More on streetcars and light rail, heavy rail expansions in North America
December 15th, 2009 at 02:02am Chuck Sweeny
This post also appeared as a comment to Thomas V. Bona’s article about streetcars making a comeback in the U.S., and whether they might once again be seen in Rockford. (The last streetcar ran here in 1936.)
In Bona’s story, he he talked about Kenosha’s 2-mile streetcar loop. Another example of a ‘loop system’ in the Midwest is Memphis, which built a downtown streetcar loop beginning in 1993 in the downtown district and Mississippi riverfront.
The Memphis Area Transit Authority acquired nine refurbished vintage trolley cars from Melbourne, Australia. They also had some new ones built in vintage style. I rode those streetcars in 2004, when MATA had just opened up a new line to the Memphis Medical District.. People I talked to, from tourists to locals, said the streetcars are a convenient and fun way to see central Memphis without driving and trying to find places to park.. Fare is cheap enough, about 60 cents..
Rockfordians who don’t get around much probably aren’t aware of the explosion of city rail and commuter rail transport in the U.S., from Los Angeles to Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, the city of San Diego, North San Diego County, Denver, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Charlotte, Tampa, St. Louis, to name just a few cities in the U.S. Canadian cities of Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto all have been building new commuter and light rail projects. Of Canada’s major cities, only Winnipeg does not have light rail or commuter rail. (Winnipeg is the home of New Flyer Industries, one of the major bus builders in North America.
Los Angeles, which had no commuter rail transport from 1963, when the last Red Car was removed from service, until 1990, has just opened a new segment of light rail, the Gold Line extension to East LA. The LA County MTA is currently building the Exposition Line to Culver City and eventually to Santa Monica (called the Subway to the Sea) and has just OK’d building the Crenshaw Line through the south side..That’s in addition to the Blue Line to Long Beach, the Red Line subway to North Hollywood and the Green Line , an east-west route thru LA County in the median of the Century Freeway.
Of course, LA residents voted to tax themselves for rail and other transit capital projects, and California voters in 2008 OK’d $10 billion for high speed rail. Colorado and Utah residents also voted to tax themselves for rail projects.
In the 1990s, the Los Angeles area also built a 7-line heavy rail commuter network, called MetroLink.
Any street car project in Rockford would inevitably require a referendum to approve a tax to help build and operate it. Voters would also have to approve a tax to operate any commuter trains that run in this area. Farebox revenues would not generate enough money to pay for all the costs of operating and maintaing commuter or light rail trains.
Remember, however, that no form of transport would exist without heavy government subsidies. It’s just that the federal and most state funding formulas favor road construction because road builders give heavily to the politicians they help to elect.
(Amtrak trains would not require a local tax.)
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8 Comments Add your own
1. SNuss | December 16th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Any “light rail” system is going to be quite costly, and require road space to run the trains, unless you want to build a EL (elevated railway), which is even more expensive. And what locations/ attractions would this system connect?
If it was to happen, I think a monorail system, like Disney runs at it’s parks, might be the best option.
2. monkey | December 16th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Let’s be realistic; this is absolutely a non-story, with no chance of ever happening in this community. Look at the populations of the cities Chuck mentions in the column; they’re all much, much bigger than Rockford and they actually have things happening in their downtowns. Trolley cars in a downtown with nothing going for it make no sense.
Rockford needs to focus its transportation efforts on attracting commuter rail. That’s the only hope we have at this point.
3. Seve Bellic | December 16th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Rockford need to worry about controlling crime, protecting and educating our children, holding elected officials accountable, to us the citizens, and pushing to have the RRStar becomes a respectable media outlet again. This story is just another deflection by the RRStar and the city administration. It amazes me that they run this crap when there are so many more important issues to deal with in this city. Wake up RRStar, people are sick of your mediocre and enabling reporting. It’s truly astounding that there are so many people complaining to the RRStar about their reporting and yet all they do is call us names, deflect from the real issues and bury their heads in the rears of the local politicians. How sad, sad for the city, sad for the citizens and simply because the editorial board of the RRStar have such inflated egos they feel they can do no wrong and they see no evil.
4. SNuss | December 17th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
For the “mediocre and enabling reporting” see: http://blogs.e-rockford.com/applesauce/
5. Seve Bellic | December 17th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Does this guy get paid to link YouTube videos to the RRStar? This is what he does all day and gets paid for it?!
6. monkey | December 18th, 2009 at 11:08 am
More importantly, Pat Cunningham is a contracted columnist for the RRS. He’s not a reporter. Sweeny is a reporter and columnist.
7. fgmoore19 | January 4th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Please note: The “Subway to the Sea” is not part of the “Expo” Line.
The Expo line is a light rail project, above ground running mostly along the route of the old Southern Pacific Railroad.
The “Subway to The Sea” is a heavy rail, underground system connected to the current Metro Red Line subway on Wilshire Blvd.
Both the ‘Expo Line’ and the ‘Subway to the Sea’ will both end in Santa Monica City, they both run east-west in parallel but will not merge or even run near each other.
8. Kenoshan | January 13th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Well, I can tell you that as soon as Kenosha reinvented itself to shed its factory-town image, tourism rose from $92 million a year to appoaching a quarter-billion dollars a year. And the city feels a lot better about itself, too, being a prosperous, laid-back bedroom community that will soon be Wisconsin’s third-largest city.
And a big part of it was the HarborPark recreational and residential complex with its fabulous streetcar line that opened in 2000. Every year the streetcars set new ridership records as tourism increases. Surveys show that 34% of all tourists use the Kenosha streetcars. The City hopes for line expansion, because the infrastructure for that is there. That will certainly pay off in many ways, among them transit usage because people love to ride the streetcars. Also they use clean American electric energy, not Iranian or Venezuelan oil. And by expanding the streetcar line, it will free up buses for use in outlying areas - almost like getting free buses.
Check around; eighty American cities are either planning, installing or aleady running streetcar/trolley lines already.
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