[PRCo] Installment 1, North American Light Rail/Subway

[Fred Schneider]

As I said before, I have been accused of trying to educate.  I like to raise the bar a little beyond just looking back at the streetcars of our past to observing what is going on now and into the future.
Where did the new light rail / subway movement begin?   There were some very small stirrings in the 1950s but without copious amounts of Federal money, these projects were few and far between.

CLEVELAND TRANSIT SYSTEM opened the Rapid from Windermere on the east side to W. 117th Street in 1954 and then extended it west to West Park four years later.  In 1968 in reached Hopkins airport.   Today the Rapid hauls about 25,000 on a weekday which, considering downtown is in the middle, would effectively be two fair trolley lines of about 12,000 riders.   Since the line opened, the population of the city dropped from about 915,000 to about 430,000.     

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZlMb7_7ON8&NR=1


BOSTON WAS ONE OF THE EARLIEST STARS IN THE UNITED STATES, EXTENDING THE EAST BOSTON TUNNEL LINE NORTH OVER THE ABANDONED RIGHT OF WAY OF THE BOSTON, REVERE BEACH AND LYNN RAILROAD BETWEEN 1952 AND 1954.  The photo shows the fourth generation of subway rolling stock on that line!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPuneq0cUu4&feature=related

Next Boston took title to the Boston and Albany's Newton-Highland's Branch and converted it to what we now call light rail.  On July 6th, 1959, the first weekday of operation, the MTA suddenly found themselves short of equipment and was pulling cars out the schedules on Commonwealth Avenue and Beacon Street to get enough equipment to cover the throngs that wanted to use the new Riverside line.   I was watching the crowds that Monday morning.   Since then the PCCs have expired, we've worn out the Boeing cars and now the Type 7s are aging.   

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i414sUMQ4XI&feature=related  

Boston only lost 8% of its population in the last 50 years; capital cities usually hold up pretty well.   MBTA claims somewhere around 230,000 subway and light rail riders on weekdays but I'm always skeptical in large cities where it is impossible to easily segregate who rode where, especially pass riders like those with the Charlie Cards.   Once you go through a turnstile, do we know if you turned right and went to the subway or left and onto a streetcar?  

Since the Urban Mass Transit Act was passed, Boston proved very adept at grants writing.  Without bothering to check the actual numbers, I would hazard a guess that they managed to talk Washington out of more dollars for rail projects than any other city in the United States.   

In 1971 Boston went south on the Red line to Quincy and by 1980 they reached Braintree.  By 1984 the line was extended northwest to Alewife.   

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu0wXo8DiBw
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLqizIe_F0o&NR=1

Much of the Orange Line elevated on the South Side was replaced by a railroad right-of-way in 1987.   This photo was taken just before it was torn down.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agmWLXrnFXI
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpPGflGWgbk

CHICAGO OPENED THE CONGRESS STREET RAPID TRANSIT LINE IN 1958 REPLACING AN EXISTING ELEVATED. Since then a portion of the North Shore reopened as the Skokie Swift.   The Dan Ryan line opened.   A branch to the southwest was created out to Midway Airport.   And rapid transit reach O'Hare Airport.   Weekday patronage exceeds 600,000 making it the third busiest in the USA.  

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ2UynWTKdQ&feature=related

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU76n298cYs&NR=1&feature=fvwp

        
MONTREAL (Société de Transport de Montreal) OPENED ITS RUBBER-TIRED SUBWAY SYSTEM IN ELEVEN STAGES BETWEEN 1966 AND 2007.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJlW0tpSY4s&playnext=1&list=PL3A509F52F9F9358B

THE FIRST OF A NEW GENERATION OF HEAVY RAIL LINES IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE FIRST AUTOMATED LINE WAS THE DELAWARE RIVER PORT AUTHORITY'S ROUTE FROM PHILADELPHIA TO LINDENWOLD, NJ THAT OPENED LATE IN 1968.   PATCO was created on the right-of-way of the former West Jersey and Seashore (PRR or PRSL) mainline from Camden to Atlantic City, which permitted 70 mile per hour operation.   While PATCO was created at the start of the public era, it was funded entirely locally ... everything came from the DRPA out of bridge tolls.  Those 1968 Budd cars and the newer Canadian Vickers fleet are to be rebuilt, strangely with DC motors and control just as they were originally in spite of modern AC technology ... all the railroaders who understood have been replaced by politicians.    All the plans for extensions also seem to have disappeared.   There are few good videos on line ... these are not streetcars so they don't attract a railfan  following.   Sad because it is a good operation.   Patronage?   It peaked at 40,000 and has dropped to around 30,000 reflecting the decline in center city Philadelphia job opportunities.   

