Trams and History
One impediment to streetcar construction in DC is that our local lords of historic preservation have decreed that there can be no overhead wires in the so-called “L’Enfant City” — the original planned City of Washington that includes the bulk of the offices and so forth. It’s worth pointing out that historic central cities in Europe seem to have no problem incorporating modern trams into their landscape. Here’s Berne:
And of course downtown Berne actually is historic, whereas the bulk of the L’Enfant City is composed of rather new and not-very-interesting buildings. A streetcar line to replace the heavily used north-south bus routes on 14th and/or 16th streets could be extremely useful and the lower operating costs would pay off relatively quickly on such heavily traveled routes.
53 Responses to “Trams and History”
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November 28th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Great point Matt. Now if you could please fix the alignment.
November 28th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
What does a tram get you that a bus can’t?
(other than an inability to drive around parked cars, eyesores, overhead costs, and less route flexibility)
November 28th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
>What does a tram get you that a bus can’t?
Ability to use electricity which is
a lot cheaper than diesel fuel (even)
now, and even if oil goes back down to
$35 per barrel. Lower maintenance.
(I would add lower emissions – direct
use of electricity, even majority
coal sourced is still lower emissions
per vehicle mile than direct diesel
power.)
November 28th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
>What does a tram get you that a bus can’t?
No exhaust, vastly superior passenger comfort, cheap and stable power source (electricity), cheaper maintenance.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Damn Gar why didn’t you leave the low-hanging fruit to me!
The story of the SEPTA manager who was so furious on what was supposed to be the last day ever of trolley service he had all the scheduled maintence done anyway always warms my heart. This seems to have been a boon for streetcar museums as the SEPTA cars could do excursions pretty much from Day 1 of delivery.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
(I would add lower emissions – direct
use of electricity, even majority
coal sourced is still lower emissions
per vehicle mile than direct diesel
power.) hımm good web site go >> http://www.makkale.blogcu.com
November 28th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Don’t discount the psychological value, as well: you can follow a tram line and find a stop in the way that you can’t with roads and bus stops.
(Route flexibility is a double-edged sword: it’s useful further out of town, or to deal with special occasions, but bad at establishing passenger confidence in a regular service.)
November 28th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
What trams offer, beyond the immediate efficiencies and economy, is the assurance that they will still be there in the future, an assurance that persuades people to invest more and live closer to tram lines.
Why this should be such a burr under the saddles of our nattering nabobs of negativity is somewhat beyond me. You might think there is still plenty of open range for those ‘mavericks’ to roam free, but instead, they stay close to the corral, compulsively complaining as thought they were at that very moment trapped on a tram in traffic because some Fedex driver had parked on the tracks.
Electric trolley buses can provide the silent service and snappy acceleration of an electric tram, but they too depend on overhead wires. As a spectator from afar of Washington DC politics, I’m guessing that shoe leather and bicycles may be more practical ways of taking DC transit into the 21st century.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Washington D.C. actually solved this problem in the early days of electric streetcars. Because overhead wires were forbidden, many of the D.C. lines used an underground wire system. There was a narrow slit between the tracks and the streetcar dragged a trolley pole and shoe underneath. There must have been some problems with icing, but the systen was in use until the end of streetcar service in D.C. in the early 1960s, so it must have worked well enough.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Washington had streetcars until 1962; because of the rules against overhead wires, the powerlines ran through underground conduits. Like Matt, I wouldn’t have any objection to overhead wires, but if they’re against the rules, it would be possible to have a streetcar system anyway.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Right, Ben. In fact, the streetcar line from Bethesda stopped at the DC border to transfer from overhead to underground power.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Somewhere in the U.S., a safety inspector is looking at that photo and having a brain meltdown. Look, there are no fences to keep children out of harm’s way! No horns, bells and flashing lights to warn people! Anyone can just stroll right across the tracks! Why, the injury and fatality rate must be astronomical compared to the U.S. automobile crash rate which is–
Oh. Never mind.
November 28th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Trams aren’t bad, but dedicated bus lanes are a much better investment, costing a fraction of what trams cost.
November 28th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
What does a tram get you that a bus can’t?
Priority in traffic, along with the other advantages mentioned upthread. The MAX trams in Portland (Oregon) can override traffic signals and claim priority throughout the system. The schedules are relatively unaffected by street traffic even during rush hours.
