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2015 APTA-TRB LIGHT RAIL & STREETCAR CONFERENCE |
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Why Streetcars and Why Now?
BY SHELLY POTICHA and GLORIA OHLAND
Streetcar systems were ubiquitous at the turn of the last century and are uniquely suited now to serve all the high-density development underway in downtowns across the United States.
They’re much cheaper than light rail, are hugely successful in promoting development and street life and fit easily into built environments with little disruption to existing businesses, residents and traffic.
They can provide high-quality transit service to support compact, walkable, higher-density development in small and mid-size cities that can’t afford bigger rail systems—offering the potential to significantly increase the constituency for [public] transit in the United States. ... Demographics are changing: American households are older and smaller, and singles—not families—are becoming the new majority. Combined with the problem of traffic, these changes are having a dramatic impact on the housing market, as evidenced by the renewed popularity of loft and condo projects in close-in urban neighborhoods ... .
Enter, or rather reenter, the streetcar. Almost every U.S. city once had an extensive streetcar system, which extended the pedestrian environment out into neighborhoods, served as a collector for intercity rail systems and stopped at every street corner to stimulate a density and an intensity of uses that made for exemplary and engaging downtowns.
If the high cost of providing parking drives development today, streetcars make it possible for developers to provide less parking and put their money into high-quality design, building materials and community benefits like affordable housing and parks. Streetcars also enable residents to give up a car—freeing up a substantial amount of money for other household expenses.
Streetcars aren’t like light or heavy rail, designed to carry lots of people over long distances at high speeds. The cars are  smaller, the average streetcar system is just two to three miles in length, and the average speed is only three to five miles per hour. They’re not like buses—streetcars are easier to get in and out of, don’t lurch in and out of traffic because most run on fixed guideways, they’re less threatening to pedestrians, they’re quieter and they don’t smell of exhaust.But like rail, streetcars channel development and like buses, they’re less expensive to build—about a third the per-mile cost of light rail, or $12 million to $15 million per mile as compared to $30 million to $50 million. [Data from Reconnecting America.] …
The permanence of the fixed-guideway system, developers and investors say, helps mitigate the risk, and the higher densities and lower parking ratios typically permitted in downtowns make projects more profitable.
Moreover … a streetcar will increase property values and stimulate business because more customers will be walking down the street [and] the impetus for streetcar projects and at least some of the funding often comes from the business sector, with operations funding raised through business-improvement districts.
This is not to contend that streetcars cause development to happen. Rather, in the words of Rick Gustafson, [then] chief executive officer of Portland Streetcar, they “create the right decision-making environment” for policy and investments that will support compact, walkable, high-density, sustainable development. And developers and investors are far more willing to take a risk and build at higher densities with lower parking requirements.
Streetcar critics will argue that this development probably would have happened anyway somewhere else in the region—that a streetcar isn’t going to lead to a net increase in development. But that’s missing the point, which is that the development is happening at higher densities and with a mix of uses and less parking in those very neighborhoods where residents are most likely to walk or take transit—and streetcar systems typically connect with a regional transit system and therefore promote overall transit ridership—instead of in neighborhoods that don’t have density or transit. ...
In other words, this is the most sustainable kind of development and can yield increased tax and sales revenues for local governments and local businesses.
Moreover, streetcar projects are relatively easy to construct in already built-up environments.
* Systems can be easily integrated into a built environment;
* Streetcars stop so often that they serve and promote an intensity of uses;
* Streetcars are slow and integrate seamlessly into the environment and are nonthreatening to pedestrians; [and]
* Streetcar systems don’t require the massive infrastructure ... that make bigger rail systems so expensive and difficult to build.
Streetcar projects have typically been championed by cities and not transit agencies—which tend to view them as competition for long-planned light-rail and commuter-rail projects that have already been waiting in the long queues for oversubscribed funding programs.
But in fact streetcars are the very investment that can help promote transit ridership because they provide that “last mile” connection that makes the rest of the transit system work better by getting people to their final destinations, be it work or home: If regional rail systems are like the highways and arterials of our road system, streetcars are like the local roads.
Moreover, streetcars utilize a domestic energy source. And the higher-density development that they promote is also the most efficient in terms of infrastructure cost and energy use. ... For all these reasons, we believe that it’s time for a streetcar renaissance in the United States.
About the Authors
This article first appeared in Street Smart: Streetcars and Cities in the Twenty-First Century. Poticha was president and chief executive director of Reconnecting America and Ohland was its vice president for communications. The Natural Resources Defense Council assumed many programs and services of Reconnecting America, including the copyright to Street Smart. Article reprinted with permission.
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