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZjzjStZAis&feature=related

THE FIRST MAJOR PUBLIC FUNDED MODERN SYSTEM UNDER THE URBAN MASS TRANSIT ACT WOULD HAVE THE BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT DISTRICT, WHICH OPENED ITS FIRST LINE IN 11 SEPT. 1972 FROM OAKLAND TO FREMONT.   There have been ten subsequent BART extensions, the last was the branch to the airport in San Francisco.  The video shows a 10-car train running to the airport and stopping at Balboa Park in San Francisco.   Ten cars?  Well, BART isn't a light-weight by any stretch of the imagination.   Typical weekday riding is around 110,000 passengers!   Harre Demoro would be vidicated.   

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH0hvHeis_c&feature=related

THE SECOND MAJOR PUBLICLY FUNDLY MODERN SYSTEM IN THE USA WAS THE WASHINGTON SUBWAY, WHICH OPENED ITS FIRST LINE ON SATURDAY, MARCH 27, 1976.   Remember those David P. Morgan pictures in Trains magazine that were titled, "The editor does this or the editor does that?  Well on opening day in 1976, Fred found a scrap toilet on the hillside above Rhode Island Avenue station and was photographed sitting on it and looking down on the assembled crowds and dignitaries.  At the time I was the editor of Headlights magazine.   I understand the picture hung for a while in the office of L T Klauder and Associates.  It was titled, "The Editor Watches Metro Crap Out."   Metro has been a little too political; it's had a few too many accidents.   However, 35 years ago I doubt that anyone standing at the dedication ceremony that day would have every believed that it would become the second busiest subway system in the United States, beating out Chicago by almost 300,000 riders a day!   WMATA caries nearly one million  passengers on a normal weekday.   Why?  Because capital cities tend to keep employment downtown where they can have meetings to pat each other on the back and lobby.   (In that second video:  Getting old is remembering when there was no subway station at Silver Spring, Maryland,  but the Royal Blue and the Diplomat the National Limited passed there on the B&O.)

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEY22SvleBM&feature=related

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3I8QyarBxY&feature=related

THE SECOND GENERATION LIGHT RAIL MOVEMENT IN NORTH AMERICA BEGAN IN EDMONTON, ALBERTA WITH THE OPENING OF AN 8.8 MILE LINE TO CLAREVIEW ON 23 APRIL 1978.  Initially it became difficult for this writer to imagine driving to Montana, turning right and driving 500 miles farther north and finding a metropolis with light rail.   It was expanded since then to over 22 miles.    It equipment from Siemens / Duewag became the prototype for Calgary, San Diego and Pittsburgh.   

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm6p8FRyp8g&feature=related

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lKj3eNtCPs&feature=related

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QLRS9UccDU&NR=1

THIRTY-SEVEN MONTHS AFTER EDMONTON OPENED, CALGARY HATCHED.  It has already morphed into 30 route miles out in the Canadian prairies with another 5 under construction and 10 under construction.   In the writer's opinion, this is one of North America's most livable cities.   It has grown from 129,000 when Calgary Municipal Railway abandoned trolleys in 1950 to 1.1 million people today.   Roughly 13 percent of all Calgarians ride C-train every weekday (270,000 fares out of 1.1 million people).   Did the significance sink in?   That's 9,000 passengers per day per route mile!   Guess that's as good as any reason for bringing them back!   And Edmonton and Calgary became the model for San Diego.   

     Calgary is a fantastic multi-cultural / multi-ethnic city.   There are more Koreans, Chinese, Japanese and Southeast Asians living there today than the total population in 1960.   You can find Dim Sum for lunch in the Chinese Cultural Center ... ever had duck tongues?  Delicious.   And your meal will not be adulterated for European taste buds because there are enough Chinese to support their restaurants.  

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpAbbunI4t8&feature=related

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckD-YeDj_aA

ALTHOUGH IT IS NOT CHRONOLOGICAL, I'M GOING TO TOSS IN VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA HERE WHILE WE ARE IN WESTERN CANADA.   Greater Vancouver Transportation Agency or TransLink operates 59.2 miles of linear induction rapid transit or Skytrain built by Bombardier.   This was designed for airports but Vancouver wanted it for the city.   The propulsion system consists of a motor in two parts, one on the car and the other stretched out over 59.2 miles between the rails ... the field coils are between the rails.   The result is a car that will virtually climb a mountain.   The agency claims 357,000 daily riders in 2010 ... That doesn't surprise me in a city of almost 600,000 in a metro area of 2.2 million and in a nation where the homes are smaller and closer together than in the U. S. A. 

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1gE4aoJRw0&feature=related

Translink also opened the Canada Line, their version of heavy rail but restricted to platform lengths to two car trains.  It runs from downtown to Richmond and the airport.  Nineteen miles opened in 2009.    By the way, that parking garage at Bridgeport station makes a good viewing platform for photography  (speaking from experience).   

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzhby2pRrfc

Fred Schneider
Lancaster PA