A trolley can work in downtown. It may take 10 years to get here.
That’s the latest word from City Hall after asking a San Francisco-based consultant to study the feasibility of returning the real vehicles — rather than the retrofitted bus substitutes — to the nine squares.
The consultant’s report identified potential engineering and planning roadblocks to instituting the plan.
The next step is to get the public involved, forming a steering committee to help guide the process, which could take as long as 10 years, said Michael Piscitelli, the city’s director of transportation, traffic and parking.
The move comes about a year after a report by Kansas City-based TranSystems to the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments concluded that trolley service is not only possible but could serve as a catalyst for economic development. That report, which cost $150,000, was part of a regional transit survey by the COG. The city’s portion was $20,000 Piscitelli said.
Electric trolleys did clang along New Haven streets from 1892 to 1948.
On Feb. 19, San Francisco-based URS Corp., the engineering and planning consultant, presented a half-day workshop. URS presented its take on what the next steps should be in planning, engineering and financing a trolley system. The city’s contingent then presented a long list of questions to URS. A report addressing those questions and concerns is due to the city any day, Piscitelli said.
(Read previous stories on the trolley comeback plan here and here.)
“This was a workshop to present a broad overview” of the trolley project, said Stuart B. Popper, a principal planner in URS’ satellite Rocky Hill office. “Ours was a workshop on steps you would have to take, looking at issues you have to address.” The workshop also included participants from the state Department of Transportation and Yale.
“Even if you decide exactly where you want it to go,” there are questions that must be answered, Popper said.
Among some of those: Is the road wide enough? Are there utilities in the road? Are the utilities adequate? Is your route feasible?
Among the issues addressed was financing, including the Federal Transit Administration’s Small Starts program.
Piscitelli said inclusion in the Small Starts program depends of the city proving that trolleys would have a better cost benefit than added buses. The early read is that trolleys would have a better ridership than buses on their routes, he said. The city is paying URS $10,000 for its work, he said.
“These guys are very good and the early read is positive,” Piscitelli said of the trolley project’s potential. The URS workshop presented feasible implementation strategies and engineering challenges for the project and implementation in terms of routing and financing.
URS worked with officials in Portland, Ore., to get its trolley system up and running. It was looking at some photos of the Portland project that brought some of the problems home to New Haven’s contingent.
In the book was a photo (pictured) of a trench a couple of feet wide and about a foot deep, in which the track bed would be constructed in Portland.
“We just stood and stared at that for a very long time. We were thinking of how we could accomplish that along streets like College Street,” he said.
Piscitelli called the TranSystems report a good first step. “We might use them” when the time comes to actually build the system. The TranSystems report was presented to a group last year.
Piscitelli said about 20 people at last year’s meeting were enthusiastic and could form the base of the steering committee. He asked interested New Haveners to begin calling him at 946‑8067 to serve on the committee.
There was some discussion last year on whether the trolley should run one way on a continuous loop or two ways on a straight track, with the trolley car reaching the terminus and reversing the way Metro-North trains do now. The steering committee could discuss those and other issues such as routing.
The committee may have to wait to begin its work, however. Due to budget constraints, funding for the committee may have to wait until the next fiscal year, Piscitelli said.
The city received the final TranSystems report about a month after the presentation on trolleys last March.
The report recommendations included running two cars on each loop track, so a rider who just misses a car would only have to wait 15 minutes. If there are three cars running, the wait would be only 10 minutes.
The car will look a lot like the ones that are in the Trolley Museum in East Haven, called heritage or historic replication, but will have all the modern bells and whistles, so to speak.
The system would cost around $30 million to build — some $21 million to prepare the streets and install the tracks and wiring and another $9.3 million for the trolleys themselves and the car barn where they would be repaired and maintained. The car barn would be 20,000 square feet, which would include some space for the Trolley Museum to display some of its collection.
Why the heck would they be made to look like the old trolleys in the museum? When those were made they were state of the art and high tech. We should do the same now and build modern cars that reflect contemporary technology and engineering.