Streetcars making a comeback

Changing policies under Obama

Vilas Bhuchar, Apr 12, 10.

Twenty-two cities around the country have plans for streetcar lines and five to eight of them could be under construction within two years, according to New Urban News.

Four lines with the strongest potential for early construction include the following cities, notes the story:

• Tucson Modern Streetcar, a 3.9-mile line which, when it opens, may carry 3,600 riders per weekday on a route connecting downtown Tucson to the University of Arizona. The Tucson line received funding through a US Department of Transportation TIGER grant in February, as did lines in Detroit, Dallas, New Orleans, and Portland.

• Seattle’s First Hill Streetcar, a 2.2-mile line that would connect Capitol Hill, First Hill, and the International District to Link light rail and Sounder commuter rail. It would be Seattle’s second modern streetcar line, joining the South Lake Union Streetcar, which started operating in December 2007.

• District of Columbia Streetcar, a 37-mile network that would offer the first streetcar service in the nation’s capital since 1962. Construction of a two-mile segment linking Union Station to an emerging retail and entertainment district has already begun, its $75 million cost paid entirely by local funds. Another $30 million segment, also paid for with local funds, would connect a federal employment center to the low-income Anacostia neighborhood.

Washington’s system — which already has several cars that were fabricated in the Czech Republic — may end up costing a total of $1.5 billion, which could be paid for through a combination of federal funds, tax-increment financing districts in the areas to be served, and revenue from other sources.

• Extension of the Portland Streetcar — the line that in 2001 kicked off America’s streetcar renaissance — to areas on the east side of the Willamette River, thus making a loop of the city center. The project, which could generate 2,500 housing units, has begun construction.

The story notes that Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio are all “devising” streetcar lines.

The potential streetcar resurgence comes as the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), under President Obama, moves away from policies that favored bus rapid transit lines and made it difficult to spend federal funds to build streetcar lines, adds the story, and David Vozzolo of HDR Engineering lays out how the Obama Administration has made it easier for cities to start new lines or expand existing ones in the story:

• Last June, FTA announced that it would evaluate New Starts and Small Starts applications on the basis not only of cost-effectiveness (as judged by how much travel time is saved) but also the land uses that the transit project would support and the economic development the transit project would bring about. Approximately equal weight would be given to each of those three factors.

• In December, DOT announced that it would make grants of up to $25 million each for “urban circulator systems such as streetcars and rubber-tire trolleys.” It noted that these systems foster “the redevelopment of urban spaces into walkable mixed use, high density environments.”

• In January, DOT rescinded a Bush policy that had required New Starts projects to achieve at least a “medium” rating on cost-effectiveness. That rating relied on criteria that tended to favor longer-distance modes of transit, such as bus rapid transit. Gustafson points out that no streetcars were able to qualify for funds under the Bush measure of cost-effectiveness.