Tag: Cincinnati

Middle America’s transit oddities

Pittsburgh Regional Transit Red Line train in the Brookline neighbourhood

In 2022, with travel restrictions eased, I had the opportunity to take several road trips throughout the Northeast and Midwestern states, from New York and Maryland to Kentucky and Michigan. Previously on this site, I wrote about my visit to Philadelphia’s Rail Park, a lesser-known, yet ambitious project to repurpose former Reading Railroad corridors in the city’s north end. I also wrote about Dayton’s trolley bus network, which, if operated to its full potential, could be a model for electrifying transit across North America.

In this post, I write about some of the other interesting transit services in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia that I visited on my travels late last year, including a personal rapid transit prototype, the remnants of a huge legacy streetcar system transformed into a modern light rail line, bus rapid transit lines, and a new streetcar service I last visited while under construction in 2015. I even got to ride TANK.

Cleveland

Cleveland Red Line train on one of the many bridges spanning the Cuyahoga River and the Flats. The arched double-decked bridge beyond the Rapid train once carried a streetcar subway into Downtown Cleveland from the west.

I visited Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Dayton in September 2022.

Cleveland, like most American cities, once had an expansive streetcar and interurban tram network. The city streetcars lasted until the early 1950s (its PCCs were acquired by the TTC), though the separate Shaker Heights Rapid Transit, which also used PCCs, continued in service.

The Cleveland system, made up of the heavy-rail Red Line, and the light-rail Blue and Green Lines (the former Shaker Heights services), run almost entirely on the surface, largely adjacent to railway rights-of-way. The Red Line, built between the 1930s and 1960s, was North America’s first airport rail link when that extension opened in 1968. Unfortunately, the service suffers from low ridership, so it operates in two-car trains, every 15 minutes during daytime hours.

A Greater Cleveland RTA light rail vehicle heads eastbound from Downtown Cleveland, headed towards Shaker Heights. Terminal Tower in the centre background.

The Red Line follows an old passenger railway alignment into Terminal Tower, the massive transportation hub, office tower, and commercial development on Public Square. The complex included a hotel, Higbee’s Department Store (made famous by its appearance in A Christmas Story) and local and intercity train platforms. With the decline of passenger rail, the trains moved to a much smaller station on the waterfront, and the Higbee’s store later became a casino.

Both the Red Line and the former Shaker Heights light rail lines share the same tracks east of Downtown Cleveland, and both services run on overhead catenary.

As the Red Line doesn’t follow city streets, Cleveland built a bus rapid transit line, branded “The HealthLine” on Euclid Avenue between Public Square and East Cleveland. The HealthLine is sponsored by the University Hospital and Cleveland Clinic health care corporations which it serves along with Case Western University and the art and cultural institutions clustered east of Downtown.

HealthLine bus with left-side doors

Though the HealthLine operates with special articulated buses with doors on both sides (to serve dedicated median stations, like that shown below), dedicated bus lanes are limited, and buses do not enjoy signal priority. However, the route is frequent and reliable, which is better than most urban bus services in the United States.

HealthLine bus on Euclid Avenue in Downtown Cleveland

Cincinnati

Cincinnati Connector

Like Cleveland, Cincinnati once had a large streetcar network, with trams also feeding into the city from communities in Northern Kentucky. Cincinnati abandoned its streetcars in the early 1950s, with the TTC acquiring its old PCC fleet.

The last time I visited Cincinnati, in January 2015, work had started on a new urban streetcar line that would connect its waterfront, the sports stadiums, the central downtown core, and the Over-the-Rhine area, a gentrifying neighbourhood north of the city core.

Like the modern urban streetcars in Atlanta, Detroit, Kansas City, and Portland, Cincinnati’s Connector serves a small area on a route practically geared to young urban residents and visitors. Though I came away with positive impressions of Kansas City’s streetcar (which is undergoing a lengthy extension), I felt that Cincinnati’s streetcar — like Atlanta’s and Detroit’s — was too slow, too infrequent, and too short to be of great use. At least the service was free to use.

