Streetcars desired

Washington Business Journal - by Jonathan O'Connell Staff Reporter

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Kathleen Lavine

On track: Jim Graebner, who has worked with states and cities to create modern trolley systems, says streetcars are an ideal means of transportation and an engine for economic development.

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Forty-five years after increasing auto traffic squeezed the region's streetcars off their tracks, that congestion -- now exponentially worse -- may be fueling their return.

Several new streetcar lines are on track to arrive in the area, planned by municipalities hoping to return their commercial corridors to the pedestrian- and tourist-friendly places they were before the automobile began to dominate the scene.

Urban areas around the country are doing likewise, hoping to ride trolleys toward the dual ends of traffic reduction and tourist promotion.

"What's happened with streetcars is they are both a means of mobility and an economic development assist," said Jim Graebner, who chairs a committee on streetcars for the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). Cities everywhere are hoping to leverage the old-made-modern mode of transportation into tourist dollars and traffic reduction, he said. "The streetcar can be the thing that makes it happen."

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