Discussion on:

From relic to revolutionary: streetcars revitalize city transit

LA was ground zero for the most public scandal, but nearly every street car system was killed by the same corruption. It was happening across the nation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal

What is a common thread among the destruction of street cars and the current state of mass transit in the USA?

Corruption.

Everything from the placement of rail and bus stations to the location of rights of way for mass transit is not governed by the best solutions to the problem, but by what is politically acceptable.

Any time people propose a major shift in any industry it is prudent for taxpayers to follow the money. We the taxpayers must make sure that the changes being paid for by the taxpayers are the right changes, not the most profitable for the well connected.

To use a blanket statement like "Since streetcars were mostly overrun by subsidies for automobiles and airplanes," is to throw out a polically popular punch line and ignore the bigger problem of corruption in our government at all levels.

When a city or town gets it right I am more than willing to offer praise. As I have numerous times here.

All too often we the taxpayers end up with poor solutions that become costly white elephants. All you have to do is look at the state of most major American cities to know I am right.

The biggest fault with modern urban planning among government entities is the one size fits all mentality. As such urban planning has run in fads over the years with occasional success, but more often failure when a concept is applied to a scenario in a city where it is not the right answer.

The current fad is bike sharing. It works great in some areas and should be expanded, but in some areas it runs into a little problem called winter. That is not to say it is a bad idea. But one has to ask is it worth it if the bikes have to be stored 3 months of the year? Is it worth the effort needed to keep the lockup points shoveled out to have it available year round? Large scale bike sharing might not be the right answer for every city. Yet people who raise such honest questions are shouted down.

Solutions to a host of issues vary greatly depending on geography, climate, city layout and a host of other factors. It is often as complex as, what works on the west side of a big city might not work on the east side.

On a final point. Call me a troll if it makes your day, but it is never wrong for a taxpayer to second guess the motives of people spending millions and sometimes billions of OUR hard earned dollars.

NIMBY aside, if a majority of residents think a project is a bad idea for their city yet a government bureaucrat pushes it all the harder, follow the money.

The "scandal" wasn't that GM conspired to put streetcars out of business, but that they conspired to monopolize interstate commerce. That's what they were convicted of. They wanted to make more money, and they bought streetcar lines and replaced them with more economical buses, which they happened to build. GM built (and builds) locomotives, too, so had electric trolleys been more economical, they might very well have monopolized that market rather than converting to bus systems.

Building full sized locomotives for conventional rail use would not put them in competition with their own buses.

They were economical only because the price of fuel was low and they were supplying the busses to themselves at cost. If they were paying fleet prices they may not have changed over.

The backstory of "Who Killed Roger Rabbit" was the true story of what happened to the Redline in LA. My wife, who lived in that very area in the early to mid fifties and used the streetcar extensively, remembers very well the advantages. She didn't know anyone who was happy to see it go...and yes, greed and corruption there and around the country killed the streetcar and has largely kept it from coming back for these sixty-plus years. Finally people are getting their heads on straight and rejecting control by the monied and powerful who only have their own agenda in mind. Great article.

Streetcars are nice. Streetcars are efficient. That's all good. The trouble with streetcars is that needs, neighborhoods, routes change over time. As the city evolves the need to move people from one place to another remains but the places change as neighborhoods spring up and decline and business moves to different areas. Since the streetcar operates on tracks it is very hard and expensive to move when it no longer takes people where they need/want to go. Buses are a whole lot less glamorous but the routes can be changed to meet changing transportation requirements without much cost. This is why over time streetcars will always lose.

If you have a high amount of vehicular traffic moving on a regular basis over relatively short distances between two or more points then street cars can be a viable alternative to increased road size and parking associated with supporting more cars.

Once you have identified a location were streetcars will have the riders and alleviate traffic congestion related to separate vehicles being used for short distance travel, the next big problem is scheduling.

People will not wait 30 minutes for the next streetcar to travel 5 city blocks when they walk it or drive it in less time. Schedules need to be timely. A fact often over looked by municipalities looking at any form of mass transit.

Streetcars are by no means a panacea. They are one piece of the transit puzzle. Buses are another option. Street cars or buses can be very cost effective or very costly depending on how they are implemented.

As mentioned above, taxpayers need to make sure their money is being spent on the right solutions, not the profitable for a few people solutions.

Municipalities are usually not the entities planning and scheduling transit systems. Those tasks are typically performed by separate transit agencies. There are some transit agencies such as OC Transpo in Ottawa, the Charlotte Area Transit System and Detroit's bus system which are city departments, but it is much more common, particularly in larger cities, for transit agencies to be separate from municipalities, in part because they serve areas comprised of many different municipalities.