Junction to yet-to-be-built extension to University of Cincinnati

One thing I did note is that, unlike Toronto’s busy — and useful — legacy streetcar network, the small Cincinnati Connector loop was built with modern tram standards. The few switches (like the one shown above) are double-point switches, with dedicated signals. This allows streetcars to pass intersections at normal speed, unlike the TTC’s insistence on stopping and then proceeding at a dead slow pace over its manual, single-point track switches.

Switches were even installed to the proposed, but postponed, extension to University of Cincinnati (a cutback due to Republican opposition to transit projects at the State Capitol), shown in the photo above.

As a Torontonian, where streetcars form the backbone of transit in the dense, urban downtown area, it’s frustrating to see a small, novelty streetcar line build proper track infrastructure, while our crowded trams are forced to crawl at every intersection because of indifference at the TTC and at City Hall.

A Cincinnati Bell Connector Streetcar, followed by a SORTA bus

One of the amusing oddities of transit in the Cincinnati area are the acronyms used by the two local agencies. Cincinnati and the surrounding Ohio municipalities are served by the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority, or SORTA. The agency wisely uses “Metro” as its public brand. Covington and other Kentucky communities are served by the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky, or TANK. To their credit, the two agencies cooperate on fares, a $5 day pass purchased on one bus is good for all regular services on both agencies. Many TANK routes enter Downtown Cincinnati as well.

Pittsburgh

In late October, my spouse and I visited Pittsburgh to attend a conference. Pittsburgh has one of North America’s most fascinating cityscapes, with the downtown core situated where the Allegheny and Monongahela join to form the Ohio River, with steep hills immediately to the north and south. The steep topography is the main reason why Pittsburgh maintained two historic incline railways, where many other cities (including Hamilton) abandoned theirs.

The Duquesne Incline, on a very bright autumn afternoon

Pittsburgh was also a leading operator of PCC streetcars until the late 1960s, with a fleet of 666 PCCs — North America’s third-largest — at its peak. Because of Pittsburgh’s many hills, often requiring private rights-of-way or tunnels for streetcars to serve outlying areas, Pittsburgh was late to abandoning its street railway, but with highway projects in the 1950s, a public takeover in the 1960s, declining ridership, and a desire to modernize, most of the lines were abandoned and replaced by buses by 1971. Only a few South Hills lines, which used a lengthy tunnel to access Downtown Pittsburgh, remained.

Red Line train in Beechview

The two core southern lines were gradually upgraded to light rail standards, with a downtown tunnel replacing the on-street trackage there. Only a short section of Red Line in Beechview still operates on-street, betraying the service’s streetcar legacy. In 2012, the downtown subway was extended north under the Allegheny River to serve the North Shore, particularly the baseball and football stadiums.

Steel Plaza Station, part of the Downtown Subway

In the 1980s, the Port Authority of Allegheny County, the public agency tasked with operating the city’s transit system, designed and built several busways radiating out of the city centre. Like Ottawa’s Transitway before construction of the Confederation Line LRT, the Pittsburgh busways follow former or current railway rights-of-way, with grade-separated road crossings, and with on-street operation in the downtown core. The busways offer rapid transit service, though stations are quite simple, with at-grade pedestrian crossings at most locations and basic shelters.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (East) Busway, Swissvale

Pittsburgh’s problem though is that the busways and LRT managed to avoid the main university campuses and many of the city’s most vibrant neighbourhoods. Oakwood, the home of University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, many of the city’s arts and cultural institutions and some of its densest neighbourhoods, has only local bus service. Not coincidentally, Oakwood was one of the last parts of Pittsburgh to lose its streetcars in 1967.

South of Pittsburgh, streetcars operate on an abandoned interurban line near Washington, Pennsylvania. Unlike the Halton County Radial Railway, the Washington interurban line’s tracks were not yet removed when the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum was formed. The museum, which operates several streetcars and hosts a large collection of static displays, is well worth the visit.

Former Pittsburgh Railway Company trolley #4398 carries autumn crowds at the museum in Washington, PA. Behind is a former Philadelphia Suburban Lines (Red Arrow) trolley.

