Portland: Driving the streetcar renaissance
The Portland Streetcar. Photo by Jeff McMahon.
My parents fondly recall two features of Chicago life that I can only visit in my dreams: the corner bakery and the electric streetcar. Both were destroyed by the automobile.
The corner bakery was typically across the street, they tell me, from a corner grocery and a corner tavern. Anything you really needed–a klotchke, a quart of milk, a cold beer–was just steps from your front door in those good old days, not too arduous a journey even in Chicago, even in winter.
And if you needed to go further to get to work or to The Loop, a streetcar line was never more than a block or two away. So the story goes. While buses run on some of the old streetcar lines, in many neighborhoods bus lines are fewer and farther between now that many more people own their own cars.
Of course, you can buy kotchkes at any grocery story but no large corporate bakery, I’m assured, can match the klotchkes baked on the corner of your own block. And few city buses run as cleanly or as quietly–or with as much charm–as the electric streetcar.
Which is why, and here’s the good news, the streetcar is making a comeback. And Portland, Oregon is the Florence of its Renaissance.
I’m in Portland right now in part to test ride this pacific city’s swift and stylish streetcars. In 2001 Portland opened a streetcar line to link the downtown with the city’s northwest neighborhoods and southwest waterfront. The streetcars run, as in days of yore, mingled with auto traffic on city streets with electric lines strung overhead.
Next year the city plans to lay rails for a second streetcar line that will embrace the city’s eastern buroughs.
Portland also has a light-rail system, the Metropolitan Area Express (MAX), that connects the city to suburbs, to the airport, and through a deep tunnel to attractions in Washington Park like the Oregon Zoo, Portland Japanese Garden and International Rose Test Garden. MAX trains can fly past traffic in their own lanes, but they’re otherwise not much different from streetcars. They also run on electric lines, but they’re roomier, with space reserved on each car for bicycle parking (are you listening Chicago?).
MAX trains run on three routes, named, like Chicago’s El lines, for colors. Next week, the city will open a fourth, the Green Line.
Portland has fought traffic congestion downtown by allowing passengers within a designated downtown area to board for free. The area, Portland’s version of The Loop, is called Fareless Square (are you listening, Chicago?), but as far as I can tell, the whole system runs on honor. We’ve purchased tickets for every ride but no one has ever asked to see them. (That might not work as well in Chicago.)
The Infrastucturalist has a map of streetcar projects under development nationwide that have been inspired in part by Portland’s example. With so much attention focused on electric cars and high-speed rail, let’s not forget the opportunity to bring back America’s streetcars, which were clean and green out of simple necessity and long before it was cool.
Some parts of the good old days really were good. Give us alternatives to automobiles, and then we can talk about reviving those corner bakeries and their unrivaled klotchkes.
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Nice post. I love streetcars, and just happily rode the red rocket in Toronto. One of the best pleasures ever is riding the one in New Orleans.
Caitlin, have you visited the streetcars on Market in San Francisco? It’s a moving museum of classic cars from other cities, restored.
In response to another comment. See in context »My favorite SF streetcar is a 1930s Italian model. I’m not sure we’ll ever recreate the soaring humanity of the Deco period–democratic, human-scale, liberated. But creating high-quality public spaces and amenities would be the commitment we need to make.
In response to another comment. See in context »I have fond memories of Portland. I remember memorizing the announcement for the stations we went past, the bagel shop we got one for the ride at, the clean, pleasant interior, the kind people, and the speed. Portland is a good standard for how public transit can revolutionize a city, in a positive way.
True, Skid, and I think that’s how Portland’s trains differ from tourist attractions and older systems in other cities.
In response to another comment. See in context »Figure out a way for the “connected” to skim money off this project and we’ll have one approved.
Laura, the CTA is such a mess that I don’t think even the “connected” could make these kinds of visionary improvements. But I want to add that I think Daley has done a lot to make Chicago more livable and more environmentally friendly and I don’t think he did it to benefit the connected.
Ah, but why is the CTA such a mess? He’s managed to make it appear he’s not responsible except that he is. Had he wanted to maintain it, improve it, heck even make it safe, he could have. Didn’t.
[...] of cutting jobs, instead of cutting bus and El service, instead of raising fares, bring back the streetcars. Or at least solvency for the [...]