Tempe Considers Downtown Trolley: Streetcars Would Ease Traffic, Parking Concerns in Area Expecting Big Growth

By Garin Groff, The Tribune, Mesa, Ariz.

Sep. 7–Some Tempe business leaders say the best complement to Tempe’s modern glass-andsteel buildings is a technology from the late 1880s — a trolley.

But quaintness and nostalgia were not the main reasons why they want to explore a trolley system. The idea spawned from a need to provide additional transportation options in an area expected to attract thousands of new residents and workers in coming years.

The Tempe Chamber of Commerce has formed a streetcar committee that will study the feasibility of a trolley system. The group hopes to have a plan within a year.

An initial look shows a trolley could go along Mill Avenue or Rio Salado Parkway, said Eric Emmert, the group’s chairman.

“It just appears to fit into our downtown rather well at a cursory glance,” he said.

He and others acknowledge they don’t have any answers yet for the most important element to build a system — money. The city doesn’t have the cash to build and operate miles of tracks, and it’s getting tougher to get federal funding for transportation projects.

Committee members said they’ll study several financial models that other cities across the West have used to pay for projects.

It could be easier and cheaper to build a system without federal money, said Stan Nicpon, a member of the group and owner of Pizzeria Uno’s on Mill Avenue.

Other cities have built systems that cost roughly $25 million per mile, but that jumps to about $35 million a mile when the federal government gets involved financially and imposes additional regulations, Nicpon said. By comparison, light-rail tracks cost about $60 million to $75 million a mile.

Nicpon figures the trolley system could be built in less than three years, compared with about a decade to plan and build light rail. And, unlike light rail, cars could share the road with streetcars.

Both systems use tracks and overhead power lines.

Nicpon triggered the chamber’s interest in streetcars earlier this year by pitching the idea to other businesses and city officials. He figures it would solve two of downtown’s biggest problems — parking and congestion.

He envisions trolleys on Mill Avenue, going perhaps from the Phoenix Zoo to south Tempe. Park-and-ride lots would let downtown visitors park a few miles away, preventing further congestion or parking shortages downtown.

Another line could run on Rio Salado Parkway to serve a growing number of office and condo projects.

Downtown Tempe won’t be able to function without another transportation mode once the area fills with condo and office towers, said Vic Linoff, group member and owner of Those Were the Days! on Mill Avenue.

Metro light rail won’t have enough stops downtown or serve the Town Lake area well enough, Linoff said. A streetcar system wouldn’t need platforms similar to a light rail stop, which saves lots of space and lets it stop anywhere, much like a bus.

But unlike a bus, the public is more likely to ride some sort of rail line, Linoff said.

“People just aren’t very enamored with buses,” he said. “No matter what you do to it, a bus is still a bus.”

The streetcar committee likely will meet for the first time in the next few weeks. The city doesn’t have a formal role in the committee but would provide any information to help, said Jyme Sue McLaren, a Tempe transportation official.

Though governments often start these kind of transportation studies, McLaren said the chamber-driven effort could get traction because it also played a key role in developing support for the city’s 1996 transit tax.

“Recognizing they do play a significant role in our downtown and transportation, I think it’s appropriate that they would look at some options,” McLaren said.

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