A streetcar named Desire-Line

Light-rail lite – but proper planning principles still apply. Prompted by an insightful blogpost from Jarrett Walker, Graham explains the contemporary US streetcar concept.

Earlier this year the Mayor of Washington DC announced that the city’s only streetcar line would soon be replaced with buses. The US public transport planning expert Jarrett Walker has blogged about this and some of the other “little modern streetcars” in the US. His piece is worth reading. It has some good advice for public transport planning anywhere.

I should explain the contemporary US streetcar concept. It’s not quite synonymous with light rail. Streetcars are ‘light rail lite’: primarily on-street, with a deliberately low-cost design approach (by rail standards) and pragmatic. A number of routes or mini-networks were built around or after the turn of the century, sometimes associated with regeneration or transit-oriented development. The look-and-feel can be modern or heritage-style, according to your preferred vibe. Either way, a key factor is the typically shallow trackform which minimises the need to relocate utilities – a major cost and timescale risk in conventional light rail construction. You do have to accept the trade-off that, in service, any utility works will need to be done in non-service hours or require the service to be suspended. The UK ‘very light rail’ trackform takes a similar low-depth approach.

Back to Washington DC. Their streetcar has a single route, starting downtown-ish – specifically, the middle of a road bridge at the far end of Washington Union Station (Londoners should think of Eccleston Bridge). It goes along a main radial road corridor through the inner suburbs to, well, it peters out after 3km. It was planned to expand. But it won’t be there much longer.

Photo looking down the track from the bumper (buffer-stop) at the start/finish of an on-street urban streetcar line. We are in the middle of a road. There is a single track, with trolley wiring, and a raised platform alongside for the stop. There is snow on the ground, which has been cleared from the platform and the road carriageways. — The Washington DC streetcar terminus at Union Station. It turned up eventually.

As Jarrett explains, a bus route covers the same roads, and goes beyond at each end to a wider range of destinations and interchanges. The streetcar’s other limitation is that it’s vulnerable to obstructive parking in what is essentially a mixed-traffic high-street environment for much of its distance. I saw this issue when I travelled on it: a visit from the tow-truck provided entertainment during one of the hold-ups. The trolleybuses due to take over in a couple of years will, at least, be able to dodge the protruding parkers.

VIew along a city street with shopfronts. Cars are parked alongside the kerb. Next to the cars, there is a streetcar track with a concrete trackbase and trolley wiring. A red streetcar vehicle is in the middle of the picture. In the adjacent traffic lane, a red single-decker bus is passing the streetcar vehicle. There is some snow or slush on the ground, mostly in the gutter areas of the parking and the adjoining part of the sidewalk (footway). — These were OK – but a couple of blocks earlier, a badly-parked car had stopped the streetcar for a considerable time. The snow and slush in the gutters was encouraging many drivers to park further out than they otherwise would. Some were close enough to make the streetcar drivers go past slowly; a few were foul of the swept path.

Jarrett puts the DC experience in the context of other contemporary US streetcar routes, not all of which he thinks will endure. And he draws out some transit planning principles. His closing point is important: work out what routes you need, then pick the appropriate technology – rather than “falling in love with a technology and then designing a line around its limitations”. This is good advice for any sort of public transport planning.

That’s not saying you can’t build incrementally – of course you often have to. But the first increment needs to be apt and valuable enough in its own right that it builds the momentum for the next one.

And in the right place, a standalone streetcar line (as the DC one never got beyond being) might be the right solution. Jarrett mentions Tucson’s – one of the longer and perhaps more light-rail-esque routes – as being one that “makes some sense”.

I still have a soft spot for the mini-network in Little Rock, Arkansas that I had the pleasure of visiting many years ago, and which seemed to be well-matched to its job.

Photo at a signalised crossroads of city streets. Coming towards the camera is an old-fashioned-looking (but modern) streetcar. It has just taken the straight-ahead route over a switch (points) which offers a diverging route to the left (right of photo). There is other traffic around the streetcar, including SUV-style pickup trucks. The streetcar is in predominantly yellow livery with red doors and roof. It has the name and logotype of Central Arkansas Transit and is numbered 408. The destination blind says "Little Rock Loop". The streetcar is collecting current from the overhead trolley wire using its rear trolley connector; we can also see the lowered front trolley connector. — Little Rock, Arkansas. Yes, it’s a 21st-century streetcar. High-floor, but with on-board lifts for step-free access.

If you want to read more about the modern US streetcar concept, how it works and what it seeks to deliver, there are useful guides from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) and the Community Streetcar Coalition. APTA also produces guidance on vehicles.

Finally, I would recommend the book Street Smart: Streetcars and Cities in the Twenty-first Century, edited by Gloria Ohland and Shelley Poticha. It’s out of print but available second-hand online. It has technical information and case studies in a readable style, and is well-illustrated.