For 10 cents in 1945, Jim Broker would hop the trolley from Westville to join the throngs of Thursday night shoppers at the Shartenberg department store. It was a “social time.” Cars were easy to catch, running until 1 a.m. As more cities revive the abandoned transit mode, the city has procured consultants to look at bringing back those easy downtown trips.
National transportation consultants TranSystems are set to start work in December to study the feasibility of reviving New Haven’s defunct streetcar system. The group has been hired through a $150,000 federal grant administered by the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments, reports city transit chief Mike Piscitelli.
The study would look at bringing light rail — electric trolleys running either on rails in the ground or by overhead guide-wires — to New Haven, possibly stretching into Hamden. Such systems are making a “comeback” across the nation, Piscitelli said. Modern models are having success not just in bigger cities like Boston and Portland, Oregon (pictured above), but also in Kenosha, Wisconsin, population 90,000.
Signs of old rails remain in the streets from when streetcars rattled through the city’s major arteries, taking factory workers to work, kids to school, and day-trippers out to surrounding towns.
Broker, who’s now 79, has lived in Westville all his life. He remembers hopping on the cars to go to school each day at the downtown Hillhouse High School. In summer, his friends would pack their towels and roll down to the East Haven beach.
“It was really quite an enjoyable trip,” said Broker. “A very social time.” The system was “efficient,” easy and quick, he said — “it was ideal transportation.” The light rail system was huge cost burden to the city, however. Pushed along with a lobby from car companies, the city finally ditched the trolleys and replaced them with city buses.
Today, when Broker and his wife go downtown from their Westville home to go to the movies or eat out, they drive a car. Buses don’t run as frequently or as late in the night, he said. Driving is easier and quicker.
A Comeback?
Piscitelli welcomed the prospect of light rail revival: “We’re very excited, for a number of reasons,” he said by phone Friday. He sees light rail as a way to fill in gaps in the city’s existing transit system, foster economic growth and widen the range of pedestrian-accessible parts of the city.
Light rail would be “a very viable, feasible way to better connect the city’s downtown and its outlying areas,” said Piscitelli (pictured).
Piscitelli pointed out a few areas where streetcars might connect to: the woefully hard-to-reach Union Station, the burgeoning Rt. 34 medical district, and up Whitney Avenue to Hamden. Unlike the old system, where streetcars took up their own center lane in major thoroughfares, the trolleys would be integrated into existing traffic lanes, he said.
The main advantage over the current city bus system would be frequency, Piscitelli said. A light rail system would go farther and run longer than the current underutilized electric “trolley” buses, which have to drive far from the center of town to be recharged.
Consultants will study current ridership, economic development potential and physical impediments to see where trolleys might make sense. The city will form an advisory committee to work with consultants, who are scheduled to report back in June 2008, said Piscitelli.
Broker welcomed the idea of reviving such a system, but wondered if commuters are now too “spoiled” by the convenience of modern automobiles to voluntarily switch back to the quaint cars of the past.
Cars are cool, but in some ways, they're not. Thye're expensive to maintaint and insure. Driving one to a dense downtown or any other parking limited place can be a pain in the neck. There are hidden costs such as upkeep of roads, petroleum related diseases such as cancer and asthma, and military presence protecting middle eastern and south american assets.
Since oil reserves are only going to last another 20-30 years anywy, whether we like it or not, we're headed towards cleaner fuel...answering my geo-political concerns. So the question remains, how does a fixed rail system improve upon a flexible (theoretically clean future) bus system?