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Have Streetcars Adequately Demonstrated Their Development-Generation Potential?
Sep 27th, 2010
By Yonah Freemark
Read More: http://americancity.org/columns/entry/2638/
Relationships Between Streetcars and the Built Environment: http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/tcrp/tcrp_syn_86.pdf
The most commonly cited argument for the development of new streetcar lines is that their implementation will result in the construction of new housing and commercial buildings in surrounding areas. Unfortunately, according to a new report by the Transportation Research Board, that link has yet to be substantiated by empirical evidence in most places where these new rail systems have been built. This does not mean that streetcars don’t work as development tools, merely that their value has not been demonstrated conclusively.
- The federal government currently has placed a major emphasis on funding such projects and dozens of U.S. cities have shown significant interest in investing local resources on them. That movement towards this new transportation mode, however, should be slowed until more research is undertaken.
- The report, written by Ron Golem and Janet Smith-Heimer, evaluates the thirteen “new†streetcar systems in the United States (it excludes New Orleans and San Francisco, which never took their historic lines out of operation). Five projects—in Kenosha, WI, Savannah, GA, Portland, OR, Memphis, TN, and Seattle, WA—are specifically described.
- Representatives of the other systems “believed that the streetcar had positively affected the physical built environment†but also “noted the critical lack of data and analysis to demonstrate this perception of positive benefit.†This represents a critical failure in the way cities have gone about developing these lines, since they have failed to show apart from in anecdote specific ways in which their projects have contributed to environmental improvements.
- All that said, in spite of the lack of existing information about the value of streetcars on producing development, there is a high likelihood that they do actually have an effect. Around the new light rail line in Charlotte, North Carolina, there has been $288.2 million in new housing and office space; a further $522 million of development is now under construction, even in face of the recession. This makes sense: Public investment in transportation is often the conduit for private investment in development.
A streetcar in Memphis, Tennessee Credit: Yonah Freemark
Sep 27th, 2010
By Yonah Freemark
![rev_logo.png](http://americancity.org/assets/images/rev_logo.png)
Read More: http://americancity.org/columns/entry/2638/
Relationships Between Streetcars and the Built Environment: http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/tcrp/tcrp_syn_86.pdf
The most commonly cited argument for the development of new streetcar lines is that their implementation will result in the construction of new housing and commercial buildings in surrounding areas. Unfortunately, according to a new report by the Transportation Research Board, that link has yet to be substantiated by empirical evidence in most places where these new rail systems have been built. This does not mean that streetcars don’t work as development tools, merely that their value has not been demonstrated conclusively.
- The federal government currently has placed a major emphasis on funding such projects and dozens of U.S. cities have shown significant interest in investing local resources on them. That movement towards this new transportation mode, however, should be slowed until more research is undertaken.
- The report, written by Ron Golem and Janet Smith-Heimer, evaluates the thirteen “new†streetcar systems in the United States (it excludes New Orleans and San Francisco, which never took their historic lines out of operation). Five projects—in Kenosha, WI, Savannah, GA, Portland, OR, Memphis, TN, and Seattle, WA—are specifically described.
- Representatives of the other systems “believed that the streetcar had positively affected the physical built environment†but also “noted the critical lack of data and analysis to demonstrate this perception of positive benefit.†This represents a critical failure in the way cities have gone about developing these lines, since they have failed to show apart from in anecdote specific ways in which their projects have contributed to environmental improvements.
- All that said, in spite of the lack of existing information about the value of streetcars on producing development, there is a high likelihood that they do actually have an effect. Around the new light rail line in Charlotte, North Carolina, there has been $288.2 million in new housing and office space; a further $522 million of development is now under construction, even in face of the recession. This makes sense: Public investment in transportation is often the conduit for private investment in development.
A streetcar in Memphis, Tennessee Credit: Yonah Freemark
![4d86511063fee6355d30796afb5cfa8c380d29fa.png](http://americancity.org/images/cache/4d86511063fee6355d30796afb5cfa8c380d29fa.png)