Morgantown, West Virginia

Only a 90-minute drive south of Pittsburgh is the city of Morgantown, West Virginia, home of the sprawling West Virginia University. What makes the public university especially unique is the automated transit system that serves the university and connects it to Downtown Morgantown.

The one-of-a-kind Morgantown PRT, opened in 1975, has five stations between Downtown Morgantown and the main campus to the north. What makes the line a “personal” rapid transit system is passengers, upon paying the fare or swiping their university ID card, select their destination station, and wait for a car that will take them to their desired point, skipping any stations in between. Though the technology can be described as a “gadgetbahn” it fills a unique niche, and still runs with the original rolling stock and guideways, though software and motor upgrades were required. Because of the limited road space between Morgantown and the university facilities to the north and the mountainous topology of West Virginia, traditional bus service gets caught in traffic, especially on game days.

Walnut Street Station in Downtown Morgantown

Each car has eight seats and allows for twelve standees, so despite the name, the service isn’t precisely “personal.” As it is operated by the university mostly for staff and students, it does not run on Sundays, holidays, or when classes are not in session. During off-peak periods, the PRT usually runs in an all-stops configuration.

The video below shows how the PRT operates, including the bypass of Towers Station.

Part of the nine-minute ride on the Morgantown PRT at the University of West Virginia

I will follow up with posts covering my return to Toronto, Ohio (which is just an hour’s drive west of Pittsburgh), and some thoughts after visiting a local history museum.

January 23, 2023
Subways don’t always last 100 years

Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford liked to claim that subways would last one hundred years, while other “inferior” forms of transit, like light rail systems, would last only thirty.

At the time, Ford was pushing for a subway extension to Scarborough Town Centre that would replace the Scarborough RT. The SRT opened in 1985 and nearly thirty years later, the line needed a major rebuild, including new equipment. The City of Toronto planned to replace the aging system with a modern LRT route, including a three kilometre extension with two new stations at Centennial College and at Sheppard and Progress Avenues in Malvern. The line would have been fully funded by the province, and the rebuild would have reduced the cumbersome transfer from the subway platforms.

Of course, Rob Ford was wrong about subways lasting 100 years. While Toronto’s subway system is over sixty years old — the original Yonge Subway opened in 1954 between Union and Eglinton Stations — only the tunnels and station structures themselves remain from that era. The Yonge Subway is on its fourth generation of vehicles. Each of the stations have been renovated with new turnstiles, tiling, signage, and elevators. The TTC is also working on a new automated signalling system, and track replacement is an ongoing program.

Had the Scarborough RT been built as originally planned as an LRT route, there would only be the need for ongoing maintenance and new replacement vehicles. Extensions of the line would have been much easier and cheaper. The problem was that the planned route was converted — with pressure from the provincial government — to an Intermediate Capacity Transit System, a novel technology which was then being developed by the Province of Ontario. The rolling stock — nearing 30 years old — had to be replaced, and Bombardier, the successor to the provincial Urban Transportation Development Corporation, no longer built vehicles that could fit a tight turning radius between Ellesmere and Midland Stations. That’s why, after 30 years, the SRT needs a replacement.

But you don’t have to travel far to see proof that subways don’t last a hundred years. In Rochester’s case, that city’s subway lasted only twenty-nine years before abandonment.

High Falls, Rochester

Rochester, New York is an interesting city. It’s best known as the home of Kodak and Xerox, with a few attractions that make it a worthwhile place to visit, including the George Eastman Museum and estate, The Strong Museum, and the most easterly of Frank Lloyd Wright’s classic Prairie Style houses.

It also has America’s only fully-abandoned subway system.

The Rochester Subway was one of three subways planned and built in mid-sized American cities after the First World War. All three, coincidentally, were designed to permit streetcars to run under city streets using abandoned canal beds.

Cincinnati’s subway was the first to begin construction. Work began in 1919 on the path of the old Miami and Erie Canal, which once linked the Ohio River with Lake Erie at Toledo. But costs increased and construction was never completed. Today, the Cincinnati Streetcar runs on top of the abandoned subway route along Central Parkway.

