Portland light rail and trolleys: a rail-volution?

When I was a very young boy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana growing up in the 1950s, my father would take us down to New Orleans on the weekend. One of the pleasures of those rare trips was a ride on the St. Charles Street Car, a Trolley which ran from downtown Canal Street out along St. Charles Avenue to Tulane and Loyola University and beyond to its terminus at South Carrollton and Claibourne Avenues.

Our trip usually began with some turtle soup and some seafood gumbo at Kolbs, a famous Bavarian Restaurant established by German immigrants to New Orleans in the 1890s. Then from near Kolbs at 125 St. Charles Ave, we’d ride out to Audubon Park to the zoo to feed the seals or ride the famous Dentzell family’s carousel constructed in 1910.

The joy of riding “open air” on those old wooden trolleys has come back to me now in Portland. We actually are likely to see the construction by United Streetcar Company of Clackamas the first streetcar built in America in 57 years.

The mahoghany seats, brass fittings and exposed lamps inside the St. Charles cars always intrigued me and today as I ride the Portland trolley system and the ‘vintage versions’ in the Lloyd Center going downtown that ‘slower’ era returns to me. I remember that I always wanted to ride and ride and ride–then and now. The St. Charles line was the oldest continuously operating rail car system in America and in May of 2008 was finally restored to full service after the devastation of katrina in 2005. It was part of a slower way of life there and it can be here in portland.

Let’s hope that the prototype streetcars planned to be built for Portland (the first built in 57 years in America) by United Streetcar Company will invite a ‘slower pace’ along both MLK Blvd and Grand on the East Side between OMSI and the Rose Quarter and finally bring Portland deserved praise for starting a rail-volution here and nationally. Perhaps families will make the trolleys their first choice of transportation because they wish to visit a restaurant alongMLK Boulevard (South) or Grand Avenue (North), or take their kids to an exhibit at OMSI or visit the Rose Quarter for any number of entertainment events.

Portland’s deserved but ‘stalled reputation’ as a “model” for the nation in its mixed use of light rail, trolleys and bicycles can now be on a more sound footing and may usher in a rail-volution nationwide before Boston or other cities make the claim stick that they started it all. Moreover, we can be justly proud of having NOT been a party to arguments that took for granted that U.S. urban rail transit systems, particularly those opened after 1945, provided few if any financial benefits to transit operators.

“Many authorities believe that the same or better performance could be obtained with non-rail alternatives. However, the 12 postwar rail systems considered in a published study online provide combined annual operating cost savings of about $800 million.” There is no evidence for the huge net losses claimed by some critics. If the social cost were calculable, savings would exceed those to operators alone. And the rail-volution?

Portland is the only Metropolitan Region in the US where transit ridership outpaces the increase in auto use. If we find the scholarship of Richard Florida persuasive, Portland may well be on it’s way to becoming a place critical to the nascent national discussion about what makes cities ‘livable”. My guess is Jane Jacobs, one of Florida’s intellectual mentors and herself a lucid economics writer about cities–my guess is she would have loved Portland’s present love of light rail and trolleys and many of it’s other ‘traditions’ as well–like bicycles!

Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood’s announcement awarding $75 million in federal money Thursday (4/30) to expand Portland’s streetcar system advances the Oregon Business Plan’s transportation initiatives yet another long awaited notch. And it helps bring attention to other measures of transportation success in the greater Portland area that were showcased along with other metrics in last year’s 2008 Prosperity Index and related Economic Summit–an index maintained by Greenlight Greater Portland, the region’s only private-sector economic development group.

~ by pdxren on May 2, 2009.