NotPetroleum Blog

While visiting Salt Lake City this week, I rode one of UTA Trax’s electric light rail cars.  I didn’t have a place to go or somewhere I had to be at the time.  I just wanted to go for a ride because an electric streetcar is fun to ride for a clean energy enthusiast. We don’t have streetcars in Atlanta anymore so this was my opportunity to experience what was a part of everyday life for city dwellers in the early 1900′s.  I couldn’t wait to buy my ticket and go for a ride!

Light rail is thought of as a utilitarian form of public transportation.  However, our grandparents used it both as a way to get from point A to B and as a form of entertainment.  In the late eighteen hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds, street cars and light rail were commonplace in most metropolitan areas.  My wife’s grandparents remember riding the street car on Peachtree Street in Atlanta in their Sunday best after church.  They didn’t have a destination.  The streetcar was the destination and the entertainment.  There was a slower pace of life that allowed people to often enjoy the trip more than where they were going.

So what happened to this form of entertainment?  Some will tell you that mass production of the automobile in 1908 was the catalyst that doomed the electrified streetcar to the scrapyard.  Others will speak of the National City Lines conspiracy where companies representing autos, tires and the oil industry formed a company that pressured city governments to pave over rails and send the streetcars to the junkyard to make way for internal combustion engine-powered buses that needed tires and petroleum to run.  Internal Combustion by Edwin Black has detailed research on this theory.  I hoped that my experience on this electric rail car would help me form an opinion after reading studies on most of these theories.

I purchased my full fare ticket and waited for the next rail car to arrive at the station.  When the cars pulled up, I pushed a button, the doors opened and I climbed up for a ride.  The first thing I noticed when sitting down was the familiar surroundings from riding city buses and subway trains growing up.  After sitting down and looking around, I could have easily been on a diesel bus.  The sounds were familiar.  Beeping from the warning system that the doors will be closing and the rushing sound of air from the climate control system was very familiar.  As we pulled away from the station, the only missing sound was the roar of a diesel bus engine.

Here’s what I noted from my short excursion:

Riding streetcars isn’t much different from riding a subway. They have a set path and don’t deviate from it.  Buses have set routes but they can be easily changed by providing new directions to a bus driver.  Light rail requires laying new tracks and integrating it into existing tracks before the route can be changed.

There were still lots of cars on the road.  It was obvious that having a streetcar in Salt Lake City didn’t cause most drivers to get rid of their cars and ride public transportation.  The street car I was riding on was half full but there were lots more cars driving all around us.  It is clear to me that there are two requirements for the adoption of clean public transportation: building the light rail system and convincing people to use it.

A great way to see the sites. I picked a route that took me straight through the city by the convention center, temple square and the stadium.  I could have easily stepped off of the train, visited the sites and stepped back on the next street car.  However, I was there for the ride and could see the Mormon temple from the outside and the rest of the sites with ease.

My overall impression of the electric streetcar was that it is a functional and clean form of transportation that should be pursued by most cities.  While current sources of electric power are not clean, building electric transportation systems and vehicles will help us prepare for more cleaner sources of electric power that will replace coal as the grid is updated over time.

Currently, electric light rail is very common in Europe and more than fifty US cities have deployed electric light rail with many cities in the process of planning electric light rail systems, including Atlanta, the home of NotPetroleum blog.

My hope is that we’ll see a revitalization in urban areas in the US with electric light rail and street cars for public transportation.  Not only will it reduce our consumption of petroleum but it will help us to reconnect with our neighbors and fellow citizens.  Driving carpool in a minivan is a very isolating experience.  You can ask any Mom or Dad who has this daily duty.  Imagine jumping on an electric tram with other neighbors and heading to the grocery store, dry cleaners or even school?

As I ride down Main street Salt Lake City, I realize that light rail is a part of the solution for our clean energy future.  There will need to be many innovations and solutions to help foster adoption of clean transportation but electric light rail should surely play a role in weaning us from our addiction to petroleum.