In many cases, 30-minute intervals between buses or streetcars may have nothing to do with municipal or transit agency planning and everything to do with refusal of local or state governments invest sufficiently in transit to provide higher frequencies of service.

In nearly every country but our own, streetcars in one form or another still carry huge numbers of passengers through cities far older than American cities. Subways serve essentially the same purpose, as do the elevated trains in some other cities. Of them all, the streetcar is still the most visible and most easily used transportation system that is also least affected by motor vehicle congestion quite often due to having their tracks separated from normal roadways and in others car owners doing their best to clear the rails before their own car gets struck by a tram. Simply put--you get hit by a tram, it's your fault for being on the tracks. Streetcars, through their 'rigidity', ensure the viability of a community longer than busses--which is why most American cities are now surrounded by huge suburbs and highways are clogged by cars--those busses simply cannot meet the need due to maintenance and fuel costs as well as their dependence on roads 'owned' by congestion.

one oft-ignored cost of busses--the drivers. Many streetcar/tram systems carry more people per vehicle than a bus, and so need less drivers.
But they also cost a lot less per KM to run, and the vehicles and vehicle parts last a longer.

Your notion might be correct for low density areas, but in denser cities fixed rail transportation actually stabilizes neighborhoods and creates more lively business districts at each stop. Denser housing also develops near the lines. Perhaps Portland is an example; Minneapolis certainly is.

which is why Melbourne has trams /and/ buses--all govt owned, and you use one ticket for all public transport (trams, trains and buses). It's great to go shopping and get a day ticket for all transport, and it's not expensive.

Your argument about buses being superior because of route flexibility is as wrong as it is familiar.

In Brooklyn, for example, most bus lines still follow the old trolley routes more than half a century after the streetcars' demise. In Los Angeles, the old streetcar routes are still so sensible that they are being rebuilt for modern light rail and trolley service.

The truth is that cities and the travel patterns within them change _very_ slowly, if at all, and the alleged advantage of bus route flexibility is a phantom, logical at first glance but rarely meaningful in practice.

Of course, you have studies to back up what you're saying, right?

Being an old fart, if I remember correctly it was GM & Goodyear that conspired to buy up streetcars/trolleys and bankrupt them. They raised prices, cut service, until folks gave up on them. They were found guilty in court and paid a fine. Big deal. If they start throwing the CEO's in jail this stuff will stop on Wall Street.

The history is bit more sordid. GM and others replaced the ripped up tracks and tolley companies (they bought up) with bus companies that featured junk buses that broke down ofter enough to spur the purchase of automobiles - which the bus companies also were manufacturing. A conincidence? Not to mention the interest of big OIL.
Further, remember all the trolley and RailRoad systems that blanketed the country (so you could take trolleys from Portland, ME down to NYC just by switching between companies) were all built with private money and then destroyed with (GM's) private money. Now the taxpayers are paying for the rebuilding. America the beautiful. Who does your elected rep work for? Not you.

re
Unlike light rails, which often transport passengers between suburbs and cities, streetcars are more like intercity (sic ?)circulators specializing in shorter trips.

should be
Unlike light rails, which often transport passengers between suburbs and cities, streetcars are more like intracity (thus) circulators specializing in shorter trips.

Philip Bradfield living near Ediburgh (they are re-introducing a limited service : trams to the airport (next to which the railway to Fife already runs!) - see local opinions)

> Whats more, streetcars can protect the environment. If you have clean electrical energy
> sources and feed them into the tram system, Condon said, it is greenhouse gas zero.

Hardly. It just moves the gas generation out of town, to the site of the coal-burning electrical generation plant.

Not all cities use coal-fired power plants--not even most. There are many other means of generating electricity that don't require fossil fuels at all and many of the oldest pre-date coal-fired steam generator plants. In the US, the oldest generator plant uses plain, old, water. No burning. No greenhouse gases.

Still a huge amount more efficient than your car (unless you own a hybrid), and can easily use green/renewable power (which your car probably can't).
And they can easily switch to newer electricity sources when they become available--so if a new solar plant opens in the area, that can be your tram power. Can't do that with a car.

to power them entirely by hydroelectric power if they contract with the Bonneville Power Administration for the electricity.

The author failed to mention the line Houston has had in place since 2002, or before. It is very effective, comfortable and has a large amount of people who use it. It connects all the downtown business with the Medical Center and is being expanded Southward to the Reliant Center / 610 Loop regions. Although I no longer live in Houston, I have friends and my grown children who use it several times a week. It is great to have in times when gas prices are on the rise, wind power is being expanded and anything to reduce greenhouse gases is needed.
Without a solid, affordable electric car with the necessary power stations emplemented, the streetcar, and use of interurbans also, is a very logical form of transportation. And, streetcars are not so rigid as one thinks. They are very viable and they do not eliminate the use of the streets for other traffic. The Siemens system used in Houston is very efficient and blends well with other means of transportation.

