Gold Line train on East 1st Street, July 2017

Light rail in the United States is a mode of rail-based transport, usually urban in nature. When compared to heavy rail systems like

commuter rail Commuter rail, or suburban rail, is a passenger rail transport service that primarily operates within a metropolitan area, connecting commuters to a central city from adjacent suburbs or commuter towns. Generally commuter rail systems are con ...

rapid transit Rapid transit or mass rapid transit (MRT), also known as heavy rail or metro, is a type of high-capacity public transport generally found in urban areas. A rapid transit system that primarily or traditionally runs below the surface may be ...

(subway), light rail systems are typically designed to carry fewer passengers and are capable of operating in mixed traffic (

street running A street running train is a train which runs on a track built on public streets. The rails are embedded in the roadway, and the train shares the street with other users, such as pedestrians, cars and cyclists, thus often being referred to as ru ...

) or on routes that are not entirely grade-separated. Systems typically take one of four forms: the "first-generation" legacy systems, the "second-generation" modern light rail systems, streetcars, and hybrid rail systems (light rail with some commuter rail features). All of the systems use similar technologies, and some systems blur the lines between the different forms. The United States, with its 27 systems (as counted by the

Light Rail Transit Association The Light Rail Transit Association (LRTA), formerly the Light Railway Transport League (LRTL), is a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to advocate and encourage research into the retention and development of light rail and tramway/street ...

), has a much larger number of "true" light rail systems (not including streetcar systems), by far, compared to any other country in the world (the next largest are Germany with 10 and Japan with 9). According to the

American Public Transportation Association The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) is a nonprofit group of approximately 1,500 public and private sector member organizations that promotes and advocates for the interests of the public transportation industry in the United S ...

, of the roughly 30 cities with light rail systems in the United States, the light rail systems in six of them (

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

, Portland (Oregon),

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

, and

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

) achieve more than 30 million unlinked passenger transits per year.

History

From the mid-19th century onwards, horse-drawn trams (or horsecars) were used in cities around the world. The St. Charles Avenue Line of New Orleans' streetcar system is the oldest continuously operating

street railway A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport ar ...

system in the world, beginning operation as a horse-drawn system in 1835. From the late 1880s onwards, electrically powered street railways became technically feasible following the invention of a trolley pole system of collecting current by American inventor Frank J. Sprague who installed the first successful electrified trolley system in Richmond, Virginia in 1888. They became popular because roads were then poorly surfaced, and before the invention of the internal combustion engine and the advent of motor-buses, they were the only practical means of public transport around cities. The streetcar systems constructed in the 19th and early 20th centuries typically only ran in single-car setups. Some rail lines experimented with multiple unit configurations, where streetcars were joined together to make short trains, but this did not become common until later. When lines were built over longer distances (typically with a single track) before good roads were common, they were generally called

interurban The Interurban (or radial railway in Europe and Canada) is a type of electric railway, with streetcar-like electric self-propelled rail cars which run within and between cities or towns. They were very prevalent in North America between 1900 ...

streetcars or radial railways in North America. Historically, the rail gauge has had considerable variations, with a variety of gauges common in many early systems (e.g. the broad

Pennsylvania trolley gauge Originally, various track gauges were used in the United States. Some railways, primarily in the northeast, used standard gauge of ; others used gauges ranging from to . As a general rule, southern railroads were built to one or another broad ga ...

, etc. used by New Orleans' streetcars and by the light rail systems in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh). However, most modern second-generation light rail systems now operate on

standard gauge A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in E ...

rail. After World War II, six major cities in the United States (Boston, Newark, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco) continued to operate large first-generation streetcar systems, although most of them were later converted to modern light rail standards. Toronto in Canada marks the other city in North America with a continuing first-generation streetcar system. Additionally, a seventh American city, Cleveland, maintained an interurban system (e.g. the Blue and Green Lines) equivalent to what is now "light rail", that opened before World War I, and which is still in operation to this day. When several of these cities upgraded to new technology (e.g. San Francisco, Newark, and Pittsburgh), they called it "light rail" to differentiate it from their existing streetcar systems since some continued to operate portions of both the old and new systems. In the United States, most of the original first-generation streetcar systems were decommissioned from the 1950s onward through approximately 1970 as the popularity of the automobile increased. Although a few traditional streetcar or trolley systems still exist to this day the term "light rail" has come to mean a different type of rail system. Modern light rail technology has primarily German origins, since an attempt by Boeing Vertol to introduce a new American light rail vehicle was a technical failure. After World War II, the Germans retained their streetcar (Straßenbahn) networks and evolved them into model light rail systems (

Stadtbahn ' (; German for "city railway"; plural ') is a German word referring to various types of urban rail transport. One type of transport originated in the 19th century, firstly in Berlin and followed by Vienna, where rail routes were created that co ...

