Streetcar (Tram) Resurgence in the United States

What is it about?

Streetcars (trams) have returned to many cities in the United States, and dozens of cities are contemplating making their own streetcar investments. Yet, most streetcars carry relatively few riders per unit of service at a relatively high cost per ride. The streetcar’s poor transportation performance thus raises questions about the purpose of these investments. Using a case study of five cities, the authors seek to better understand the streetcar’s appeal in the face of its poor transportation performance. Drawing on interviews of developers, business leaders, local officials, transit planners, streetcar advocates, and other key respondents, as well as documentary sources, the authors find that private actors with business and development interests in downtowns and nearby areas are the main drivers behind the streetcar resurgence. These actors operate within growth-oriented public-private coalitions (growth-machines) and typically regard streetcars primarily as economic development, image making, and tourism promotion tools rather than transportation investments. Rent seeking behavior underlies growth-machine dynamics, and thus streetcar projects remain appealing to these actors despite their weak transportation performance. The focus on non-transportation goals as primary streetcar objectives affects local decision-making and likely leads to their underperformance as transit.

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Why is it important?

Streetcar (tram) technology, although considered less costly than light-rail, still requires non-trivial shot-term capital investments and long-term maintenance / operational costs. Most of these costs are backed with public resources. If the documented weak transit performance continues in existing and in new streetcar projects serious miss-allocation of limited transportation funds and opportunity costs might occur. Also the economic, transportation, and environmental benefits that some of these projects purport to bring to their communities might not be taking place. Streetcar decision-making and planning in the U.S. therefore warrants improvement and more research. As binary social-technological artifacts the integration of political-economy perspectives with technical and quantitative evaluations is key to understanding streetcar resurgence and performance and points to the need for both governance and technological improvements in streetcar decision-making processes.

Perspectives