The Houston light rail suffered from low ridership, high cost and political cronyism. It also disrupts traffic flow and has lead to quite a few train-car accidents due to the confusion it's design created. Ridership was so bad that Metro discontinued many of the bus routes that used to transport people from the Park & Ride lots to their jobs in the Houston Medical Center. They are now forced to take the bus to downtown, walk several blocks to the train stop and take the train down to the medical center instead of just staying on the bus the entire distance. While the extra exercise might be good, it's no fun on a rainy day and adds about a half hour a day to a lot of people's commutes. The money would have been much better spent improving the traffic flow through more intelligent traffic signalling, better designed and improved traffic lanes, etc.

Nice article. For what it is worth, Portland has had light rail in place since the 1990s. It is good to see at least some city expanding.

Now if you could only convince Los Angelinos............

If you mean that LA is trying to fund a kitschy tourist streetcar, that may be true, but Los Angeles already has two light rail and three heavy rail subway lines running under its downtown. The two light rail lines also run above ground through parts of the city, and beyond, and recent added funding will push up the timetable so that the "subway to the sea" light rail will be completed within the next decade.

Cities in the Netherlands, like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht, have always upgraded their 'tram' infrastructure and materiel. They also have buslines everywhere and Ams and Rdam have a subway system, too. Apart from the many streetcars on rails, very often with their dedicated lanes, only used by trams, buses, taxis and emergency vehicles, there are trolley buses in the city of Arnhem. Like trams they have an overhead power line that they make contact with, but unlike trams they have wheels with rubber tires and they can sway left to right, when necessary, without the presence of rails. Amsterdam now has its experimental, articulated electrical buses, too.

They sound like true blended transit systems. Finding the right tool for each job.

The citizens of many European cities and nations decided to keep their trolley/light rail/rail infrastructure when rebuilding after WW II. Avoiding the trap of the automobile.

Generations of grateful citizens have benefited from their forethought.

Before I get to the main subject, I'd really like to see two of SmartPlanet's writers weigh in on this article as commenters, not necessarily as contributors: Christina Sherwood, the author of this article, and Tyler Falk, who writes about cities for SmartPlanet.

When I was growing up in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, my city had trolley buses--or "trackless trolleys"--until I was seven or eight. They were clean and quiet, but they were useless if a traffic accident necessitated a detour or a street needed to be closed for maintenance. Hence the switch to buses in the late 1950s (see http://oldwilmington.net/oldwilmington/transportation_1.htm).

Now to address the GM issue. The companies accused of conspiracy were: GM, which manufactured the buses; Firestone, which manufactured the tires; and Standard Oil, which provided the fuel. The Bradford Snell report to Congress (1974), which detailed the conspiracy, is presented in Stanley Fischler's book, "Moving Millions: an Inside Look at Mass Transit" (Harper & Row, 1979). Fischler states that Alfred Sloan, in order to increase GM's automobile sales, bought out and closed streetcar companies, changing to what he called "inferior bus service", and that inferior service caused former transit customers to buy their own cars. That, in a nutshell, is the conspiracy story.

I'll offer some sources in my next comment.

There are several sources, both academic and non-academic, that refer to the idea of a conspiracy, both pro and con:

Bianco, M. J. (1998). Kennedy, 60 Minutes and Roger Rabbit: Understanding conspiracy-theory explanations of the decline of urban mass transit (Discussion Paper 98-11). Portland, OR: University of Portland, Center for Urban Studies.

Cudahy, B. (1998). General Motors and mass transit...again. Transportation Quarterly, 52(1), 24-26.

El-Nasser, H. (2007, January 10). Cities rediscover allure of streetcars. USA Today. Retrieved July 20, 2009, from USA Today Web site: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-08-streetcars_x.htm.

Matus, P. (1974, September). Street railways: U.S. versus National City Lines recalled. The Third Rail. Retrieved December 30, 2006, from The Third Rail Web site: http://thethirdrail.net/9905/agt1.htm.

Slater, C. (1997). General Motors and the demise of streetcars. Transportation Quarterly, 51(3), 45-66.

Snell, B. (2001, September 10). The streetcar conspiracy: General Motors deliberately destroyed public transit. Retrieved April 3, 2012, from LoveEarth Network Web site: www.lovearth.net/gmdeliberatelydestroyed.htm.

Zearfoss, C. (1998). Rebuttal to "GM and the demise of streetcars". Transportation Quarterly, 52(1), 15-23.

Two books on mass transit that I've enjoyed reading are Fischler (cited above) and Brian Cudahy, "Cash, Tokens and Transfers: a History of Mass Transit in North America". Fordham University Press, 1990.

