The desire for streetcars returns
Posted on August 1st, 2008By Saqib Rahim
Climatewire: NEW ORLEANS — Not long ago, the St. Charles streetcar line — the oldest continually running streetcar line in the world and one of the lures for this city’s tourist trade — was considered the last of the breed.
Its sister lines had made mighty contributions to this city and its charms. One had given the name to a famous New Orleans delicacy — the po’ boy sandwich — when a baker took pity on striking streetcar operators in 1929 and brought those “poor boys” warm sandwiches on thick French bread. Other lines lent some poetry to Tennessee Williams’ play “A Streetcar Named Desire” when Blanche DuBois asked directions to the French Quarter: “They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at — Elysian Fields!”
These lines were sent into oblivion by buses and America’s car culture. But as America’s energy woes and climate problems mount, what goes around comes around. Rising gas prices are driving many motorists out of their cars. According to the American Public Transportation Association, Americans took 88 million more trips on public transit in the first three months of 2008 than in the same period of 2007. Experts say that gas prices are also boosting an existing trend: More people are moving to cities, hoping to simplify their lives and avoid traffic.
Twenty-three cities have active streetcar systems, and more than half of them are planning extensions. As many as 70 others have considered streetcars of their own, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
None of them mimics the hundred-mile rail networks of yesteryear. Most, in fact, stretch only a few miles in mid-size cities like Kenosha, Wis.; Little Rock, Ark.; and Tacoma, Wash. But as New Orleans and other cities begin to imagine how they will operate in a carbon-constrained future, they are re-examining the rumbling but dependable all-electric streetcars of the past.
The Canal line, original sin and resurrection
As a little boy, Ed Branley remembers, he and his family regularly boarded New Orleans’ Canal streetcar to go shopping downtown. But by the time he was a high-schooler in the 1970s, streetcar service had thinned. He began riding a series of buses to go between home, his grandma’s house, school and debate competitions.
Now pushing 50, Branley rides airplanes, zooming to California, the Netherlands and elsewhere for his job as a software trainer. In his spare time, he heads the New Orleans Street Railway Association, a community group interested in streetcars. He’s also an author: In 2004, he wrote the definitive history of the Canal line streetcars.
It begins in the 1920s, when the “motor bus” first took to city streets around the country. At the time, streetcars — or trolleys, as they’re often known outside New Orleans — dominated. By 1917, more than 1000 streetcar companies had carried 11 billion passengers, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. In 1923, New Orleans was crisscrossed by 220 miles of railways, and riders could jump on board for a nickel.
But buses, the advertisements said, were faster than streetcars. They had plush, upholstered seats rather than streetcars’ tough wooden benches. And they had air conditioning — a refreshing alternative to opening a streetcar window in sweltering New Orleans.
“The consensus among city planners was that to be modern, you had to have buses,” said Mark Major, general manager of the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority, or NORTA.
For modern-day streetcar lovers — sometimes known as “trolley jollies” — it was the car culture’s original sin. A handful of bus suppliers, including Firestone Tire, Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum and General Motors, formed a company called National City Lines, buying hundreds of streetcar lines around the country. The company bought and liquidated streetcar companies wholesale, replacing the transport service with the buses they built.
‘The Great Streetcar Conspiracy’ terminates Desire
Simple economics finished off the rest. Buses had lower up-front costs and could change their routes more quickly. They also needed only one driver, whereas streetcars needed two operators. By 1960, Americans had voted with their fares, and only about a dozen cities still had streetcars. To this day, many streetcar enthusiasts call it “The Great Streetcar Conspiracy.”
New Orleans’ Canal line shut down in 1964, following the West End and Desire lines into history. The transit authority either destroyed or gave away almost 50 vintage streetcars. Webs of buses popped up in their place. Only the city’s most renowned streetcar, the St. Charles line, was spared.
Then, in 1988, the Republican Party called. It was holding its national convention in New Orleans, and it wanted to restore the Riverfront streetcar line, not for commuters but for tourists and conventiongoers to enjoy. When the city restored service with three of the Perley Thomas streetcars it had given away in 1964, it was a hit. Riders packed the benches. “It got way more popular than anybody expected,” Branley said.
Soon, transit authorities were lobbying to restore the long-defunct Canal line. After $160 million of investment in tracks and sparkling red streetcars, Canal reopened in 2004 — just as Branley timed the release of his book on Canal streetcar history. High expectations were largely met in its first year, as the streetcar’s return catalyzed business up and down the line.
Then Hurricane Katrina struck.
Rosalind Blanco Cook, a Regional Transit Authority spokeswoman, walks into a parking lot behind the RTA’s main building where the Canal streetcars were during the storm. Cook, a shade over five feet tall, holds her arm just above shoulder height. She points toward a wall, at the highest of three dim lines where the water crested.
As the storm intensified, Cook recalls, she and her co-workers had felt little alarm. Most of the 300 employees huddled in NORTA headquarters had seen fierce storms before. Bus drivers stood by, as per protocol. As soon as the storm subsided, they would roll their buses back out. “We felt safe at that point,” Cook said. They thought they had dodged the bullet yet again.
