Trolley Tuesday 6/16/20 - The New El Paso Streetcar

Heritage streetcar service is nothing new today, as almost every city has some way of celebrating its transit heritage. Some, like the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority, maintain a fleet of heritage cars to run on lines that have been in service since the 19th century, while others prefer creating new streetcar lines and loops that function more as moving museums on brand new alignments like the San Francisco MUNI. Indeed, to appeal to both tourists and nostalgia-bait-takers alike, you have to have a heritage streetcar. Today, we look at one of the more recent systems to pop up in the 21st century, the long awaited return of the El Paso Not-Quite-International-Anymore Streetcar!

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An original El Paso Streetcar enters Ciudad Juarez, year unknown.
(Smart Growth America)

The original El Paso Streetcar closed in 1974, bringing to an end a combined 93 years of street railways between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. One of the longest-lived transit systems in America, the streetcar was purchased in 1949 by the infamous National City Lines (NCL) and restocked with 20 P1-type PCC cars taken from NCL's San Diego Electric Railway. The entire system closed in 1974 following an international labor dispute and the PCCs laid out to rust by the local airport. However, even as soon as a year later, people with a keen interest were already planning ways to bring back the streetcar. it was, after all, the Bicentennial and heritage streetcars were the hot new trend.

PCC 1513 gets a special "SCAT" logo on her side in 1979.
(CRRMA)

Many ideas were trialed on how to bring back streetcar service, but none  really stuck until after the turn of the 21st Century. The first proposal involved appealing to the US Urban Mass Transportation Administration to "construct a downtown people mover for El Paso and Juarez" in 1974, but El Paso was not selected in the end. In 1979, Pan Am Savings (absolutely no relation to the airline) donated $4000 to El Paso to conduct a feasibility study to bring back the streetcars. Two PCCs (1511 and 1513) that were in storage at the Cotton Street maintenance shops were pulled out and repainted with flashy Sun City Area Transit (SCAT) logos.

A pitiful "trolley bus", which can be found in every city and
also replaced the El Paso streetcars on its "Heritage Routes",
sometime in the 1990s
(CRRMA)

The result of this study came in 1981 through Bernard Johnson Inc, involving a proposed 2.2 mile streetcar from downtown El Paso to the Mexican border, and cost 7.8 million. A serious discussion in 1988 by El Paso's Urban Design Division began analyzing the feasibility of a heritage streetcar and concluded a "binational" streetcar with Ciudad Juarez was possible, but it was better recommended to only focus on El Paso. By sticking to just one city, it would eliminate any hardships that could come up with international operations. A further study in 1993-1994 by Kimley-Horn and Associates recommended a much smaller, .64 mile line between San Jacinto Plaza and Oregon Street. The biggest suggestion from this latter study, though, came from Kimley-Horn's recommendation to use the existing PCCs left behind.

By 2004, light rail was the big talk of the town as the Goodman Corporation filed a report assessing the mobility needs of El Paso. This was further compounded in 2008 by a Jacobs Carter Burgess study reviving the former Bernard Johnson feasibility analysis. This new study kept the service between San Jacinto Plaza and the border bridges, but also connected the Civic Center Complex and El Paso Union Depot. Ideas from the Kimley-Horn study were also similarly recycled, with 9 PCC cars being recommended for restoration to the tune of $40.4 million (plus $24.6 million for the necessary infrastructure installation and improvements). By 2010, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) had gotten involved looking at yet another feasibility study involving "ports of entry" in El Paso that could best utilize the downtown route everyone had planned for.

One of the six P1 type PCCs gets lifted onto a truck
for transport to Brookville, 2017.
(CRRMA)

And finally, after over 30 years of constant feasibility studies, proposals, research and idea-recycling, the City of El Paso finally agreed to a plan to return the streetcars to their rightful place. In 2012, city representative Steve Ortega implemented the initiative to bring in the URS corporation to help install the necessary infrastructure, which included a new maintenance facility, all the necessary electric wire and catenary support, and the new stations. In 2014, Ted Houghton (chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission) approved $97 million of construction funds through TxDOT, with the new Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority (CRRMA) being responsible for everything going on.

One of the things the CRRMA was responsible for was contracting the Brookville Equipment Corporation to restore six of the PCCs left in El Paso's city limits. When the cars were sent to Pennsylvania, they were completely rehabilitated from the inside-out, including new traction motors and relays, refreshed bodywork, modern dash components, and even modern amenities and safety features like new automatic pantographs, wheelchair lifts, and air conditioning. Cars 1504, 1506, 1511, 1512, 1514, and 1515 were all selected to be refurbished, and to celebrate the whole of El Paso's streetcar heritage, two cars each were painted in a different generation of the streetcar schemes (1504 and 1506 wear the first generation "green stripe", 1511 and 1512 wear a "red stripe", and 1514 and 1515 have on the NCL "Salad Bowl" livery.)

A small smattering of the three flavors of El Paso's PCCs, featuring cars 1504, 1512, and 1515.
(El Paso Times, Valentine Thome, David P. Jordan)

Construction occurs on the new El Paso Streetcar, 2016.
(Smart Growth America)

 As this was going on, the first street rail was re-laid along Oregon Avenue in May 2016, near the University of Texas at El Paso. By August 2017, the final rail of the 4.8 mile long figure-eight route was laid and all 27 stations were finished. The next year, 2018, the maintenance facility just north of the Santa Fe & 4th station was also complete and ready to receive the six PCCs coming back from Brookville between March and October.  On November 9, 2018, the city of El Paso was proud to announce that streetcar service in their city had not been revived, but had merely resumed once more. 

The line currently runs two services along the figure eight, the "Downtown Loop" serving everywhere south of Franklin Street, and the "Uptown Loop" between Franklin and Baltimore Streets. Despite being the youngest heritage streetcar system, the line sees healthy ridership and serves a practical use connecting Uptown and Downtown businesses (as well as the local colleges and high schools). Perhaps the over 30 years of planning and study helped create a more robust system than people expected, one that wasn't just a touristy boondoggle but something the city can continue to be proud of. May El Paso keep its poles up and its rails warmed.

Official map of the new El Paso Streetcar
(CRRMA)

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Thank you for reading Part 2 of the El Paso Streetcar Story! Next week, we look at some of the modern light rail operations you can find around Dallas today, but before that happens please show your support for the CRRMA and the City of El Paso on their social media, respectively! And as always, you can follow myself or my editor on twitter if you wanna support us, and maybe buy a shirt as well! Remember, I have "Trolley Pride" shirts available for a limited time this month! Ride safe!