Ain't gonna happen. Just ain't. I'm sorry. This is a case of folks wanting to do grandiose things with someone else's money.

This general proposal has been floated about three times in the past decade and a half, and every time it floats like a lead balloon.

I don't know the stats, but Phoenix, Arizona, has just begun a remarkable, state of the art, street car system. There is also New Orleans, which has been in place for over a century, and the San Francisco cars. Anything is possible, but establishing the infrastructure to support the basic service - that's the rub.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this proposal. There has been significant demographic changes along the proposed route during the past five or so years. Redevelopment of the residential area at the route's midpoint also improves the proposal's chances.

I remember vividly in the 1960s the naysayers casting significant doubts about the proposed redevelopment of a seedy, run-down, industrial area along Pratt Street extending eastward including a dowdy section of old ship docks. That area today is the home of the University of Maryland Medical Center and Baltimore "Inner Harbor" tourist area.

Achieving critical mass of served locations is vital - and often overlooked. Our new light rail line in Charlotte allows anybody downtown to ride out into a neighborhood where you can pawn jewelry and purchase auto parts near the stations, but not much else. The majority of traffic - and there's a lot of it - drives and parks at outlying stations from unserved locations, and rides downtown - cheaper than maintaining downtown parking. So, the line isn't displacing auto trips - just relocating them, and probably encouraging more of them by removing the inconveniences that kept many from considering trips downtown in the first place. Kind of an energy and capital intensive way to increase congestion and pollution............

If the entire planned system ever gets completed - which is slated for something like 2 decades and then some - it might be possible to actually use it as a transit system that replaces some driving. Many of us will be dead before then assuming it does happen at all. Weak point is connectivity at outlying stations - the arrogant assumption seems that only walking proximity to downtown locations is important. A station is planned in the basic area where I'm employed, but not within walking distance and no sidewalks or paths were built when the area was developed. So since my older, in-town residential neighborhood is similarly unserved, I might as well drive instead. Probably over 95% of the city is in similar situations.

Until we learn to plan and rebuild entire communities and cities streetcar and light rail lines won't serve larger purposes than very limited areas development engines - and in times of economic downturn, hard to make a rational case for funding them.

dave

The Kenosha, WI trolley helped revive a vacant industrial neighborhood and it's not a museum line, it's tied into the city bus system.

I feel like I'm the perfect candidate for B'more's existing light rail line (the old NCR). I live in the northern suburbs, and work a few blocks from the Woodbery station.

But...

I'd STILL have to drive to the station (so I couldn't get rid of a car), and I'd still have to walk a bunch of blocks, uphill, through unpleasant surroundings.

AND I'd have to get up an hour earlier, and get home half an hour later.

Sorry MTA, I'm still piloting the swedish battlewagon in every morning.

Charles St would be interesting though. One of the core problems with the existing light rail system is that it was built where it was convenient to build it, not where it was convenient to take it. Down in the valley, in the middle of nowhere, etc... Charles St. is right in the middle of things, and I think it would be useful.

The core problem is that , like the USPS and UPS, transit is a network service. It's only as good as the network coverage. When you need to go OUT of network, its usefulness quickly diminishes.

Ed,
You're right about the Baltimore light rail not meeting everyone's needs. However, it did meet my needs splendidly when I worked in downtown Baltimore. For nearly 10 years, I drove to the Timonium station, boarded the trolley, rode downtown to within one block of my office. In the evening, I did the reverse. And, since my travel hours coming and going were during rush hour, my trip took no more time than if I had driven my car. The benefit: while drivers were negotiating the rush hour traffic, I was relaxing, unwinding, reading a newspaper or magazine, or socializing with fellow commuters (yes, even in Baltimore "regular" commuters start to bond with each other). It's surprising how many people I run into at the local shopping areas from time-to-time who remember me--and vice versa--from our days as fellow commuters on the "snail." Oh, I should also mention, that the monthly cost of commuting by light rail was less than half of the parking fees I would have had to pay had I chose to drive to work, not to mention the cost of fuel and more frequent maintenance.

While the Baltimore light rail doesn't work for everyone, it does work for several thousand commuters day in and day out.

Let's be honest about one other thing:

The proposal has been made several times over the years. I've heard vintage streetcars, a heritage car line (like San Francisco's PCC line), and a new light rail line.

If anyone were serious about this proposal, they'd float the idea of a "circulator" bus line through the areas in question, just to test the transit market. (There's such a line being instituted this summer downtown on an east-west route.) Instead, these folks remain fixated on rail, apparently convinced that all the folks who would never think twice about a low-cost local bus would flock instead to a rail vehicle.

The city of Baltimore and the People's Republic of Maryland don't have a spare $160 million lying around, and I can think of better transit uses/needs for any such injection of money from Federal coffers.

I was told that one proposal several years ago proposed using the Baltimore Streetcar Museum's roster of equipment for this "people-mover" function. I can't speak for the BSM, but I believe that said proposal was rejected by the BSM administrators on the basis of vintage/unique equipment not being suitable for a 21st century transportation use (think wheelchair access, for one thing).

