Portland. Oregon
If Dallas’ McKinney Avenue
streetcar represents the “low end” for new American streetcar lines (in
cost, not in service quality), the new Portland Streetcar is the high end.
When operations began on July 20, 2001, Portland, Oregon, became the first
American city since World War II to inaugurate streetcar service with modern
equipment.
Photo: Harold Geissenheimer
A Streetcar in Portland, Oregon.
Portland’s new streetcar line is a
2.4 mile long downtown loop (4.8 miles of track) with five modern streetcars
built in the Czech Republic. The cars run from 5:30 AM to midnight Monday
through Thursday and to 1:30 AM on Friday and Saturday; through most of the
day, service is at 15-minute intervals. By the end of its first week of
service, it was already carrying about 7000 people each day—almost double
what was projected. The line connects many important downtown venues, from
Portland State University on one end to Good Samaritan Hospital on the
other. It also provides local distributor service to Portland’s MAX Light
Rail system, and is intended to spur and shape redevelopment of two major
downtown locations, one a former railroad yard.
From the beginning, the Portland
Streetcar was a citizen’s project, not just a government program. Starting
in 1990, a team of consultants worked with a Citizens Advisory Committee to
plan the streetcar route. The initial alignment was presented to the public,
then changed significantly in response to public comments and suggestions.
Development considerations played a major role in those changes. One study
notes,
Dialogue was beginning with the
property owners and other interested parties about two large parcels of
undeveloped land near the central city. Those parcels are the River
District to the north of downtown and North Macadam to the south. The
conversations centered around the benefits to the City and to the property
owners of not developing huge amounts of office space. Rather than
competing with the downtown office market, it was proposed to complement
the jobs market with new medium-to high-density housing and to use the
streetcar as the appropriate transit tool to facilitate and support that
development.31
Once the route was chosen, citizen
involvement did not end. On the contrary, a new, non-profit corporation,
Portland Streetcar, Inc., was formed to build and operate the line. The
Board of Directors is made up not of politicians but of leading Portland
businessmen, developers, and executives. Only one elected official, City
Commissioner Charlie Hales (a leading proponent of streetcars for Portland),
is a member. By giving private citizens, including developers, a leading
role in the streetcar project, Portland has insured that the community is
united behind the streetcar line instead of being divided by it.
Portland was also careful to draw
a distinction between streetcars and Light Rail. Portland’s Light Rail
system, MAX, opened in 1986 and has since expanded with several new lines.
MAX is popular and, in terms of ridership, very successful. But the smaller,
more intimate scale of streetcars was emphasized strongly. A study
co-authored by Commissioner Hales states:
A general tenet of the project
is, “This is not light rail; it’s a streetcar. ... Rather than regional
travel, the streetcar is intended to serve short local trips. The theme of
simplicity permeated every aspect of the project, not only to keep costs
low, particularly in its urban setting, but also to ensure that the
streetcar line blended in with the neighborhoods through which it passes.
It employs small sidewalk stops, a simple track structure, an unobtrusive
overhead power supply, and it has required few utility relocations.32
Another paper sounds the same
theme:
Early on, it was decided that
Portland Streetcar should be integrated with every day street life, should
respect the human scale of the city and should minimize disruption to the
community during construction...The streetcars use existing rights-of-way,
do not require separation from automobile traffic and allow on-street
parking to remain...Construction staging was such that we worked in 3
block segments. From the day the contractor cut into the street to the day
everything was finished was 3 weeks.33
Minimizing construction time and
disruption is especially important to retail merchants whose businesses lie
along the streetcar route.
Portland’s approach to the
streetcars themselves is also instructive. Usually, when a city needs new
rail equipment, it decides what it wants, then finds someone to build it.
Portland realized this approach would be very expensive, because it only
needed seven streetcars (five initially and two later). Wisely, it instead
chose to buy “off the shelf.” It found a company that already built
streetcars and took what it had to offer, with a minimum of modifications.