Central Parkway in Cincinnati in January 2015, where new streetcar tracks run above the abandoned subway line

Rochester was the second city to build a subway line in a disused canal bed. The Erie Canal was rerouted around Downtown Rochester in 1919 and the new subway line — of which less than three kilometres was below grade — was built along the old waterway. A new downtown roadway, Broad Street. was built above the old canal. Service began in 1927 and was abandoned in 1956, as streetcar service in Rochester came to an end. Suburban growth along with population decline in old central city, and the prioritization of new interstate highways, put an end to rapid transit in that city.

Newark was the last city to build a new subway system in an old canal bed. Opened in 1935, the Newark City Subway was built between the Pennsylvania Railroad Station (which now serves Amtrak, NJ Transit commuter trains, and PATH subway trains to New York City) and northwestern suburbs. The City Subway, which operated PCC streetcars until 2001, later became the core of New Jersey Transit’s Newark Light Rail System.

In Rochester, several sections of the abandoned subway remain visible to the public, including both tunnel portals. Stairs leading down from the Broad Street Bridge, which spans the Genesee River and once carried the Erie Canal, allow the general public to get a glimpse of the tunnel (it is also accessible from the Genesee Riverway Trail next to Blue Cross Arena without stairs), and all the graffiti lining the walls.

A public walkway from the Genesee Riverway at the Broad Street Bridge allows visitors to get a glimpse of the abandoned Rochester Subway

August 15, 2018
The new American streetcar: A visit to Detroit, Cincinnati, Atlanta, and Tampa

The brand new Atlanta Streetcar

I went on a short vacation, driving down Highway 401 and Interstate 75 from Toronto to Florida’s Gulf Coast. From there, I went on to Miami and Miami Beach, before flying back north; first to New York, then back home to Toronto.

On the drive down, I took the opportunity to visit some of the cities along the way. Once I crossed the border and entered Detroit, my route followed Interstate 75 all the way. The great highway, 2,875 kilometres (1,786 miles) long, goes from the Canadian Border at Sault Ste. Marie to Naples, Florida, and via Alligator Alley to just north of Florida on the Atlantic Coast.

Interstate 75 passes through Detroit, Cincinnati, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Tampa; all were stops along the way. Four of those cities — Detroit, Cincinnati, Atlanta, and Tampa, all are either building, or have completed, new streetcar lines. Tampa’s TECO Line is a vintage heritage streetcar (like those in New Orleans and Memphis), the other three are modern streetcar lines that are or will be similar to those in Portland and Seattle — short urban circulator routes. Nearly all streetcar routes build in the last decade have followed Portland’s model of a modern circulatory streetcar; older systems, such as Tampa’s (or those in Memphis and newer lines in New Orleans) are heritage-type streetcars, using vintage or replica equipment on lines that are part of the regular transit system, but geared more to tourists and occasional riders.

Unlike light rail, (think Calgary’s C-Train, or Los Angeles’ Gold, Blue, Green, or Expo Lines), the new streetcar systems being built in the United States have short stop spacing, usually run in mixed traffic (or in separate lanes on city streets), and are often built to promote urban development, tourism and/or local transit ridership. The systems planned or being built here in Ontario, such as Ottawa’s Confederation Line, or Kitchener-Waterloo’s ION line, should be considered to be light rail (though ION will be partially running in city streets in Uptown Waterloo and Downtown Kitchener).

Detroit

Looking down Woodward Avenue towards Downtown Detroit, January 2015

After crossing the border, I made a quick stop in Detroit to see the progress on the M-1 Rail streetcar.

