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What goes around comes around…

Maybe you saw the news story announcing that they’re hoping to bring street cars to Downtown Indianapolis. Yes, street cars! It all brought back a wave of nostalgia to me – but let me first describe how they plan to do it.

To start with, they’ve gathered a passel of city leaders, a real who’s who of Indy (this is no small change affair) to push the project. Covering only downtown Indy, at least to start, the cars would run on rails and draw power from overhead lines – just like they used to in the “old days.” The big decision right now is whether to go for nostalgia with San Francisco-style street cars or choose a more modern and practical European-style system. If any of you have ridden a street car in Frisco, you’ll have to question that choice – where it’s strictly a tourist attraction, going up an down a steep hill, overlooking the bay – and the weather is usually better.

Already, they’re pricing their Big Idea at something between $l million and $10 million per mile (guess $10 million), with connections reaching farther into the city beyond downtown that could cost up to $l billion. Wow! They must have a lot of loose change over there.

Why street cars? Well, a local expert explains: “Unfortunately, in Central Indiana and Indianapolis in particular, there’s a stigma associated with busses. A rail car or a trolley is a different experience, a quaint experience.”
* * *
Quaint – that’s me. Let me tell you about it.

To start with, is anyone old enough to remember when they had a rail car system all through central Indiana? They called them “Interurbans.” One line came clear out here to Richmond traveling, I’m told, along National Road West. Interurbans went out of business many years ago, maybe in the 1920s.

But there were still street cars, real street cars, in Indy not that long ago, and – ahem – I used to ride on them – every day. That’s because we lived in Irvington, on the far east side, and for 2 ½ years of grade school I attended a private school (Orchard) on the north side, and then four years at Shortridge High School, also up north. There was always a ride going up in the morning, but everybody came home at a different time, so I always caught a street car coming home, sometimes late at night. It didn’t seem like any hardship (I hadn’t learned to complain about riding that long every day on public transportation). Usually, I did homework or just stared out the window.

Later, they converted the system to what they called “Trackless Trolleys,” which were busses that still drew their power from overhead lines, but no rails. After that, they did away with the overhead lines and we got diesel-powered busses, with all the fumes.

So, here we are back again, yearning for the nostalgia of street cars – the real thing, with rails in the streets and electric lines overhead.

But this time it may cost them up to $1 billion. That’s pretty expensive nostalgia.

–Vic Jose

Vic Jose :: Feb.09.2008 :: Uncategorized ::

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