Downtown streetcars urged

Spokane-area voters haven’t even gotten a crack at deciding whether they want a regional light rail system, but some downtown Spokane development proponents are talking up the possibility of a smaller-scale downtown streetcar system.

Light rail trains and streetcars both employ rails to move people, both could boost economic development along their routes, and their backers say the two systems could work together. But either would require a multimillion-dollar local investment.

Light rail systems and streetcars can be complementary because they serve different purposes, said Spokane Regional Light Rail Project Manager K.C. Traver.

While light rail is designed to move large numbers of people efficiently over longer distances, serving the commuter crowd, streetcars are used for local trips, appealing to visitors as much as locals.

“The light rail system brings people downtown. The streetcar system circulates those people,” said Traver.

In Spokane’s case, light rail would connect the city with Liberty Lake and Spokane Valley. As proposed, a streetcar would transport people around the downtown Spokane core, between the Riverpoint campus and the Spokane County Courthouse.

Light rail planning is significantly further along in Spokane than streetcar work. While the Spokane Transit Authority Board has narrowed light rail options down to one possibility, the Downtown Spokane Partnership has just released its completed streetcar feasibility study.

That study examined what a streetcar system would look like, areas it would travel and how much it might cost, but did not settle on a specific route or design, said DSP Operations Director Mary Ann Ulik.

The two would most likely need to operate on different tracks and streets because of the size and speed disparity of vehicles, said Traver.

In Portland, part of the light rail system was built 15 years before the downtown streetcar, which carried its first passengers five years ago. The two are owned and operated by two different agencies, but they work well together, said Carolyn Young, TriMet’s executive director of programs and communications.

TriMet runs Portland’s light rail and bus systems, while the city owns and operates the streetcar.

Such systems don’t necessarily have to compete with one another for funding, Young said.

Much of the light rail system was paid for with federal grants, while the initial streetcar was locally funded, she explained. But a new federal program called “Small Starts” might put future expansions of both projects into the same funding hunt.

That could happen in Spokane, too, if both light rail and a streetcar system apply for Small Starts funding, said Traver. But projects are rated on their individual merits, so one project isn’t penalized if another in the same city wins funding.

As for whether the community can afford both, Ulik said that’s “something that would have to be analyzed further.”