The 12 stop, 5.3-kilometre (3.3 mile) streetcar route, now under construction, will run on Woodward Avenue, Detroit’s main street, from Congress Street, downtown near the river, up to Grand Boulevard, in the New Center district. The streetcar line will link the reviving downtown core, three major sports venues and live theatres, Wayne State University and the fabulous Detroit Institute of Arts, and Detroit’s Amtrak Station. (Map)

Near Wayne State University, the roadway was being rebuilt to accommodate the new tracks; crews had dug-up the old streetcar tracks last used in 1956. Detroit once had a very extensive streetcar system that was one of the first to be publicly owned (Detroit and Toronto were pioneers in this respect); Detroit’s Department of Street Railways (DSR) even had a fleet of modern PCC streetcars in the post-war era. But the Motor City opted for buses, and it, with state and federal financing, was busy building a network of freeways to serve that rapidly decentralizing urban area. The M-1 streetcar is scheduled to open in 2016; 60 years after the last Woodward streetcar pulled into the carhouse in Highland Park for the last time.

The route will mostly operate in curb lanes, much like other modern streetcar routes in Portland, Seattle, and the new Atlanta Streetcar discussed below. Interestingly, only the central section will have overhead wires; downtown and in New Center, the streetcars will operate off of battery power.

In a city emerging from bankruptcy, Detroit’s short streetcar is being built mostly with private money; downtown business interests and some public institutions, such as Wayne State University, are contributing most of the funds. These business interests include the owner of the Detroit Red Wings and Tigers, pizza magnate Mike Illitch. Illitch’s firm, Olympia Developments, is looking to build a new arena for the Red Wings right on the streetcar line. Dan Gilbert, the head of Quicken Loans, centralized his company’s offices downtown and is one of the line’s biggest backers.

Certainly the line will be an improvement and spur more development along Detroit’s most famous avenue; it will connect most of Detroit’s major trip generators. But the rest of the city is sprawling, largely poor and blighted,; the public transit system, D-DOT, has been forced to make major cutbacks in the last few years. The city and federal governments preferred to build a bus rapid transit system that would serve suburban commuters as well as city residents; this is the main reason private funds are being used for this project.

Former DSR tracks, last used in 1956, are removed as construction progresses on the M-1 streetcar, January 4, 2015

Cincinnati

Central Boulevard, where newly laid streetcar tracks sit above the abandoned Cincinnati Subway

The Cincinnati Streetcar, also planned to open in 2016, is further ahead in construction than Detroit. Like Detroit’s line, it was planned to link the downtown core with sports and entertainment venues, educational institutions, and gentrifying neighbourhoods. However the line, first proposed in 2007, has been mired in controversy. An unlikely alliance, conservatives and the NAACP, opposed the streetcar plan for different reasons and backed ballot initiatives to block the project. Republicans at the state level pulled funding for the project and opposed it at the federal level. (To put it very simply, conservatives were opposed to money spent on the project, while the NAACP saw the streetcar, serving the downtown and the gentrifying Over-the-Rhine district, distracting from social needs elsewhere in the city.) Until a pro-streetcar council was elected, it seemed that Cincinnati was yet again going to see a rail transit project abandoned before completion.

After the First World War, plans were drawn up for a new streetcar subway line through an abandoned canal bed on the north side of the downtown core, with a new parkway built on top (Newark and Rochester also built streetcar subways in disused canal beds; Rochester’s was abandoned in the 1950s, Newark’s City Subway is still in use as part of its light rail system.) Central Parkway was built; the subway underneath was partially completed, and when the costs to complete the line soared, and construction bonds ran out, work was abandoned. The Cincinnati Street Railway completely got rid of its streetcars in 1951. Interestingly, many of Cincinnati’s streetcars continue in service here in Toronto. The purchase of 52 PCC streetcars was the first of several streetcar acquisitions the TTC made from American cities abandoning their street railways in the 1950s.

The current route being completed is a short 5.8 kilometre (3.6 mile) long loop, utilizing Cincinnati’s one-way street grid. (Map) In effect, the first phase would be nearly half the length of Detroit’s starter line. (The extension to the university campus is now planned for a later phase, subject to funding.)

While in that city (which I’d like to explore further; I was only there overnight and in the morning), I got to see new streetcar rail be laid along the route, and poles put up for overhead wiring. But without the extension to the University of Cincinnati, and a route catering more to tourists and to downtown and Over-the-Rhine residents and bar-goers, I wonder about the utility of this one short loop.