). The renaissance of light rail in the United States began in 1981, when the first truly second-generation light rail system was inaugurated in the United States, the

San Diego Trolley The San Diego Trolley is a light rail system operating in the metropolitan area of San Diego. It is known colloquially as "The Trolley". The Trolley's operator, San Diego Trolley, Inc. (SDTI), is a subsidiary of the San Diego Metropolitan Tra ...

in California, which adopted use of the German Siemens-Duewag U2 light rail vehicle. (This was just three years after the first North American second-generation light rail system opened in the Canadian city of

Edmonton Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city an ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest T ...

in 1978, and which used the same German Siemens-Duewag U2 vehicles as San Diego). Other North American cities, particularly on the West Coast, began planning their own light rail systems in the 1980s. , there are a total of 53 operational light rail-type lines and systems (noting that some cities, such as Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle, have more than one light rail system) that offer regular year-round transit service in the United States: 26 modern light rail systems, 14 modern streetcar systems, and 13 heritage streetcar systems (including the

San Francisco cable car system The San Francisco cable car system is the world's last manually operated cable car system and an icon of the city of San Francisco. The system forms part of the intermodal urban transport network operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railwa ...

"First-generation" legacy systems

Inbound T Third Street train at Castro station, August 2013

The first-generation legacy systems are typically vestigial elements of sprawling streetcar systems that were decommissioned from the 1950s onward through approximately 1970 as the popularity of the automobile increased. These systems were spared that fate due to these systems having high ridership and some form of exclusive right of way. Many of these streetcar systems have been at least partly upgraded to more closely resemble the more modern second-generation light rail systems.

"Second-generation" modern systems

The second-generation of modern light rail systems began in 1981 with the

, which ushered in several systems that generally feature large multi-car trains that travel larger distances, and make fewer stops, on exclusive rights-of-way. These systems were inspired by the German

(English: city rail) systems.

Streetcar systems

The modern streetcar era started in 2001 with the Portland Streetcar, which inspired several other systems that generally feature smaller single-car trains that travel on short routes, with frequent stops, in lanes that are shared with automobile traffic (street running). There are also some

heritage streetcar Conservation and restoration of rail vehicles aims to preserve historic rail vehicles. Trains It may concern trains that have been removed from service and later restored to their past condition, or have never been removed from service, like UP ...

lines, which operate in the same manner using vintage vehicles or historic vehicle replicas, which have been built before and after the modern streetcar movement.

"Hybrid rail" systems

Hybrid rail systems, light rail with some features similar to commuter rail, were introduced in 2004 with New Jersey's River Line. Hybrid rail systems operate small multiple unit railcars like a light rail system, but like commuter rail, they are typically powered by diesel engines over tracks which may be shared with freight trains (which typically only operate overnight, when passenger service has stopped). Unlike most commuter rail systems which only operate during the weekday peak travel periods, hybrid rail systems operate all-day, every day, but typically at longer headways than light rail.

Systems under construction

The following table lists entirely new light rail, streetcar, or hybrid rail systems under construction. Systems that are in the planning stages but not yet under construction (e.g.

Glassboro–Camden Line The Glassboro–Camden Line (GCL) is a planned diesel multiple unit (DMU) light rail system to be located in South Jersey. At the northern terminus, the Walter Rand Transportation Center in Camden, it will connect with the River Line with w ...

MARTA Marta may refer to: People * Marta (given name), a feminine given name * Märta, a feminine given name * Marta (surname) : István Márta composer * Marta (footballer) (born 1986), Brazilian professional footballer Places * Marta (river ...

Clifton Corridor The Clifton Corridor is a proposed public transportation corridor in and near Atlanta, Georgia, roughly connecting the Buckhead, Emory University, and Decatur areas. Proposed route The proposed route stretches from: * Lindbergh Center at the ...

, Austin

Capital MetroRail Capital MetroRail is a hybrid rail (light rail with some features similar to commuter rail) line that serves the Greater Austin area in Texas, and which is owned by Capital Metro. The Red Line, Capital Metro's first and only rail line, connects ...

Blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when ...

and Orange Lines, and

Omaha Streetcar The Omaha Streetcar is a proposed streetcar in Omaha, Nebraska. History Background The Omaha-Council Bluffs streetcar era began operations in 1868. By 1890, the metropolitan area had of tracks — more than any city except Boston. The Omah ...

), are not listed; expansions of existing systems are also not listed here.

Notes

References

External links

American Public Transit Association
(APTA) ** Table o
Light Rail Transit Agencies in the United States
(from APTA)
Federal Transit Administration (U.S.)

Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the U.S. National Research Council

Light Rail Central photos & news

A movie
of Armour's electric trolley, circa 1897 from

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

{{North America topic, Light rail in