Street Cars: A bad idea finds new life

An Intelligencer Journal – New Era article entitled “Hourglass Foundation speaker says young and old together revitalize cities” reports on a talk given to members of the local organization by Christopher Leinberger  whom they describe as a “Land use strategist, author, professor and Brookings Institution Fellow”.

According to the article:

” ‘Streetcars are tremendous economic generators,” said Leinberger, noting that cities across the country are installing tracks.”

“ ‘To fund those systems, cities are using ‘value latching,’ in which the increased value of properties along the line are tapped to pay for part of the streetcar’s operating costs, he said.”

” ‘You now have the tools to do it. It’s now time to put in the streetcar,” Leinberger said.”

“Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray, who supported a study of a 2.6-mile streetcar loop four years ago, said the idea never really went away.”

Ironically, a Google search reveals that Leinberger is best known as a big exponent of walking.   See

“Walk this Way: The Economic Promise of Walkable Places in Metropolitan Washington, D.C.”

Perhaps Leinberger had not read the series of articles by NewsLanc some six years when the street car concept was first suggested for Lancaster.   The sponsors cited several cities as references of success.  In fact, NewsLanc’s research determined that either the lauded systems were almost totally subsidized by tax payers or were in major cities and thus irrelevant.

Representative articles are “Little Rock Trolley Experience Belies Lancaster Projections” ,

“Portland Streetcars: Fares cover only 6%; Taxpayers subsidize millions annually” , and

“Trolleys are for broad avenues; not narrow streets” .

Then there was the letter to the editor of the New Era, “Former Operator Warns Against Street Cars” by a driver of the the faux Lancaster street cars (the rubber tire version seen around town) who pointed out that hardly anyone rides the loop route.

The following NewsLanc article from 2007 is equally applicable today.

“Why trolley cars are wrong for Lancaster”

Posted on April 2nd, 2007 in News and Commentary

By Robert E. Field

My son Richard and I have been conducting business in Eastern Europe over the past 15 years. As such, I have had considerable experience with trolley cars. In fact, we have had to design entry ways in a manner to minimize the lethal risk that trolleys engender.

They do run silently. And they cannot be quickly stopped. Pedestrian fatalities take place each year. At least in Eastern Europe people have been admonished by parents about the danger since earliest childhood.

The initial route is to be between the Amtrak Station and downtown. How would you like your children or grandchildren to live on a city street with a trolley car that cannot be readily heard and cannot be quickly stopped?

I am old enough to recall riding trolleys in Philadelphia during my youth. There are good reasons why street cars were phased out by trackless electrical vehicles and finally by busses. Riding behind a trolley is comparable to riding behind a school bus. They impede traffic. They cannot pull over to pick up pedestrians, let alone the physically challenged. And if they run along curb side, they eliminate vital on street parking.

Of course when built in dedicated lanes in the center of broad boulevards (six to eight lanes including the center trolley lanes and platforms) street cars work very well. We have no boulevards in Lancaster.

I went to school at Cal Berkeley and love to visit San Francisco and ride on the cable cars. But they are something very unique and they can stop quickly under most circumstances since the brakes grab onto a cable. (Those of us who hung on from the sides learned to anticipate this.) And I have visited the New Orleans waterfront and seen the street car named Desire. If it wasn’t the object of the play and the movie, it probably would not be running now. It does serve the river front.

I suspect that a slow moving trolley on flat ground on a broad avenue along a waterfront in a town with many tourists attractions might be worthwhile. But that is hardly Lancaster. Our downtown is a mixed use commercial, retail and residential community with very little tourism. This is pointed out in the Feasibility Report. (I encourage readers to use this link to read the actual Stone Consulting & Design, Inc., February 2006 report.)

The study indicates that the initial project would cost $14 million. (The initial estimate for the Convention Center / Hotel Project was $70 million and ended up $200 million, all things considered.)

The estimated annual operating loss (that is before debt service) is about $400,000. However the report acknowledges the difficulty in anticipating ridership.

I see here a pattern of ‘Lancaster exceptionalism’ whereby the power elite ignores hard facts and chase federal and state largess, regardless of whether the outcome will be good or bad for the community.

I have made no secret of my feeling that the convention center project is the worst thing that could happen to downtown and will be a major obstacle if not the death blow to the town’s ongoing revitalization. People revitalize a downtown, not boondoggles. Condominiums and shops draw people. Convention Centers generate dead zones in the heart of a city.

The Convention Center will likely be a community debacle. But fatalities resulting from trolley cars running on narrow streets will be a human tragedy.