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Return of the Rails

Examining the Twin Cities’ streetcar tradition

by Ryan Gierke

The new light rail vehicles being built for Minneapolis will glide down the tracks at 55 mph, powered by two 375-horsepower electric motors. In contrast, the city’s first light rail vehicles were one-horsepower, and clanked along the rails at six mph, leaving a trail of manure. These changes did not occur overnight, but demonstrate over a century of advancements in streetcar technology.

Rail mass transit arrived in the Twin Cities in the form of horse cars. The first horse car line began service in 1875; it linked the University of Minnesota to a major rail depot and then continued on through downtown Minneapolis.

Horse car transit was not without its problems. In addition to their slow pace and dung trail, streetcars tired horses out quickly. It took six horses to power one streetcar for its 18-hour service period.

Horse car service continued for 12 years until the advent of cable cars. This new system had a long, constantly moving cable under the rails, which the car will grip to start moving and release to stop. It was invented to pull the vehicles up steep hills that horses couldn’t take, but it also ran twice as fast and eliminated the problem of taking care of hundreds of horses. This system quickly made its way to St. Paul, but then disappeared even more quickly.

Horse-drawn rail cars were common around campus in the late 1870s. One line linked the University to downtown Minneapolis.

"The cable system was very expensive to install and, with rapid cable wear, even more expensive to maintain," explains Russell Olson, former employee of Twin City Transit System. Starting and stopping in traffic was especially difficult, because the cars had only one speed, dictated by the constant 12 mph cable. Olson is author of The Electric Railways of Minnesota, and now helps restore the electric streetcars that became the technology of choice after only three years of installing cable systems.

Twin City Rail Transit was one of the first rail companies to install an electric rail system after the technology was introduced in the 1880s. The first line built linked Minneapolis and St. Paul, and by 1890 all streetcar lines in both St. Paul and Minneapolis were electrified.

Electric streetcars were powered from an overhead trolley wire that was supported by a series of poles with arms protruding over the track. This wire was charged by generators spaced out along the track to supply electricity evenly over the entire line. The pantograph structure on top of the trolley pressed up against the wire and collected 650 watts for a direct current electric drive motor.

With the electric motors, "speed was much easier to control; the conductor could apply as much or as little electric power as desired," Olson says. In addition to allowing easier starting and stopping in traffic, the electric streetcar lines were much cheaper to construct and maintain than cable lines. Electric trolleys also had speeds between 22 and 42 mph.

The electric streetcar appeared to be the ideal form of mass transit for the city. Electric streetcar lines continued to grow in length, importance and efficiency until the mid-1950s. However, at this time the popularity of motorcars brought streetcar patronage down steeply. People were drawn to automobiles because they offered much more freedom than the railbound streetcars. Many companies switched to buses to stay competitive and by 1954 streetcars had all but disappeared from most major U.S. cities.

Automobiles continued to increase in popularity, choking roads and highways in major cities. When a plan to convert Hiawatha Avenue into a highway was presented in 1975, many local residents protested and suggested a light rail transit system alternative, which was eventually approved. Light rail is merely a new name for modern electric streetcars, which never lost popularity in Europe and were making a comeback in America.

The Twin Cities have experienced the second largest congestion growth in the nation, and today the average commuter spends 54 hours a year in gridlock. Traffic congestion during rush hour increased 425 percent between 1990 and 2000.

Light Rail Technology

Light rail transit may solve much of the Twin Cities’ traffic problems. At around $2 million per car and over $675.4 million for the entire project, no expense has been spared in providing the latest streetcar technology. The new technology improves the streetcar service in an attempt to coax car users into trading in their keys for a light rail ticket.

One of the main objections to public transportation is that it is slower, so the Minneapolis light rail system will be sped up by giving trains priority at traffic lights and using vehicles capable of 55 mph. But this higher speed requires changes from power lines all the way down.

