The City of Lancaster is one step closer to the streetcar system some local officials desire.
The Lancaster Streetcar Co., a Pennsylvania nonprofit corporation, has been formed, a board of directors chosen; the group will now seek federal nonprofit status and begin investigating ways to build and fund a streetcar system in the city.
It's a big step forward for a plan that proponents see as both bold and necessary.
"This is going to be a tremendous economic development tool," said Tim Peters, chairman emeritus of Warfel Construction Co. and chairman of the Lancaster Streetcar Co. board of directors. "It's really going to stitch the city together."
Said Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray, a member of the board of directors: "It's past the theoretical stage, it's conceptual, based on what's happening in other cities."
There's no guarantee the streetcar system will get built. Merely constructing the proposed 2.6-mile loop would cost an estimated $14.1 million. And officials say they have no intention of building a system that will run major deficits year after year; the idea is that it would be "financially sustainable," said Jack Howell of the Lancaster Alliance, another member of the Streetcar Co. board.
"We are not going to be subsidized by RRTA," said Howell, though RRTA is likely to be the conduit for federal and state funding for construction of the system. And while backers will certainly look for philanthropic dollars, he said, it is the corporate dollar they really plan to chase, via advertising schemes that could let companies sponsor individual stops or place ads along the route.
The Streetcar board will seek tax-exempt status to "provide donors with tax advantages and help solidify corporate partners," according to a Lancaster Alliance press release.
The board also will fine-tune the route and design of the proposed system, with an eye on minimizing traffic disruptions, and to reach out to the public, perhaps with neighborhood meetings and an expanded Web presence.
Streetcars would operate at about 10-minute intervals around a north-south loop along Queen and Prince streets, from the city Amtrak station to Southern Market Center at South Queen and Vine streets.
There are, backers acknowledge, a lot of legitimate concerns about the project. Traffic is a major worry, but backers say these aren't the streetcars of old; they will move at the speed of traffic and may in fact reduce traffic volume, if people park at the edges of the city and use the trolley to get around town.
Backers are hoping doubters can be convinced; indeed, one member of the nascent board of directors said she already has been. Althea Ramsay, vice president of real estate for Burle Business Park and chair of the Economic Development Action Group "wasn't real gung-ho until I started attending some meetings and really saw" what advocates were touting — not a return to the streetcar systems of old but something new and different, something that could be a boon to a city that, they hope, is on the way up.
Indeed, the effort is being driven not by nostalgia but by cold calculation, the belief that a trolley system would increase the marketability of the hotel and convention center at Penn Square. Conventioneers and visitors, said Peters, might want to visit Clipper Magazine Stadium or go antiquing in the 300 block of North Queen Street; a trolley system that picked them up and dropped them off right in front of the hotel will improve their experience.
But the stitching together of the city wouldn't merely benefit visitors. "What of the kid who lives two blocks south of Vine Street and wants to go to the new YMCA" to be built off Harrisburg Avenue, Howell asks, "or elderly people in downtown high-rises who can't get around?" For a nominal fare — maybe 50 cents or so — city residents themselves could travel around town without a car, he said.
And a trolley system might also help alleviate the need for parking downtown: If those who work in the city might be convinced to park at the proposed parking garage to be constructed at the Amtrak station or elsewhere along the loop, it could free up spaces in downtown garages.
Finally, those behind the effort think the streetcars can become iconic — a symbol of a revitalized Lancaster. Little Rock, they noted, has incorporated its streetcar on its official logo. And with good reason: When officials in that city proposed Little Rock's "River Rail" streetcar system, the purpose was to complement a "River Project" which incorporated a tax to build an 18,000 seat arena with just 300 new parking spaces, and to double the size of the city's Statehouse Convention Center. The system was to "animate" city streets and "bring new life to the urban core," according to Passenger Transport Magazine.
Officials forecast 140,000 riders in the system's first 12 months; more than 200,000 actually used the system in that frame. Within two years of its opening, two additional cars were ordered, along with an extension of the rails. Additional extensions to the system are under discussion, and more than $140 million in new development is under way or has been announced in Little Rock.
Streetcars here might look similar to the ones used in Little Rock, which resemble the Birney-type cars used in many American cities prior to World War II.
There are other success stories. In January, the vice president of Tampa (Fla.) Historic Streetcar, Michael English, told USA Today that "We spent $55 million [and] it attracted well over $1 billion in private investment."
Shelley Poticha, president and CEO of Reconnecting America, a national nonprofit group working to spur development around transit stops, told the newspaper that streetcar systems are becoming so appealing that some developers are pitching in to help pay for them.
"It's an inexpensive way of providing transit," Poticha told USA Today. "It expands the reach of pedestrians in a community without having to build an expensive infrastructure. It can be built quickly, inexpensively, right into the street to get around without a car more easily."
"This is not some harebrained idea, "said Howell. "We're not out there all by ourselves."
Other members of the board of directors include Lancaster Parking Authority Executive Director Tom Mathews; Bob Thompson, legal aide to Sen. Gibson Armstrong; Spanish-American Civic Association head Carlos Graupera; and Red Rose Transit Authority Executive Director Dave Kilmer.
Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com, or phone 291-8817. 