Note that the Snell article is not the original 1974 report to Congress; that can be found at the end of Fischler's book. That article also refers to an earlier article, published in 1994 in the New Electric Railway Journal, which I have been unable to find online.

To attribute the decline of rail transit primarily the shenanigans of National City Lines/GM/Standard oil shenanigans is an overly simplistic analysis which overlooks other significant factors:

1) Most urban/interurban electric rail lines were financially marginal operations. The combination of the increasing popularity of the automobile and the Depression caused many companies to go out of business in the 1930s. Seattle's trolleys were gone by 1939.

2) Many electric rail companies were corporately affiliated with electric utilities which provided much of the funding for operations and capital improvements. In the mid-1930s, Congress passed legislation requiring electric utilities and rail lines to be separated, thus depriving the transit companies an important source of funding.

3. After World War II, city officials, businesses and many transit companies themselves considered trolleys to be outdated and buses to be modern transportation. Additionally, buses did not have the costs of track and overhead and were cheaper to operate than single-car trolleys.

4. Many rail lines were built more to promote real estate development than to provide transportation. When the developments were completed and automobiles became popular there was much less reason to have the rail line.

5. City traffic engineers also wanted trolleys out because they interfered with traffic flows.

Having lived in Portland for many years, I have enjoyed the benefits of much of the variety of mass transit options available within the urban and suburban metro area. The mix of options include an aerial tram, the MAX light rail, trolleys, buses, street cars, our international airport, our feet for walking, and of course our world class biking infrastructure. All of which contribute to the high level of livability within the Portland metro area.

One of the features mentioned in the article but overlooked by the commenters is the contribution to the local economy made by United Streetcar. Many years ago the City of Portland made a strategic decision to help grow the local economy and to build its fleet of streetcars by supporting the work of United. The synergy has worked quite well, leading to some of the best jobs in Oregon for what has become a growing industry. Some farsighted thinking on the part of a select group of local citizens.

The revitalization of both urban and suburban areas has been directly attributed to the work of the local and regional government agencies and the local populations in a cooperative environment. Partnering with local developers and city planners has resulted in some of the best examples of how to grow a regional economy intelligently and avoiding much of the problems associated with urban sprawl. Love it or hate it, the urban growth boundary has contributed to the livability of the area and has become a model of sustainable local land use, recognized throughout the world.

Don't get me wrong, Portland is not a utopia, it has its share of problems; but on a whole, the transportation system in Portland is quite well thought out and implemented to the benefit of its local citizenry.

We also take advantage of some of the country's lowest electric rates, courtesy of the Bonneville Dam, which is essentially a giant solar collector if you consider how the water gets to the dam.

So with the combination of intelligent urban planning, a cooperative population, a relatively cheap power supply, and a wide variety of mass transit options, Portland is one of this country's best examples of how to make things work.

In Milwaukee, WI the mayor is planning a trolley for the downtown are. It will cost millions to move transmission lines and other infrastructure as the trolley cannot run over the areas where these lines are present. Who would pay for it ? The consumers on their bills and taxpayers. How likely are people to ride this albatross in the Winter ? Not very lilkely. We have enough toys thank you. Carbon Neutral ? Hardly. Anything needing electricity is not carbon neutral

If it is such a good idea then someone in the private sector would fund it. That's why governments fund these sort of garbage projects that end up costing taxpayers maintenance costs and low ridership. Even in Europe rail ridership is declining and most people are driving their cars.

These ideas are not new. We don't need more pipe dreams.

If the 1 Billion $ rebuild of the Marquette interchange in downtown Milwaukee was a such a good idea, then someone in the private sector would have funded it. In fact, every interstate in Milwaukee, yea even Wisconsin, is free - not a single toll transponder or booth to be found!

When the private sector is building your roads and interchanges, then we can talk about private industry building other transport like trams, buses, and trains.

As long as the public thinks that transportation is worthy of government funding via roads & interstates, then it should think that ALL transport is worthy of government funding, and that includes sidewalks, bike lanes, transit bus & tram services, Amtrak, Metra or the proposed KRM, and everything else that helps people travel and provide economic benefits to their communities.

I don't even need to know anything about Milwaukee to pick out the holes in your logic. Common sense tells you that transit powered by electricity cuts down on emissions. Twelve U.S. cities are bringing back streetcars because they are clean and efficient. The prvate sector funds things to make a profit from them. This is for the public good and will do fine with public funding. I have a secret for you. You can heat streetcars in winter. If you think most people are driving their cars in Europe and not using transit you are living in a fantasy world. Transit is not a pipe dream, and streetcars are not toys. But you are a grumpy old man with an axe to grind.

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