The pantographs on old streetcars had to follow the drooping overhead wire and would begin to bounce off it when moving too fast. In order to straighten this line for continuous transmission at high speeds, modern light rail systems use a two-wire power line. The top catanary line is hung with the natural catanary curve and supports the trolley wire below, keeping this line absolutely straight for the pantograph. Both lines carry power from the 15 electric substations along the route.

Moving at speed of 55 mph would be pretty bumpy if not for the new light rail technology used for rail construction. The 60-foot sections of flexible steel track are now welded instead of bolted together, eliminating the gaps and inconsistencies in the old streetcar track. Once the track is placed and welded together it is ready for the "tapping and leveling" process, in which a machine "taps" different amounts of crushed gravel under the rails to make them perfectly level. This job was once done by human sight, but the leveling sensor measures the exact grade of the track, achieving a much more even grade.

Since light rail vehicles move at a faster average speed, they require a better braking system for safety and comfort. Those being made for Minneapolis have four breaking systems for different situations. Regenerative braking uses the train’s momentum to create electricity, and is used for breaking at high speeds. Disc breaks automatically kick in at speeds of less that three mph to bring the train to an easy halt. It also has magnetic breaks in case of emergency and a system that sprays sand at the wheels if they begin slip on the tracks.

Streetcars of the past used a single breaking system in which compressed air pressed steel plates up against the steel wheels. This was crude but effective at the lower streetcar speeds. According to Olson, "good conductors could stop on a dime without passengers feeling a thing." The light rail vehicles will not require the same operator skill-perhaps part of the reason the old streetcars have a certain magic for Olson and others that high-tech rail systems cannot replace.

But most passengers will be thankful that the light rail vehicles have also replaced the passenger skill that was once necessary. Awkward jumps and steep stairs from the station to the streetcars are now a thing of the past. The low-floor design of the vehicles eliminates the need for stairs and makes them wheelchair-accessible. A hydraulic leveling system keeps the vehicle floor within 3/8-inch of the platform height as passengers get off and on.

Hoping that the comfort and safety afforded by these technologies will do the trick in luring commuters from their cars, future expansion has already been planned into the Hiawatha Maintenance Facility. This building houses the computer control center for the entire light rail system, which has been designed for possible future lines.

Confidence vs. Controversy

But with just over a year until the first section of the line opens, conflict over light rail’s potential and costliness continues. Kathy Tinglestad, a Minnesota House representative, believes that light rail is not cost-effective because state expenses on the project are too high to justify a system that may only be used by a small amount of people.

"It’ll be cheaper to give people a cab ride from downtown Minneapolis to the airport than it will be to operate this light-rail line," says Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

The Hiawatha light rail line is half complete; track has been laid from Nicollet Avenue to the Veteran’s Hospital.

But light rail’s supporters say the light rail system is designed to aid strategic areas of traffic congestion, not automatically solve all transportation problems in the Twin Cities. Its main purpose is to provide a safe, clean alternative to automobiles. Light rail’s daily patronage is expected to reach 24,800 by 2020, so working together with bus systems, light rail may be the answer to Twin Cities growing traffic problem.

"The Twin Cities metro region needs a balanced approach to resolving the growing congestion problem," says to Karen Booth, communications spokesperson at Hiawatha Project Office. "It’s a ‘roads only’ mentality that will ever get us out of the crunch. We cannot simply build our way out of this problem with more pavement. Neither is LRT the only other piece of the solution. We must have a balance of roads, light rail, commuter rail, buses and bus rapid transit ways."

Supporters hope to not only curtail ballooning traffic congestion, but also stop urban decay and revitalize parts of the city with development by stations. Olson says that area along old streetcar lines were places of rapid growth and development because rail lines brought a permanent stream of passengers, business and life.

If the Hiawatha line is as much a success as is hypothesized, additional lines may be constructed. A Central LRT corridor would travel between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul. Another planned line may use the transit line between the Minneapolis and St. Paul University campuses. History has a funny way of repeating itself: this transit way was a streetcar line during the hay day of trolleys.