On the long open stretches outside downtown, they often reach freeway speeds. Weather delays are uncommon, and the overhead wires are relatively unobtrusive (kinda like the wires in the Berne photo). And the trains are much quieter than buses (which admittedly makes them more of a hazard for pedestrians, though problems are rare).
November 28th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Interesting about overriding traffic signals – thats not only a nifty feature, its a great advertisement to anyone stuck in their car watching the tram whisk by, unaffected by traffic. A great incentive to leave the car at home.
November 28th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
B-b-b-but…a bus in a dedicated lane couldn’t pull out and go around a double-parked car!
Welcome to the nightmare world of “dedicated lane” busology. In theory, the matter is simple- hire a few high school kids and give them paint to mark off ‘dedicated lanes’ for buses. In practice, it gets a little more complex and before you know it you’re knee-deep in million-dollar traffic signals that the bus driver can change with a wave of a magic wand.
Transit in the urban setting involves a great deal more than just the vehicle, and by the time you’ve attended to all the other factors well, it just makes sense to lay tracks, hang wire, and do it right.
November 28th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
In my many experiences with Portland’s MAX system, interference from parked (or parking) vehicles is very rare indeed. The lines make few turns in the downtown area, so pedestrian conflicts are minimal as well. And it’s even tastefully done, with handy shelters, brickwork platforms, street art and other amenities. The system has a few limitations, of course, most notably the failure to include express service (for understandable reasons of cost). But it’s popular and growing, especially in this year of volatile gas prices.
November 28th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Check out Bordeaux. A tram with no overhead wires, running through some of the oldest and most beautiful parts of the city. It’s completely spectacular.
November 28th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Bordeaux is indeed spectacular, Nathan.
Apparently their system still has problems with “waterlogging” after heavy rains. Bordeaux and most of the other cities that have ground-level power connections seem to be in locations with very mild climates, so ice and snow may not pose a problem (as they would in most of the northern U.S).
Here in Portland we get a notoriously large quantity of rain, and occasional snow or ice storms, so the system might be more problematic.
November 28th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Read the Wikipedia article linked to about the Bordeaux system. It’s not an underground conduit, it’s a third rail — but they cleverly divide the rail up into segments shorter than a car and only energize the segment under the car. So you can’t get hurt by touching the third rail unless you’ve already been run over by the car to begin with.
November 28th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Read the Wikipedia article linked to about the Bordeaux system.
I did, but if you follow a link within that article to “ground-level power supply” you get this additional information about the Bordeaux system: “Problems have included water-logging, when the water does not disperse or flow away quickly enough after heavy rain.”
The link also notes: “…Bordeaux has experienced problems, with APS being so temperamental that at one stage the Mayor issued an ultimatum that if reliability could not be guaranteed, it would have to be replaced with overhead wires. Although things have improved, in October 2005 it was announced that 1 km of APS tramway is to be converted to overhead wires.”
It’s unclear how much snow or ice would affect the third rail, but it could certainly be an issue, even in mild climates like Portland’s or Seattle’s.
All in all, Bordeaux seems like a promising system, but not without its flaws.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Kevin Love-OJ Mayo trade: eating crow, or too early to tell?
November 29th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Are you implying Portland doesn’t getr much rain?
We should be named the Rainy City.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:51 am
[Portland] should be named the Rainy City.
It’s already called Puddle City, right? (When it’s not called Stumptown, at least.) For me, the rain is one of the chief attractions of living here…
November 29th, 2008 at 2:18 am
Overhead wires look terrible. They block sight lines. I don’t want my view of a sunset or of a beautiful building marred by a big black wire going across it. Maybe people in the MTV generation don’t care about visual clutter, maybe they are ignorant of all aesthetic principles, but some of us really do care — a lot — about such things.
People in San Francisco have the good taste to have cable cars.
November 29th, 2008 at 5:56 am
TRAMS DO NOT NEED OVERHEAD WIRES! Most systems have them, but Vienna’s tram system does not. I don’t pretend to know how it’s done, but it gets powered — electrically — from the track. And it won’t zap you if you step on it. Trams are quiet, pollution free and aesthetically beautiful. In almost 20 years of living in Europe, I’ve never seen a tram stopped because of a double-parked car — not once. If you have a viable tram system in the city, drivers aren’t going to be dumb enough to park in a way that obstructs the tracks. They’ll get towed immediately.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Interesting that the Scaife Counter-Blogging Project seems to have given some of its core operatives the Thanksgiving weekend off. Or maybe they have had some layoffs there? Someone’s stock portfolio hurting a bit?
