Debra Bruno is a freelance writer and editor. She is currently working on an e-book about her time in China, scheduled for publication by the Wall Street Journal.

In the classic 1944 movie, “Meet Me in St. Louis,” Judy Garland sings, “I went to lose a jolly hour on the trolley. And lost my heart instead.” American cities today are seriously enamored of trolleys—modern streetcars have popped up in 16 cities, with more soon to open in Los Angeles, New York City, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale and Milwaukee. They’re the trendy Pokemon Go of the urban-development set.

Since 2009, the Department of Transportation has funneled, through a range of programs, $713 million into 17 streetcar projects, and that has given cities the impetus to ask voters for even more, enticing them with the prospect of better transportation, economic booms and a new, fun identity.

But will this fascination with streetcars end in heartbreak?

When it works—as with Portland, which got a head start on second-generation streetcars in 2001—streetcars can unify cities, boost real estate and draw investment. When it doesn’t, though, cities can end up with millions of dollars dumped into a glorified theme park ride. Recent projects in places like Cincinnati and Tucson, Arizona, have been budget-busters that have cost about $50 million per mile of track, says Jeffrey Brown, a transportation expert at Florida State University. The earlier wave of second-generation streetcars ran about $10 million to $30 million a mile.

Streetcars are “not a magic bullet,” says Christopher Zimmerman of Smart Growth America, an urban planning advocacy group.

They work best in places with some fundamentals already in place, says Daniel Malouff, a Washington transportation expert. There are a few basic things he says a city needs for a streetcar to work: dense population, easy walkability, a line that moves relatively quickly and some frequency of service. “If you can get all four, you will have a smashing success,” Malouff says.

But maybe the most important question of all is the one that must be answered first: What is the purpose of a streetcar? Should it fill a transportation hole, draw suburbanites to a fun downtown—or both?


“Streetcars are—as practiced in the United States—essentially place-making tools,” says David King, a professor at Arizona State’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. They’re typically not built with a city’s broader transit systems in mind. Instead, he says, they’re “amenities,” much like a fountain or a park.

Whether they are amenities or people movers, there are ways for streetcars to work. Here are five things we’ve learned from America’s obsession with streetcars.

1. Put streetcars where the people already are—and want to go.

The idea behind streetcars is that people generally want to hop on and off, which means the lines need to be along walkable locations with restaurants, shops and entertainment, rather than taking riders through landscapes devoid of life. Portland “perfectly leveraged the downtown they already have, using streetcars to expand to create a whole new downtown area,” says Zimmerman of Smart Growth America. Portland’s average weekday ridership for February was 16,351.

In contrast, Salt Lake City chose to run its new streetcar on former railroad tracks. The line is “near a neighborhood with shops, but not really,” says Malouff. “It’s not a convenient location.” Salt Lake City’s numbers reflect the difference: Sugar House line has roughly 1,300 riders a day, half of the projected volume.

Jeffrey Boothe, executive director of the Community Streetcar Coalition, notes that what matters in streetcars is that they connect people to places they want to reach. Atlanta’s streetcar, for example, didn’t make a lot of connections in its first phase, while Kansas City and Portland did a good job of connecting people to places.

“The denser the neighborhood, the more people use [streetcar] transit just for buying milk or going to dinner or visiting friends,” Malouff says.

The first part of Washington, D.C.’s 1-year-old, 2.2-mile H Street line eases slowly along a stretch that is fast becoming the Brooklyn of the political set, with Crossfit studios, a newly opened Whole Foods supermarket, a raw food juice bar and a Korean fusion restaurant. Riders in the middle of the day climb on pulling handheld shopping carts or carrying takeout bags.

As it turns onto Benning Road, about halfway into the trip, 1.4 miles along, the landscape changes to housing projects, pawn shops and rundown fast-food joints. A diversity of riders—a transvestite wearing sky-high heels, a mom, grandmother and baby with a stroller, commuters staring at their phones, gets on and off every few stops. The number of riders appears to be slightly lower on this portion of the route, but overall the number is more than double what was projected, with an average 3,000 people a day using the system, according to Terry Owens, spokesman for the D.C. Department of Transportation

2. Streetcars can’t be too pokey.

This isn’t high-speed rail, we get it. But a trolley that’s too slow ceases to be useful or fun.

“One of the most fundamental things is that you have to have dedicated lanes for these streetcars,” says Yonah Freemark, a transportation expert who writes The Transport Politic blog. They also need signal priority, so that lights are timed to give priority to streetcars.

That’s certainly not the case on the D.C. line, which averages 7 miles per hour. (By comparison, Portland averages just under 10 mph.) On a recent winter day, the driver eases his way slowly down H Street, squeezing just inches past parked cars in some places, and beeping a horn in case some distracted driver opens his car door as the trolley approaches. That kind of collision—as well as a few unfortunate cases that include sideswiping a police car or a bus—has happened more than once in the year since the line has opened. The streetcar goes end to end — 2.4 miles — in about 19 minutes. A Metro bus, filled with passengers, leaves the streetcar in its taillights.