The company was Skoda in the Czech
Republic. Skoda is an old and highly respected firm, and for decades it had
built streetcars for service in central and eastern Europe. Skoda offered
Portland a variant of its standard Astra streetcar design. While MAX’s Light
Rail Vehicles are 92 feet long (and usually run as two-car trains), Skoda's
streetcar is just 67 feet long. It has doors on both sides and can be
operated from either end. The car is air-conditioned, the interior is bright
and open, and the middle section has a low floor, making it easy to get on
and off. It can seat thirty people, and has room for 87 standees; for the
short trips that are typical of streetcar travel, many people prefer to
stand (big windows let even standees see out). As Portland intended, its new
Skoda streetcars fit into neighborhoods rather than dominating them.
Skoda and other eastern European
companies, including some in Russia, may be able to supply streetcars to
other American cities, and do so at reasonable prices. The seven Skoda
streetcars cost Portland $13.4 million, for a price per car just under $2
million. This is up to a third less than some modern Light Rail Vehicles
cost. At the same time, it is substantially more expensive than either
Vintage or Heritage streetcars. Modernity has its price, as conservatives
know only too well.
Has Portland’s streetcar been
successful? As of this writing, it has been in operation less than one year.
But in one important way, we can already say it has succeeded, because it is
already affecting economic development positively.
A rail transit line's effect on
development begins before the trains start to run. It begins once a firm
commitment to build the line is made and the exact route is decided. At that
point, developers know where and when they will have high quality public
transit. They also know that once the line opens, transit is there to stay.
This is a major difference from bus service, and it is the reason why rail
transit has profound effects on development and bus service does not.
From the outset, the Portland
Streetcar was seen as a tool for shaping development. A study notes that:
The Portland Streetcar Project
is part of the City’s growth management strategy…City goals call for
15,000 new housing units and 75,000 new jobs in our urban core. The River
District and North Macadam District will be the site of over half of the
new housing units and one-fifth of all the new jobs. We believe that
providing high density housing close to jobs and all of the amenities
available in downtown is a good idea and a good deal. Portland Streetcar
will be the essential transit link connecting people to their jobs, to
shopping, to educational institutions and to the arts and cultural
community…At the south end of the River District, the Brewery Blocks
Development is under construction. This is a major mixed-use development
on five City blocks that once housed the Blitz Weinhard Brewery…The
developer sees the streetcar project as a key element in the success of
their project.34
The Brewery Blocks Development was
under construction before streetcar service began.
The day streetcar service started,
July 20, 2001, the local newspaper, The Oregonian, ran a special section
devoted to the new streetcar line. It, too, could already report positive
effects on development:
In Northwest Portland, already
heavily developed, advertisements are appearing promoting apartments close
to the streetcar line…In the West End, projects in the late planning
stages include the three-block Museum Place, a mixed-use development near
the Portland Art Museum, and the Mosaic condominiums. The condominium
project, next to the Old Church, will have no parking…On Lovejoy Street at
Northwest 11th Avenue, a building called the Streetcar Lofts is nearly
completed, with units selling for $120,000 to $655,000. It will carry a
neon sign blaring the message, “Go By Streetcar”…Michael Dale, who moved
recently from downtown to the new Gregory condominiums, loves watching the
streetcar pass his window in a way that he said he could never love
looking at a bus. “It seems so attractive that you just want to ride it,”
he said. “You want an excuse to get on.”35
If streetcars can have this much
effect on development before they enter service, it is not reasonable to
think they will have even more after service starts. Not surprisingly,
Portland is already planning to extend its new streetcar line.
How much did all this cost? As we
noted, Portland represents the high end of new streetcar lines, and it was
not cheap. At the same time, it cost less than Light Rail, and far less than
many urban freeways. Including everything—tracks, wires, streetcars and
carbarn—Portland’s initial 4.8 miles of streetcar lines (for a 2.4 mile
loop) cost $56,925,164, for a per-mile construction cost of just under $12
million. Portland believes the streetcar line’s benefits, especially in
terms of downtown development and revitalization, are worth the cost. |
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