page_title: Streetcars in North America
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: Streetcars in North America / Second-generation streetcar systems / United States
caption_attribution_description: Car 005 of the Portland Streetcar system, a 2001 Škoda/Inekon 10T, is leaving the Broadway Bridge (in Portland, Oregon), on the B Loop service, a counterclockwise loop. The Broadway Bridge is a bascule-type drawbridge that was completed in 1913 and is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. It has carried streetcars from 1913 to 1940 and again since 2012.
context_page_description: Streetcars or trolleys were once the chief mode of public transit in hundreds of North American cities and towns. Most of the original urban streetcar systems were either dismantled in the mid-20th century or converted to other modes of operation, such as light rail. Today, only Toronto still operates a streetcar network essentially unchanged in layout and mode of operation.
  Older surviving lines and systems in Boston, Cleveland, Mexico City, Newark, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco were often infrastructure-heavy systems with tunnels, dedicated right-of-way, and long travel distances, or have largely rebuilt their streetcar systems as light rail systems. About 22 North American cities, starting with Edmonton, Calgary and San Diego, have installed new light rail systems, some of which run along historic streetcar corridors. A few recent cases feature mixed-traffic street-running operation like a streetcar. Portland, Oregon, Seattle, and Salt Lake City have built both modern light rail and modern streetcar systems, while Tucson and Atlanta have built new modern streetcar lines.
context_section_description: In 2001, Portland, Oregon, which already had a successful light rail system (MAX), became the first city in the North America in more than 50 years to open a new streetcar system served by modern vehicles, with the opening of the Portland Streetcar. It uses low-floor cars built in the Czech Republic, but the system's first U.S.-assembled streetcar was delivered in 2009.  The line serves as a downtown circulator between the central city core, the Pearl District and Northwest Portland, Portland State University, and in 2005 was extended to the South Waterfront district, a new mixed-use development along the Willamette River shoreline. Running almost entirely on streets and without any separation from other traffic on most sections, it complements the MAX light rail system, which covers much longer distances and serves as a regional, higher-capacity rail system for the metropolitan area.  The MAX system also runs along streets in central Portland, but is separated from traffic (other than buses) even in those areas, via reserved light-rail-only lanes. Construction of a second streetcar line, to the city's east side, began in 2009, and the new line opened in September 2012.
  The new Portland system and several of the new heritage streetcar systems have been intended, in part, as a way of influencing property development in the corridors served, in such a way as to increase density while attracting residents interested in relatively car-free  living.  The Portland Streetcar is considered to have been very successful in this regard.
  The second "second-generation" streetcar system opened in North America was in 2007, in Seattle, where the city's transportation department led the project to construct the South Lake Union Streetcar, but contracted with local transit authority King County Metro to operate the service.  Connecting the neighborhood south of Lake Union with the transit core of downtown Seattle, it operates every 15 minutes and is served by three low-floor streetcars of the same type as some of those in Portland.  Residents of the area began referring to the system as the "South Lake Union Trolley" giving it the amusing but unfortunate acronym of "SLUT". A line serving First Hill opened in January 2016 and feeds Central Link, the light rail system that opened in 2009. Construction of an extension that will connect the two lines is set to begin in early 2018.
  A new rail line which opened in Tacoma, Washington in 2003, Tacoma Link, is sometimes referred to as a streetcar line because of its short length and use of single vehicles (rather than trains) of the same type as the low-floor streetcars used in Portland. However, the line is separated from other traffic over most of its length, making it a light rail line, which is what its operator (Sound Transit) considers it to be.
caption: Opened in 2001, the Portland Streetcar was the first streetcar system to be established in the United States in over 50 years.
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