Turns out there is no streetcar that runs completely free of traffic, Brown says. “They all have at least some interference with cross traffic at intersections.” Besides, he says, Tampa has its own line, but that certainly hasn’t contributed to speed since it stops at all intersections.

Cars, trucks, pedestrians, and streetcars in Washington D.C. | Getty Images

Cincinnati has struggled to get its signs announcing streetcar arrivals to work, which makes the line, which runs a 3.6-mile loop through downtown to the city’s hot Over-the-Rhine neighborhood “useless for anyone trying to use it to get to an appointment,” says one local blogger. In addition, the Cincinnati Enquirer recently counted 144 delays on the line since its opening last September and noted that many of the disruptions came because delivery trucks and cars had parked on the tracks.

3. No one wants to wait forever.

Even if you’re a tourist with no place to be, waiting for half an hour at a trolley stop isn’t going to make a Top 10 list of vacation experiences. That means trolleys have to run frequently enough that you don’t resort to calling an Uber.

Tampa’s streetcar, for instance, comes every 20 minutes on weekdays and every 30 minutes on weekday mornings and late Friday and Saturday nights. It runs a tourist-friendly route from Ybor City’s entertainment district to the waterfront, 2.7 miles away. The one in Salt Lake City runs at 20-minute intervals.

Many question whether buses could serve the same transportation need—and faster. Jarrett Walker, a transportation expert who writes The Human Transit blog, says by email, “A bus can do everything a streetcar can do, plus one crucial additional thing: when an obstacle occurs in the lane (double-parked delivery truck, accident, badly parked car sticking out into the lane)” the bus can go around. The streetcar, of course, is blocked.

4. Put your money where the streetcar is—and keep it coming.

No matter the purpose the streetcars serve, the next important point, experts say, is that cities must remain committed financially. Turning off the funding spigot halfway in can create problems that often exacerbate typical growing pains. The key is to be realistic and transparent in the selling process.

Cincinnati, for instance, has had a fraught streetcar history. Voters overcame resistance to the line in ballot initiatives in 2009 and 2011 to stop the streetcar, as well as strong resistance from an earlier City Council, the mayor and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. After the 2013 City Council elections, the anti-streetcar movement grew until an audit confirmed it could cost more to cancel the $148 million project than to continue it.

Atlanta also found that once it had spent its initial federal investment of about $47 million, it didn’t have enough funding to keep up operation and maintenance, says Jeffrey Brown, an urban planning professor at Florida State University. That alone can cost millions of dollars a year, he adds.

And in Los Angeles, voters in 2012 approved a special tax district to create an 11-stop line for $125 million, says David King. But that plan “neglected to tell voters” about the additional $125 million cost for utility relocation. Oh, and the line ended up being just nine stops, not 11. (Most recent estimates of the cost for the 3.8-mile track are $282 million.)

“That’s a terrible way to treat voters, I think,” King says.

Capital costs of streetcars range from $10 million to $80 million per mile, says a 2014 Congressional Research Service report. Streetcars can be cheaper than light rail, says the report, but costs “vary dramatically.”

5. Make sure you know why you want a streetcar.

Many cities point to economic growth as the raison d’etre for streetcars, but the jury is still out on whether an investment in a streetcar causes an area to grow economically, or whether the streetcar rides a wave that already had been swelling.

David Johnson, a streetcar advocate in Kansas City, says the city was “lucky in that the streetcar struck while the iron was getting hot.” The downtown area had weathered the 2009 recession relatively easily, and there was the beautifully restored Union Station, which today hosts ballet, a planetarium and blockbuster museum shows.

(L) An old fashioned streetcar in Tampa. (R) A streetcar to be delivered to Kansas City is offloaded from its trailer. | Getty Images

Detroit would like to use its soon-to-open, $140 million, 3.3-mile streetcar to draw 5,000 to 7,000 riders a day, a route that would bring riders through downtown to the new Little Caesars Arena, which will be home to both the Pistons, now moving back from the suburbs, and the Red Wings. Some 10,000 new housing units are planned along the line.

But the question remains, King notes, about whether funds set aside for transit should go for economic development. “Streetcars represent a sizable public investment in a place,” King says. That investment can mean that streets are getting repaired, sidewalks rebuilt and real estate investment is encouraged. The real question, he asks, is, “Are there other ways for this to be achieved?”

One way to determine whether streetcars are transportation or toy is to look at when riders use the system. In Kansas City, the highest ridership is on Friday nights and Saturdays. People drive their cars downtown, park and ride around on the streetcar for entertainment.

“That’s why I call them amenities,” King says. “They’re not serious transit modes.”

“If you want an amenity, you could just invest in public art,” Brown says.

“If you’re going to build a streetcar, make it useful.”

If Judy Garland were still around, she might recognize the “heritage” trolley system that is slated to open in St. Louis this summer. The 2.2-mile, $51 million project is using refurbished vintage trolleys from Portland and Seattle. Whether anyone falls in love is another story.