Huston Street Racing Indianapolis based Urban Photojournalism & Transportation Advocacy

Streetcars or LRV: Are decisions being based on the technical merits?

Portland Streetcar via flickr user Portland Urban Condos

A common theme that seems to play out, and which has been getting a lot of scrutiny lately, is how expensive it is to construct rail transportation systems in America. If you are curious, there are plenty of studies out there that compare Spain's efforts to expand its light, and high speed, rail lines. In doing so, they have cut labor to save the capital costs associated with this.

In America, labor unions usually dictate public works projects. As such, they also charge heavily inflated costs when compared to other forms of labor. If we accept that this is not going to change anytime soon, then we must look at other ways of trimming costs.

I have been doing a somewhat in depth study of the differences between what is widley considered a "streetcar" and what is widley considered a "light rail vehicle".

A "streetcar" is what you find operating in downtown Portland, Seattle, and more commonly in nearly every major city in Europe and called a Tram. They are typically operated urban areas of high density and operate at slow rates of speed due to their mixed use with traffic or pedestrian areas. What this has done, has propped up a reputation that streetcars are slow and that they are used for urban circulator types of duty. This would also be an incorrect reputation in that the ones operating in Portland at least, are based off of a design created by Skoda, in the Czech Republic. Their designed top speed is nearly 45mph. What this says, is that a streetcar effectively can compete with automobiles and buses in a non-freeway environment. Say, a busy city street.

A "light rail vehicle" is what you would find operating in a mulitude of major American cities. Portland has the MAX. Dallas has DART.  I could go on but most of them operate a type of train car that is much heavier than a "streetcar" as explained above. It also has a marginally higher passenger capacity. With the additional weight, comes a much larger footprint that it must carry in the form of more sub-base. Gravel. Dirt. Ballast. Concrete. etc... Exactly why this is, I am trying to track down. When looking at the total unloaded weights spread out among the available axles, the streetcar and LRV are very similar. A Skoda car weighing 61,600lbs divided among 4 axles computes to 15,400 per axle. Conversely, a Siemens S70 weighs in at 96,800 unloaded but is spread among 6 axles returning 16,133 per axle. The carrying capacity of the S70 is higher but does this neccesitate such a different sub-base? I question whether the vast depth disparity between the two (see images below) really tells us the story. I have an email lodged with some people more involved in this line of work daily to get a better answer.

Tuscon Streetcar Sub-base Section

Denver Light Rail Sub-base Section

I have blogged about these infrastructure related differences before, when I advocated for a streetcar along College Ave from downtown Indianapolis to the Midtown neighborhood of Broad Ripple. This differentiation is exactly where a cost savings could be gleaned in the form of labor, if we are to believe the information on sub-base grading described above. The selling point of streetcars has been in their comparitavely cheap labor. They don't typically require as much utility relocation which is one of the major expenses of the light rail footprint; getting pipes and electrical stuff out of the way.

Given all of the above, would it be reasonable to say that if we could somehow employ streetcars in place of light rail and manage to carry the capacity that the light rail vehicle can, due to it's ability to link multiple units together, why wouldn't we choose this technology? I have been pondering just such a question and began to examine the technical differences between the two technologies. I first looked into the capability of linking a streetcar with another. It is possible. Physically at least. (see image below). Whether or not this provides any electronic control between cars remains to be discovered.

Skoda Tram via flickr user BLINKY73

Older style tram coupled between cars via flickr user m_bauer

I even went so far as to contact United Streetcar / Oregon Iron Works and ask them what the capability of linking their 10 T3 vehicle together in such a manner. I spoke with their president Chandra Brown who was not going to have any of that talk apparently. So I cannot say whether or not this is possible. She stated that no one has approached them about such a project here in America, and that if they did, the request would be met with a stiff cost increase to accomodate. However, the 10 T3 IS based off of the Skoda technology employed in Europe, and they make a 14T model that appears to have just such a capability; albeit a bit longer. Additionally, the overall tone I got from Ms. Brown @ Oregon iron Works was one of non-adaptability which raises a larger issue that makes the conspiracy theorist in me come alive. Would a company like this purposely not try to innovate a product? Have they tailored their business plan to be a niche market in the form of a low speed type of product? After listening to Ms. Brown, I found her claims to be a little inflated in regards to adding large expense to the cars cost; since the technology is obviously available and I imagine easily adaptable. And even if the electronic capability is not there, this is a manufacturing operation that does not require a great deal of investment and likely some programming and multi-conductor cable to connect the cars. This type of labor does not equal a TON of money and I can't conceive that this would make the effort so cost prohibitive as to negate the advantage of a streetcar and its infrastructure.

Skoda 14T, Photo via flickr user carnero.cc

So where does this leave me? I maintain that the technology is there, and that the capability exists to employ streetcars in a coupled manner in place of a light rail vehicle, where the capacities are such that the system would not become bogged down. If this is the case, then cities looking to break into the rail infrastructure game should be looking at how they can greatly reduce their costs via technologies that can make this happen. It is statistically proven that ridership is at its lowest when a system opens. A streetcar with it's lower capacities and deployed in a manner that is expandable via coupling with a second or even third vehicle, could provide a large cost savings over light rail. The majority of the general public would never know the difference either. Not to be purposely deceptive, but it could still be branded as light rail and most people would never know that the technology is what is commonly called a tram or streetcar.

Streetcar / European Tram technology is proven, and is in service today and represents a divergent thinking when compared to light rail and its realtively inflated costs.

As always, I welcome reader input and suggestions.

EDIT: Engineer Scotty of the Dead Horse Times penned an article right after mine on this topic as well that is well worth the time spent reading it.