Let it not be said that we don’t make anything in this country anymore. As of today, we’ve made a streetcar.
The vehicle in question was unveiled in a ceremony on streets of Portland, Oregon, where it will go into service with a fleet of Czech-made brethren. The city’s much-admired streetcar network recently got $75 million in stimulus funds for an expansion. On hand for the festivities today were DOT chief Ray LaHood and transportation savvy Oregon congressmen Peter DeFazio and Earl Blumenauer. (The latter dignitary, whose sartorial trademark is a bow tie, today donned a straight tie to “mess” with Sec. LaHood.)
Local company Oregon Iron Works made the machine at a nearby factory that employs hundreds of skilled laborers. The company has a pending order from Portland for a half dozen streetcars and one worth $26 million from the city of Tuscon for seven more. OIW aims to get at least 60 percent of its parts from other US companies and to help seed an urban transit industry in Oregon.
Since about 1950, building modern streetcars has been a lost art in this country. OIW decided, based on the success of Portland’s streetcar line, to try to rediscover it and claims that their product is already of a higher quality than European competitors.
Sec. LaHood, Rep. Blumenauer
If our Spidey sense is right–as, well, it usually is–this company and Oregon have seized an incredibly valuable first-mover advantage in what could prove to be an important domestic industry in years to come. After American cities tore up streetcar tracks and junked their rolling stock en masse in the middle of last century, dozens of are now planning or considering a new system. With oil at $70 a barrel in the depths of brutal global recession, our guess is that number will only grow in the years ahead.
(Photo)
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:14 am
Having lived in San Francisco, with its busy MUNI rail lines and historic trolleys (plus, of course the cable cars), I am a huge fan of urban light rail. And now, a block from my apartment in Hollywood, is the expanded intersection of Argyle Avenue and Yucca Street, where L.A.’s old Red Car lines used to turn around.
The most gemütlich street cars I ever rode, however, were those of Vienna, which ply their way around the Ringstrasse and elsewhere with the elegance and tempo of a Strauss waltz.
Thankfully, America is waking up to the importance of this mode of transportation.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:56 am
It looks like the train takes about 35 minutes to go a mile and a half. That kind of speed is what will propel the U.S. economy into the future, in much the same way as it has delivered low unemployment and high population growth to Oregon.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
[...] Christoph Claudius ( Alle Beiträge )Veröffentlicht: 2. Juli 2009 - 18:25Quelle: http://www.infrastructurist.com Portland/Oregon hat heute die erste Tram/Strassenbahn “made in USA” in Betrieb [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Awesome! I lived in Japan for four and half years, where just about every city has some sort of light urban rail. The whole time I lived over there I never drove a car. Hey Eric, How many times have you sat in traffic in your car for thrity five minutes to go an mile and half? Which is more efficient, moving twenty people in one street car or moving twenty people in twenty different automobiles? This will create manufacturing jobs, save people money, reduce our trade deficits, improve public health and perhaps increase efficiency and productivity.
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:04 pm
[...] Earl the Pearl in a normal tie. No tags for this [...]
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:26 am
It’s nothing but a CKD Czech product that the company bolted together. I remember when American companies used to be the ones sending CKD kits to third world countries to be assembled. Now we are third world.
July 3rd, 2009 at 6:43 am
[...] document was released a day after Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood came to the city to praise its transportation investments and the construction of the first American-made streetcar [...]
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:48 am
[...] First US-made streetcar goes into service (Infrastructurist) [...]
July 3rd, 2009 at 5:19 pm
This is an American industry with a future, because the price of oil and gasoline is going to skyrocket in coming years, and not just in its ordinary summer prise rise. And cars, of course, are deadly cancer-spewing earthkillers on four wheels.
July 4th, 2009 at 6:30 am
Bravo. On the question of streetcars as mobility improvements, however, see here:
http://www.humantransit.org/2009/07/streetcars-an-inconvenient-truth.html
July 6th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
[...] out: thanks to federal stimulus funds, the U.S. has built its first streetcar in 60 years. The Infrastructurist reports that the new streetcar is partof $75 million in stimulus funds supplied to Portland, Orgeon: Local [...]
July 7th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Whoopie! We made a streetcar. And in a few years, the USA will return to the moon. Oh, the progress we’ve made in 60 years…
July 8th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Guys like Eric need to get used to the fact that as petroleum products become more scarce and more expensive, cars will be the dinosaurs of the modern era (or should I say, horses?!) Soon there will be billions of tons of useless hunks of metal, and those who get on the mass transit future will be the ones who win the prize of liveability and attractive urban environments. By manufacturing streetcars (and what’s so evil about asking the experienced Czechs for advice??) here in Portland, we’ve got a huge head start in the renaissance of heavy industry for this new mass transit paradigm. Or would you rather we buy all our streetcars from China?
July 8th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Well, glad to hear it was made here.
You know this type of “rail” is the best because it is at street level and therefore it is easier to construct the infrastructure and makes you more likely to use it (no hunting for a station that’s a good walk away on a hot sidewalk). It will be nicer when those trees grow to shade the sidewalk and make walking enjoyable too.
When we begin to really feel peak oil (which almost certainly has already occurred), the masses who suddenly won’t be able to drive, will discover just how poorly government has maintained its streets and how unfriendly they are to walkers/public transit users. And those voters will not be happy.
Beautiful walkable streets (which will soon become full of life) are absolutely the more efficient way for local government to attract new taxpayers and new revenue through increased sales taxes.
Now, maybe they can find a way to engineer an electric street car without the ugly wires.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Actually, according to the link below Siemens has been making Streetcars in Sacramento for a while now.
Perhaps this article should be amended to First US OWNED?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,536892,00.html
Here is the Sacramento plant.
Last I checked Sacramento was in the US!
http://www.mobility.siemens.com/usa/en/pub/home.htm
(no I don’t work for Siemens- it’s just that this company has ben making and shipping LRVs to US Cities FROM the US for some time now.
July 9th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Chris - Siemens does build buy american compliant LIGHT RAIL VEHICLES. Light rail vehicles and Streetcars are NOT the same vehicles. They have different standards, different sizes, different uses. The Oregon company has built the first modern buy america STREETCAR which is a good thing.
July 12th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
[...] streetcar systems expand throughout the country, America is finally getting back into the streetcar manufacturing business. An American-made fleet of streetcars for Oakland could bring jobs to struggling automobile [...]
July 28th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
I hate to burst your bubble, but while it wasn’t very memorable (in fact it caused them to permanently leave the public transport industry) the Boeing Standard Light Rail Vehicle was manufactured in the USA between 1976 and 1979.
But aside from that little quibble, this is a good step.
Australia could learn a thing from this. After manufacturing Melbournes trams and trains for decades at the Commonwealth Engineering Plant on the outskirts of the city, the facility was privatised in the early 1990s and since then our rail vehicles have been bought from overseas.
They have consistently proved woeful, in particular those purchased from Siemens. Their train model has chronically faulty breaks requiring speed restrictions and a limit to only three carriage operation, while the chassis of their tram model has been found to be riddled with stress fractures which will severely reduce its life span – they certainly wont be lasting anywhere near as long as our famous W-class tram.
Market efficiency indeed.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
[...] Portland attempts to reinvigorate the urban transit industry in Oregon, I’m reminded of another idea about “how to fix the world,” proposed in The [...]