Laying track for the Cincinnati streetcar, near the Reds’ ballpark

Atlanta

The Atlanta Streetcar opened on December 30, 2014, so I got to ride it a week after its launch. The Atlanta Streetcar, intended as the first phase of a larger system, connects downtown with the near east side, an area known as the “Old Fourth Ward” which includes the Dr. Martin Luther King Historical Site (where the civil rights leader was born, grew up and preached at his community church). The route, a one-way loop, similar to Cincinnati’s project, is only 3.7 kilometres long (2.3 miles); streetcars currently run every 10-15 minutes. For the first three months, the streetcar is free. Atlanta ripped out its streetcar system in the 1930s and after the Second World War; the last streetcar operated in the Georgia capital in 1949.

The route serves many of Atlanta’s tourist attractions, including the King Historic Site, the Centennial Olympic Park, the World of Coca-Cola and the Georgia Aquarium (Atlanta, being land-locked, hundreds of miles from the Ocean and not even on a river, is an odd place for an aquarium, but I digress) and connects with Atlanta’s rapid transit system, the MARTA subway.

But the streetcar’s short route, and infrequent schedule work against it. I found it to be very slow, and with a frequency of only every 10-15 minutes, it isn’t an efficient way of getting around the downtown core. If you miss it, you’re better off walking.

The Atlanta Streetcar in mixed traffic. Note that cyclists are banned from the streetcar’s route.

Tampa

TECO Line streetcar at Whiting Station, in the south end of Tampa’s downtown core

Tampa’s streetcar, opened in 2002, connects Tampa’s downtown with the historic Ybor City neighbourhood via a route along the city’s waterfront. While Tampa’s downtown is an important regional financial centre, it is rather dull, even sterile. Ybor City has emerged as the city’s nightlife and entertainment district. It has a bit of the same architectural charm one finds in the French Quarter in New Orleans.

Like most early streetcar projects in the modern era, the TECO Line (named for Tampa Electric, the electric utility that helped sponsor its construction and operating partner) is a vintage streetcar system, using replica “Birney” streetcars built by the Gomaco Trolley Company in 2000. The streetcars run every 20 minutes, until about 9PM on weekdays and after midnight on Friday and Saturday nights. The line also passes the arena where the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning play; service is extended when there is a home game on weeknights. The TECO line is operated by the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit; fares are integrated with the rest of the local transit system.

Interior of a replica streetcar on the TECO line

Like most American streetcar lines, TECO streetcar line is intended to boost development (of Tampa’s waterfront and around Ybor City) and caters to tourists; there were several European visitors on the ride into Downtown Tampa. But unfortunately, all but one streetcar in service that day were wrapped in full-body advertisements, obscuring the view out the windows. I detest transit ad-wraps; they devalue the transit agency’s branding; if they cover windows, they partially obscure the view from inside the vehicle. I feel that they disrespect paying passengers. But to wrap the signature transit fleet, especially one intended for visitors and occasional transit riders, seems wildly inappropriate.

Fully wrapped TECO streetcar in Ybor City

Concluding thoughts

I’m a Torontonian, and I have loved streetcars since I was a small child. They have a certain “magic” that buses simply don’t have. Here in Toronto, and San Francisco, Philadelphia, Melbourne and many cities in Europe, streetcars/trams are an essential part of the transit network. Following Portland’s lead, the new modern streetcar lines being built across the United States (Washington, Milwaukee, and Kansas City are also building new streetcar lines) are looking to rail transit to promote mobility and economic growth in specific parts of those cities. Perhaps the small starter lines being built now will grow into large networks.

It’s likely that Atlanta’s streetcar system will grow and become more useful. Maybe Detroit’s M-1 streetcar will speed up the revitalization of the Woodward Avenue corridor and become a symbol of the Motor City’s turnaround (it does have the most utility, it seems, of the four routes I saw on this trip). I am happy to see federal money spent on transit and cities looking to building local transit projects, instead of the massive highway construction projects of the last century. But with those good feelings, I can’t help but feel a touch of skepticism as well.

January 17, 2015