Cranky
November 29th, 2008 at 11:23 am
I don’t see what’s wrong with overhead wires at all. San Francisco has them. Manchester, England has them. And I can personally vouch for the aesthetic quality of both.
However, in DC’s case, don’t forget that the streetcars alone won’t solve the problem; until a second east-west subway line is built, there’s always going to be a serious, unpleasant bottleneck at the heart of public transit in our nation’s capital.
November 29th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I have lived in Basel, near Bern, for a number of years. Now back in Connecticut, I miss the trams a lot.
In Basel, as elsewhere in Europe, the overhead wires are engineered to be tightly strung and neatly arrayed. They are almost invisible. Compare that with the messy phone and electric power lines of so many of our towns and cities, it’s not an eyesore at all.
You ask what makes the trams preferable to buses, and to be fair, let’s say the buses are electric buses, also connected to power through lines above. That’s really a good question and I had to think about it. I think it’s that when you have trams and tram tracks, you really have to reserve space exclusively for trams, space that the automobile traffic must rigorously avoid. In other words, traffic patterns are strictly organized — also with bike lanes in many places — and such organization serves to reduce chaos and increase traffic efficiency.ss them dearly.
November 29th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Seth has obviously never been to San Francisco. MUNI has both trolley buses and streetcars. The result is that parts of San Francisco have lots of overhead wires going in all directions.
November 29th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
You ask what makes the trams preferable to buses..
And (to repeat) trams in Portland’s system don’t have to stop for traffic lights. The lights turn to green, and red for cars on intersecting streets, as soon as the trams approach. (I’m not sure whether that happens automatically or if it’s activated by the MAX drivers.)
In theory, buses could benefit from the same system if they had separate lanes (or designated transit streets, as in downtown Portland). I suspect that the extensive and very advanced bus network in Curitiba, Brazil, gives buses similar priorities at intersections.
November 30th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
> In Basel, as elsewhere in Europe, the overhead wires
> are engineered to be tightly strung and neatly arrayed.
> They are almost invisible. Compare that with the messy
> phone and electric power lines of so many of our
> towns and cities, it’s not an eyesore at all.
One thing to keep in mind is that Americans /will not/ pay for aesthetic design. In fact any public works official who tries to include aesthetic considerations in a project will be literally hauled in front of a commission and fired. It can’t cost more than a 5% premium to make urban Interstate bridges, overpasses, and interchanges look decent but Minneapolis is the only place I know of that has done so. Same thing with catenary structures for trolley wires: it probably doesn’t cost more than 10% additional to make them look good (and such was done in the US in the 1880s), but any attempt to put that 10% in the budget would be met by screams of outrage and punishment at the ballot box.
Cranky
November 30th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
One thing to keep in mind is that Americans /will not/ pay for aesthetic design.
There are occasional — okay, extremely rare — exceptions. I’d nominate Portland’s MAX line and the downtown transit mall for their high levels of aesthetic awareness. Not that it was exactly voluntary: Oregon has a law requiring that 1% the budget for any public construction projects be devoted to art.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:05 am
It can’t cost more than a 5% premium to make urban Interstate bridges, overpasses, and interchanges look decent but Minneapolis is the only place I know of that has done so.
I’m all for aesthetic public projects, but perhaps Minneapolis should first spend money on making sure bridges don’t fall down…
Overhead wires look terrible. They block sight lines. I don’t want my view of a sunset or of a beautiful building marred by a big black wire going across it. Maybe people in the MTV generation don’t care about visual clutter, maybe they are ignorant of all aesthetic principles, but some of us really do care — a lot — about such things.
Maybe people in the MTV generation also care about the environment and making sure that our children see the next century. I lived in DC for a number of years, and I don’t remember seeing many sunsets from downtown (except from the occasional rooftop party), but I do remember the noise, sound, and air pollution caused by cars. I’m much more horrified by the aesthetics of fellow Americans homeless and sleeping on grates outside of “beautiful buildings” than I am by a few wires ten feet above my head between buildings. But what do I know? I just grew up with MTV.
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February 25th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
The tram on rails offers a consistent and defined pathway which will garner far more respect from surrounding rubber-tired traffic. The tram far outweighs the personal vehicle and cannot/will not yield to careless or inconsiderate drivers who ‘challenge’ the right of way of the tram. Much closer tolerances with respect to distance from stationary objects such as buildings, power poles, etc. are allowed due to the finite path of the tram on rails. Trams are far more attractive to riders than buses, and are smoother, quieter, and far more fuel efficient.
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