Foot by foot, the water came. As their confidence melted, the NORTA employees realized they would have to evacuate.
Katrina dampens the revival spirit, but can’t put it out
Without drivers at the helm, the streetcars were not so lucky. Five feet of brackish water engulfed each of the $1.6 million streetcars, ruining their delicate electronics: motors, inverters, wiring. When mechanics returned to assess the damage, they priced the repairs at $1 million each.
NORTA also lost 200 buses, a crippling blow for a transit system that had long ago switched to buses. The storm had wrecked the city’s transport, old and new. The catenary network, which delivered electricity to the streetcars through an overhead wire, was weighed down with debris, and its lines were dead, as crucial substations had gone offline.
In the months after the water subsided, businesses began to board up their windows on Canal Street. Gaping potholes began to pockmark the edges of the road, helping to form massive puddles and ankle-deep channels when the daily rainstorm hits.
In a city still gaining its balance, any return to normalcy is cause for celebration. Hundreds turned out on a mild Saturday morning in June to celebrate the restoration of streetcar service to the last stretch of the St. Charles line, in the Palmer Park area, since the hurricane. Dignitaries from city hall, as well as Baton Rouge and Washington, spoke hopefully, if with a touch of plea.
The streetcar is back, they said. New Orleans is back.
To ride a streetcar is to glimpse the past. They are marvels of 1920s-era machinery, with freshly painted cabs. At rest in the Garden District, the streetcar is quieter than the chirping birds. As the light turns to green, she ratchets forward with clanks and clicks, the operator cranking a lever that seems borrowed from a Frankenstein movie. Even at top speed, cars and buses easily roll by. Riders’ hair flutters in the breeze from the open windows.
Eight thousand riders get this experience on the St. Charles line each day. Other cities want to copy it to liven up their downtowns with “heritage” streetcar rides. But there is something else historical about the ride: the streetcars themselves.
Today, New Orleans’ rails are not served by the high-tech cars destroyed in the flood, but by green cars built by Perley A. Thomas Car Works in the 1920s and refurbished ever since. They cover the city’s 14 remaining miles of track, less than a tenth of what existed when the cars were built.
Running clean with electricity, adding value to neighborhoods
The streetcars’ simple and robust design makes them “one hundred times” easier to maintain than a typical bus, Gary Edwards, a NORTA streetcar mechanic, said. While buses only last 12 years on average, he said, the Perley Thomas cars have been around for most of a century.
“Personally, you can’t beat these things,” Edwards said. They offer “more bang for the buck.”
They can generate a few bucks, too. Jim Graebner, a consultant who works on streetcar projects nationwide, said Little Rock spurred $300 million of investment along its 3.5 mile railway after spending less than $30 million to build it. In Kenosha, he said, a two-mile, $5 million streetcar was projected to attract $150 million in investment.
Do such numbers foretell a return to streetcars’ good old days? Not so fast, Graebner says. So far, he has only worked on projects that run from 2 to 5 miles. Along those corridors, he said, streetcars offer an alternative in between the inconvenience of driving and the slow pace of walking. But the streetcars do nothing for distant residents, who still must choose between trains, buses and cars to get downtown.
“It’s not about competing with them,” Graebner said. Streetcars “are not about to do everything for everybody, nor are they intended to.”
To that end, experts debate how much streetcars can contribute to cities that are becoming more conscious of the climate problem. Advocates say that while trolleys have high up-front costs, the cars have long lifetimes and run “clean” with electricity. New Orleans, for example, generates about 39 percent of its electricity from cleaner-burning natural gas, compared to 17 percent for the country. In Portland, which boasts the country’s most successful streetcar system, half of electricity comes from hydropower sources.
A circulatory system for denser cities?
But critics point out that building a streetcar system is emissions-heavy and that the trolleys’ limited range forces buses to make numerous branching routes from the railway. They suggest that rapid buses — which make fewer stops than most buses, coordinate better with traffic lights and often have a dedicated lane — offer a cheaper, more flexible mode of transport.
Analysts like Robert Puentes, a transportation and urban policy expert at the Brookings Institution, note that for decades, federal policy has been tilted toward the low-density, pro-car urban landscape. In the last 20 years, he said, the country has built enough highways to circle the globe five times. “We made a policy decision to build a lot of highways,” he said, “and it was a self-fulfilling policy.”
Now, Puentes said, cities are getting interested in more sustainable models of development, and not just because of oil prices. For the first time in decades, he said, many cities are experiencing an urban revitalization that counteracts their sprawl. And it has left city officials trying to come up with a more energy-smart, climate-sensitive way of getting people around the city.
Denver, for example, is attempting to focus development along its commuter rail lines. Dallas, Puentes said, has also used its rail system to promote denser neighborhoods — a rare sight in sprawl-friendly Texas.
“Really, what Americans seem to be looking for is a range of options. Streetcars certainly have a role to play, but it’s not the only role to play,” Puentes said. “Many cities are starting to realize that they have to provide options, and the streetcar is just one of many transportation options that are out there.”