist adding a note that, having watched the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (unlike many city chambers) oppose federal support for Amtrak over many years, it is ironic to see the national group supporting the Big Three automakers’ bail-out plea. Perhaps Amtrak’s crime was that, in the U.S. Chamber’s view, it did not fall into the “too-big-to-fail” category?” In any event, the Chamber apparently also has softened its edge on Amtrak in recent years.
—Ross B. Capon
Posted by NARP
Tags: amtrak, big three, general motors, streetcars,Flag Stops, National Train Day Edition
Monday, May 11, 2009
The Cato Institute (no fans of smart transportation investments) is trying to generate shock value by pricing Obama’s high-speed rail vision at half a trillion dollars and denigrating its potential benefits. Trains for America and The Business Insider offer good rebuttals. To put it in perspective, the federal government spent almost four-fifths of that amount on highways in 2008. Cato’s contention that “interstates pay for themselves” is highly misleading.
In an article making the rounds in the blogosphere this week, author and business management expert Richard Florida credits the disparity in economic fortunes between the Northeast and Midwest on the presence of fast, frequent train service on the Northeast Corridor and the absence of similar service in the nation’s midsection. The characteristics of the urban megaregions that will define the United States in the early 21st century lend themselves to high-speed rail as the most sensible way to link them, he says, and parts of the country that don’t get on board (pun intended) will be left behind. Our friends at the CAHSR blog discuss the implications of Florida’s findings for California. We would add that good train service promotes exactly the kind of car-free urban lifestyle sought by members of the up-and-coming “creative class” that Florida touts.
It seems that large rail-oriented transportation projects are popping up all over the place—unfortunately, mostly outside the US. Paris is planning a new elevated metro system linking it to satellite towns, Saudi Arabia will lay track for several new freight and passenger lines, a regional railway and connecting metro lines are in the works for Abu Dhabi (capital of the United Arab Emirates). Ironically, Americans are financing a significant portion of the latter two projects in oil-rich countries at the gasoline pump. If we had a more responsible level of taxation on petroleum use, we could afford more projects like these at home.
Two pieces of recommended reading for those interested in the connection between transportation policies and our lifestyle choices: The American Prospect offers a side-by-side comparison of a sprawling car-oriented suburb and one that is compact, pedestrian-oriented and (surprise!) transit-accessible; and Streetsblog wonders if life might be better for children if their parents weren’t wedded to their cars.
LCL: Scientists warn that “even the most drastic emissions cuts currently being discussed stand little chance of limiting global warming to safe levels;” with demand for automobiles tanking, investors are taking a second look at transit; Amtrak celebrated its 38th birthday May 1; funding is the only remaining obstacle to Amtrak service from Chicago to the Quad Cities; an additional Cascades frequency will offset its costs with new tourism spending; a new documentary explores how sprawl came to be; Bostonians hold a bake sale for their ailing transit system; New York City’s transportation czar calls for the return of streetcars to Brooklyn; and one of America’s best-known forecasters says that this year’s decrease in miles driven defies his prediction and may be the start of a new trend.
We hope that NARP members and all rail advocates took Saturday’s National Train Day as a time to celebrate the fruits of our labors (the trains we already have) and the bright future ahead for passenger rail. If a Train Day event took place near you, we hope you used the opportunity to spread the word about NARP and tell people how they can get involved in our work. The day provides a good moment to reflect on the many benefits of train travel—both its oft-cited boons to economic development and environmental sustainability, and the less quantifiable ways that good trains enhance our quality of life—and remember what inspires us to stay active in the cause. If you have any photos of the festivities you attended, please email them to us and we’ll consider posting them here.
—Malcolm Kenton
Posted by NARP
Tags: amtrak, funding, national train day, streetcars, transit,Southern Cities Discovering that Trains Mean Business
Friday, July 30, 2010
For the past few decades, city boosters in Charlotte, NC, have wanted the Queen City to become more like Atlanta—taking advantage of its location to become one of the Southeast’s premier business hubs. Now, when it comes to modern transportation, it’s Atlanta that is looking enviously towards Charlotte.
Both locales, like all medium- and large-sized US cities, had streetcar networks early in the 20th century. But while Atlanta does have the 30-year-old MARTA heavy rail transit system, it lacks modern streetcar or light rail lines. Charlotte, meanwhile, opened its first light rail line in 2007 and has plans to greatly expand the system. Just this week, Charlotte’s City Council agreed to accept a $25 million federal grant to build an east-west streetcar line to connect with the north-south LYNX light rail line. There are some plans afoot to build new rail transit lines in Atlanta, and a funding application was made in February for a streetcar on Peachtree Street, but Georgia has yet to receive any federal grants for transit.
And it’s not just transit—intercity passenger rail has a lot to do with it as well. Charlotte is connected to Greensboro and Raleigh by six daily Amtrak round-trips, with two daily round-trips linking it to the Northeast Corridor—a link that the Southeast High-Speed Rail Corridor aims to solidify. Credit for this can be given to the state of North Carolina’s decades of planning and investment, while Georgia has spent next to nothing on trains, the result being that Atlanta is served by only one daily Amtrak train in each direction and high(er)-speed rail is a much longer ways off.
This has Atlanta business leaders worried that the metro area, which is suffering from worsening traffic congestion and deteriorating transit service, may be losing jobs to cities like Charlotte. MARTA and its connecting suburban bus systems have the dubious distinction of being the only urban transit system not to receive state funds—they are funded primarily by a 1% sales tax levied only in the counties they serve. This left these systems particularly vulnerable to the effects of the recession on sales tax revenue, resulting major service cutbacks. Yet the Atlanta area remains far behind in the competition for federal transit dollars because its planning process is not as far along as those of Charlotte and other cities.
Hopefully the success of Charlotte’s rail transit investments in catalyzing smarter development—aided by better intercity train connections—will finally persuade Georgia’s political leaders to get serious about passenger rail. Not only are trains (and buses) an essential lifeline for those without access to cars, but they are the most proven way to combat crippling congestion while creating jobs and desirable places to live and work—places centered on people, not cars.
—Malcolm Kenton
Posted by Malcolm Kenton
Tags: atlanta, business, charlotte, economic development, georgia, jobs, light rail, metropolitan, north carolina, passenger trains, rail transit, southeast, streetcars, transit, transportation,©2010 National Association of Railroad Passengers | » NARP website
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