[PRCo] Re: The origin of the term Light Rail in the US

[Fred Schneider]

Finally at topic I would like to visit.   I don't really want to go crazy with light rail versus heavy rail.
But what if there had been enough business to keep Transit Research Corporation in business past 1960 so that we still had PCC vehicles today?

We need to consider that the governing issues remain

a)  the Americans with Disabilities Act

b)  a need to minimize labor costs.  (Labor has become 50% or more of the industry operating costs.)

c)  indestructibility of the car's interior appointments in today's urban environment

d) some creature comforts such as air-conditioning that will attract the public

f) a recognition of modern technology that is out there today

e) and some degree of standardization within the limits that politicians will accept, which is almost 'nil

To satisfy item a) I think it's obvious that the new PCC will be a platform level car.   It has to be wheel-chair accessible or it cannot be sold in most nations.   To satisfy item b) it will probably be an articulated vehicle with design options for a single car to satisfy Philadelphia which repeated claims they cannot used anything else (or don't want to).  Perhaps TRC would tell them to go pound sand.  To satisfy item c)  you would have plastic seats.   You cannot very easily have leather in an environment where the front page of a newspaper of a 50,000 population city is the murder of the week page. The creature comforts in item d) will probably be air-conditioning.  Modern technology in item f) would probably mean AC propulsion but there would still be some agencies who know better like PATCO which still wants to go back 50 years in their rebuilding of their cars.  And item e) .... The main reason for TRC was a belief that we could standardize from city to city but now that we are governed by politics, that becomes virtually impossible unless the engineers are running the show.

Did I just define the light rail vehicles we buy off the shelf from Siemens or Bombardier?   I think so.  

Remember, TRC produced a very rigid specification but I don't think the car as we knew it in 1952 would look anything like the 2011 version.    




On Mar 10, 2011, at 4:59 PM, Carlos Mercado wrote:

> Jim Graebner speaks of rail transportation as a “continuum” that ranges from big heavy rail passenger cars down to a little hand powered track car.
> You can get into a real fix trying to differentiate where light becomes heavy or streetcar becomes light.
>  
> I too have long wondered if the “final” PCC technology of the early 1950’s (e.g. Muni’s last order) should be revisited and looked over to see what can be readily modernized with more modern technology, such as solid state and the use of newer materials.  Probably this is what happened in Europe when they build newer versions of the American PCC.
>  
> Do we have an unfortunate tendency to underestimate the skills of earlier generations, make foolish attempts to re-invent the trolley car, and end up with a  Boeing-Vertol disaster.  I guess we learned that building very fine helicopters does not make you the latter-day Frank Sprague.
>  
> Carlos Mercado – Rochester, NY