Portland, which led a national urban streetcar revival in the early 2000s, faces a slew of important and difficult questions about its own streetcar service’s future in coming years.

Planners are looking at a 2.3-mile extension through Northwest Portland to Montgomery Park. The city would need six additional streetcars to run on that new line.

There’s the potential for a massive disruption if the state transportation department moves forward with its more than $715 million to $795 million Rose Quarter freeway project.

“How are we going to manage your transit investment in that area through the construction period?” Dan Bower, Portland Streetcar Inc’s executive director asked the City Council Wednesday, saying that would be “an important conversation.”

And there’s another looming, and as-yet-unanswered question: What to do with its existing aging fleet?

Bower made that issue as plain as he could Wednesday: “We need more cars,” he said.

The streetcar needs to run every 10 minutes, not every 20 minutes, he told the Portland City Council during an annual briefing to the elected officials. To get there, the city would need 21 vehicles, plus five spares.

The city typically has 14 streetcars in active service around town on its three routes, but it was down two vehicles for more than a year due to a derailment and crash in May 2018. Last fall, crews brought another vehicle back online, but it’s still down one streetcar from what it considers a full fleet.

Portland expects three new streetcars to arrive in 2021, part of a larger order it compiled with Seattle’s Sound Transit. Those streetcars will come from Brookville, a Pennsylvania-based manufacturer.

But much of the existing fleet is in need of either replacement or refurbishment.

One new streetcar could cost around $4.5 million.

Andrew Plambeck, a streetcar spokesman, said initial estimates indicate it could cost $1.8 million to $2 million to overhaul a single streetcar’s motors, propulsion and interiors. He said roughly 11 of the existing cars need such service.

There’s no timeline for addressing those needs, he said, characterizing it as an ongoing conversation and one that will likely occur over the next few years. “We’re meeting regularly with PBOT leadership about asset management, operational improvements and specifically identifying funding to direct toward scenarios based in vehicle procurement to run more frequent service, but we have not reached a conclusion on the question of refurbishment vs. replacement,” Plambeck said in an email.

By this September, the streetcar line should be back at full strength.

Bower said he’s encouraged by the city’s attention to giving streetcars and buses a leg up over traffic, a program now branded as the Rose Lane project by transportation officials and Commissioner Chloe Eudaly’s office.

One project on Northeast Grand Avenue at the Interstate 84 interchange took five years to address, Bower said, but now has carved travel times from 17 to 19 minutes on a nine-block stretch through there to 2 to 3 minutes.

Bower started his presentation by encouraging City Council to do more for the streetcar line, pointing out its overall ridership (averaging 12,800 per day) is higher than any TriMet bus, and the fact 96% of riders get onboard a streetcar by walking, according to a recent rider survey.

He said City Council should continue to direct housing projects toward areas near streetcar stations. The streetcar rose as it did, he said, thanks to housing and development. The Pearl District and South Waterfront neighborhoods tell that story. Bower said that half of all housing units in Portland built since 2001 occurred within a quarter-mile of a streetcar line. “It’s beginning to bear fruit,” he said.

-- Andrew Theen; atheen@oregonian.com; 503-294-4026; @andrewtheen

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