I am thinking about starting a hamburger stand. I don’t have the money for a hamburger stand right now, so I am going to start by selling prepackaged cookies. If the cookies sell well, then I know the hamburger stand will be successful. But, if nobody buys my cookies, then I know for a fact that the burgers won’t sell.

That’s about the same logic as testing the modern streetcar line with a bus. The rider response to rail IS NOT the same as buses. Rails generate more riders. Rail generates more development.

I have seen some new rail projects which should not be classed as transportation, instead classed community amenities... City development staffs will roll out programs with wonderful brick sidewalks, trees, "street furniture" (a $4.00 word for vinage light post, nice benches, planters, and banners)

As such their success should not be judged simply by ridership and fare box recovery, but instead in investment in the neighborhoods, and community success.

The San Francisco Market Street vintage trolleys started as a substitute for cable cars during the system shut down and rebuilding... Yet is was so successful it was eventually brought back, then extended. It ties a large part of the city together as an open public corridor, which in turn drives development.

Portland has a local calculator as part of their downtown Light rail, the suburban lines running through, but a local calculator with faux vintage cars downtown.

San Jose had a similar program using historic cars with modern mechanical equipment, more heritage railroad than preservation, now rarely operated... but it served a purpose getting the system accepted.

McKinney in Dallas and Old Pueblo in Tucson are both Heritage preservation lines by enthusiasts, leading to transit... They were cheap tests, and add much to their communities. Tampa built a faux vintage line between the edge of downtown and Yabor City, the Cuban neighborhood with great success...

A faux trolley city calculator bus is not the same thing. It doesn't fool the public, and it doesn't represent a commitment to the neighborhood... so doesn't bring investment from private investors....

In the case of this Baltimore proposal, I can see what they are thinking, and with John Hopkins at one end and the Inner Harbor at the other it makes sense in the same way a shopping mall with a Macys at one end and Sears at the other do...
Additionally the space in between has some viable businesses, but needs a bit more to give it the momentum to grow... Strangely some of my insight was found on a tour of the neighborhood by ADM 2 years ago.. This neighborhood is still urban, not abandoned, but lacking the activity of 50 years ago...

One thought... the proponents are thinking a big, expensive project rather than the shoestring projects in Tuscon or Dallas... I suspect that this could be more viable if it started as a two mile loop built as cheaply as possible using 8 rebuilt Brookville PCCs, connecting or sharing tracks with the existing Baltimore light rail at several points..

I am not familiar with the area, but putting rails in the streets represents a major investment on the part of the government in the future of the areas served. Bus lines can come and go, but rails represent a seemingly-permanent commitment that will support further development. For the riders, there is a psychological component to this (rails = permanence), as well as the problem of classism, as many people will not consider getting on a bus.

In the meantime, I just have to look out my window here to see streetcars rolling up and down Market Street. It is a nice thing to be used to seeing PCCs everyday.

Ask philly how permanent trolley lines can be. If it works, then it's good. But if it fails - then the gov't just threw away millions of dollars putting shiny things in the street. Money that could have been better spent on real systems and not some guy's Lionel dream. You need supporters to ride it every day, but yet if you get too many of "them" riding it, then you won't attract the upper classes everyone wants. And let those trolleys get held up behind a double-parked delivery truck or police cruiser, and then people will realize why trolleys faded into the history books. A fixed route may promote commitment, but it can also lead to inflexibility.

New buses today are a far cry from the Fishbowls of yesteryear. Dare I say some of the newer offerings from Opus and New Flyer are "hip"?

But to think plunking down trolleys in the middle of a crime-ridden, post-industrial areas is the solution is foolish. "Build it and they will come" only works in the movies.

But there are dozens of cities with this trolley line of thinking (including my nearby Lancaster - which despite having started this idea years ago, has about as much traction as a trolley would on a oil-slicked uphill grade)

Gentlemen (and any ladies),

The problems with this proposal are not logistical or physical. They are financial and political.

The political reality is that 1) the proposed route of this project serves a heavily gentrified, affluent area, and 2) the purse strings of Baltimore City Council are controlled by politicians answering to constituents from everywhere else in Baltimore--the poor, not-well-to-do. There are other projects demanding their share of the state's dwindling transportation funding pie--and much/most of the money would have to come from state coffers, because the city doesn't have it. This is not to say that the money couldn't be "created" via some "pork-barrel" funding such as "economic stimulus" or "ISTEA/TEA-21/SAFETEA-LU/etc." but I seriously don't foresee that happening in this case. (A bigger cynic than me--if that's possible--might suggest it won't happen because there's no way for politically-connected cronies or relatives of City Council members to get multi-year paychecks out of this project, but I digress....)

With regards to the earlier bus suggestion, as it turns out, on July 27th, the city inaugurates on a trial basis three FREE "circulator" bus routes, supposedly using NEW buses that are distinctive and different in appearance from the standard bus fleet, and not "trolley bus" appearance. One of the three routes closely mimics the proposed streetcar route, running between Inner Harbor and Amtrak's Penn Station (soon to house a 78-room boutique hotel). A similar operation is running in the District of Columbia.

Oh yeah Ray, being downtown really does change a lot of the factors in the MTA's favor. I agree 100%.