NJERHS - FEBRUARY 16, 2021 – JACK MAY’S PRESENTATION MODERN STREETCAR SYSTEMS IN THE U. S. A.

Tonight’s program will be a survey of what the “industry” calls Modern Streetcar lines. Almost all of the views are digitally scanned 35 mm slides, which I took in the last few years on various trips by air, rail and automobile. Americans have a tendency to categorize, to create named buckets, and then assign individual items into them to emphasize differences. An example of this is what has been done in our avocation of steel wheel on steel rail transit systems, which have been classified in broad terms as heavy rail, metro/subway, light rail and streetcars or trolleys.

But that is nothing new, as when I joined the E. R. A. in 1958, after finding out I wasn’t the only one in the world interested in streetcars and subways, and knowing virtually nothing about rail operations outside of New York City and Philadelphia, I began reading current and back issues of the organization’s monthly news magazine Headlights. I discovered the terms rapid transit, trolleys/streetcars and interurbans. Like today, these classifications were really a continuum, with the lines between them hard to define, blurry.

What was the Philadelphia & Western, with its sleek Bullet cars? This photo shows a 1931 Brill-built Bullet in SEPTA colors at the Rockhill Trolley Museum in Orbisonia, Pa. Was it rapid transit, because the line is totally grade separated and has high platforms at its stations, or an interurban, because when it operates equipment in multiple unit, passengers can’t walk from car to car, and thus a fare collector had to be stationed in each unit.

This slide shows the Norristown High Speed Line’s newest cars, built by ASEA in Sweden, which came in 1993.

I remember arguments galore about this among our stalwart members in the late 1950s/early 1960s. And today, who could avoid discussing the same questions: doesn’t the Portland Streetcar have a great many similarities to MAX, Portland’s Light Rail Transit? The fact is that both employ virtually the same technology using basics that date back to Frank Sprague’s successful introduction of a trolley system in 1888.

But our transit agencies, consultants, journalists and carbuilders still separate Light Rail from Streetcar, probably based on various characteristics like length of lines, passenger carryijng capabilitiy, speed of operation and location of right-of-way. Thus we have LRT in cities like Dallas, Denver and St. Louis, whose rights-of-way are substantially not in street pavement and tend to extend into suburban areas; and streetcars, which for the most part run on streets. [Interestingly, the first of the country’s new Light Rail systems is called the San Diego Trolley.]

For the most part, the new LRT systems were built principally to improve mobility, while those systems classified as streetcars were only partly built for that purpose, as they were also created specifically to improve certain areas of their respective cities by promoting investment in the development of new office and residential buildings—and for the renewal, restoration and redevelopment of areas that had fallen into disrepair. Basically an investment in infrastructure.

The new streetcar systems seemed to have come about because city fathers saw how earlier light rail systems like the San Diego Trolley improved their cities, and wanted to create the same results in their cities, but could only afford a smaller investment, and therefore built shorter lines--using existing streets. The permanence of having fixed visible tracks serving traffic generators like museums, hospitals, stadiums, other entertainment venues and office buildings would attract investment in the cities, in contrast with the operation of buses that could easily be discontinued or rerouted. In 2009 the federal government through the U. S. Department of Transportation created the TIGER program (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery), which funded many of the new streetcar systems. That program is now called BUILD (Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development).

Thus the return, or the rebirth, of the streetcar—some years after the creation of Light Rail. Meanwhile, during this period, the so-called legacy streetcar or trolley systems, in cities like Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco and New Orleans, soldiered on while newer operations took on these exciting new names and concepts.

These new streetcar systems seem to have come in two formats, modern streetcars, like in Cincinnati, Detroit, Seattle, etc., which we will explore soon, and not so modern ones, such as those in Tampa, Memphis and Little Rock, that have tried to evoke a feeling of nostalgia by using actual real traditional trolleys or new ones built to look like them.

But I raise the question, what is really modern? I think modernity has a relationship to time and place—and perhaps it is in the eye of the beholder. Are the legacy operations in Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco Modern Light Rail, Modern Streetcar or not modern at all?

“MODERN STREETCARS” vs. “MODERN” STREETCARS

I grew up living with my parents in an apartment at 165th Street and Walton Avenue in The Bronx. It was just a few blocks from 167th Street and as early as my memory exists I knew I was in love with the Third Avenue Railway System’s streetcars running crosstown along that thoroughfare.

Even as a 7- or 8-year old child I realized that the cars on my line looked old fashioned, as they were clearly not as up-to-date as the ones on Tremont Avenue and Southern Boulevard, which looked much newer and moved faster. But, once I had a better understanding, I knew that these Brill convertible cars, built in 1911, were once the epitome of modernity. What could be better than riding in hot weather in vehicles whose sides had been removed so that passengers caught the breeze; the newer “modern” cars were stuffy in those days before air conditioning was common—and both were equally warm in the winter.

Anyway, I was really distraught in 1948, when at the age of 11, my streetcars disappeared—replaced by stinky buses. For some reason I thought that ALL the streetcars in the world were gone, probably because I had never set foot out of New York. So be it. I was resigned to a life without trolleys.

Six years later, in 1954 I graduated from high school and was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania, and in the summer my parents took me down to Philadelphia to see the campus. My mother wanted to shop at Wanamakers so they found a parking space on 12th Street between Market and Chestnut, and I stayed in the car in case a cop came by. What did I see? Something incredible! Old fashioned trolley cars running on Market Street and modern-looking ones on Chestnut and on 12th. Streetcars had NOT been wiped off the face of the earth.

This is an example of what I saw running on route 20 in Philadelphia. And to my eyes it was as modern as any transit vehicle could be. Wow! And for the next four years of my life these and other trolleys were what I was fortunate to see and ride. Ironically, these PCC cars were being built in St. Louis at the same time their cousins in The Bronx were on their way to oblivion.

The presentation will start with some photos of a visit to the Baltimore Streetcar museum this past November, followed by views of what I consider modern streetcars in Philadelphia. The first will be this photo of PTC PCC 2733, built in 1947, on display in the basement of SEPTA headquarters at 1234 Market Street in Philadelphia. For the time it was modern, despite not being air conditioned or having a method to allow disabled people to ride.