toledoblade.com --

Head out the front door and walk a few blocks to the neighborhood coffee shop. Grab a latte, a morning paper, and walk two blocks farther to the light-rail station.

Swipe your transit card and find a seat. Within a few minutes you're at the office or workshop downtown, or in Maumee's Arrowhead Park, or in Sylvania - and you've left your car and $3.50-a-gallon gas back home in the driveway.

A farfetched dream? This can't be Toledo.

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It could be Toledo. In fact, it was Toledo 100 years ago except for the neighborhood java joint and the plastic transit card. Back then it cost a nickel to ride one of the dozens of electric streetcars that crisscrossed the city.

But then came Henry Ford, the Model-T, and America's obsession with the automobile.

Within a few decades, streetcars were gone.

But during the last 10 years a transit renaissance has blossomed in many parts of the country. According to the American Public Transportation Association, public transit use has risen 30 percent since 1995, more than double the U.S. population's 12 percent growth and higher than the 24 percent increase in vehicular travel during that period.

In Baltimore, the Patapsco light-rail system keeps passengers moving. Public transportation use has increased 30 percent across the country since 1995.
( BALTIMORE SUN/KARL MERTON FERRON )

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In 2006, the association said, 10.1 billion passengers boarded local public transportation, the first time that number topped 10 billion in 49 years.

A significant part of that growth has involved light rail, a transit category covering modern streetcars, trolleys, and "heritage" trolleys.

Last year, light rail had the highest-percentage increase of all transit modes, enjoying a 5.6 percent ridership boost.

At the beginning of the last century, streetcars served the entire city. You could ride to Point Place and on to Toledo Beach in Michigan for a swim in Lake Erie on a hot day, or out Broadway toward Maumee. Streetcars headed out Monroe, Dorr, Nebraska, South, and Ashland; Summit, Cherry, Central, and Lagrange. On the east side they'd take you from downtown out Front to the Birmingham and Ironville neighborhoods; down Main, Starr, and East Broadway, and down Oak and Miami heading to Rossford.

They rode on rails embedded in the streets and were powered by overhead electric lines. There was no belching exhaust or traffic backups, and they usually ran on time.

The city's last streetcar, "Old 838," made its final run on Monroe Street on New Year's Eve, 1949.

With the streetcar's retirement, the Community Traction Co. finished converting all of its routes to buses.

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Since 1950, the internal combustion engine has reigned over public transit in Toledo.

During the decades that followed, the money-losing private bus service became a tax-levying public agency - the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority - and ridership eroded as more and more commuting and shopping trips were made by car.

To one degree or another, similar stories played out in cities across the United States. With the exceptions of a few densely populated holdout cities along the East Coast, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay Area, the rule of thumb became: Those who could drive did. Those who couldn't took the bus.

That has changed, at least in some places.

With much fanfare, new or expanded light-rail systems have opened and enjoyed robust ridership during the past decade or so, including those in previously highway-only cities like Minneapolis, Dallas, Salt Lake City, and St. Louis.

"Transit is really in a boom in all areas of the country, not just in big cities," said Virginia Miller, an association spokesman.

But in Toledo, which has only bus service, transit ridership declined by 2.25 percent last year, including a 2.64 percent drop on fixed-route buses that are the system's bread-and-butter.

James Gee, the transit authority's general manager, said with gasoline prices reaching record highs around $3.50 per gallon, TARTA ridership has increased by about 8 percent this month compared with April.

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A matter of planning

Last week, workers rebuilding Cherry Street unearthed Toledo's last light-rail system in the form of old streetcar rails that were buried two feet under asphalt pavement. They were dug up and taken away as scrap along with old brick paving stones.

Should those old trolley tracks have been rebuilt to plan for a transit boom in Toledo fueled by rising gasoline prices that make one-car, one-person commuting ever more expensive?

Is a new light-rail system possible in Toledo?

"It's all possible, it's not impossible, but it's not a matter of just slapping down track, it's a matter of planning," said James Seney, a former Sylvania mayor and former director of the Ohio Rail Development Commission.

"You'd have to get people from Sylvania to Arrowhead, people from Bedford to Arrowhead, people from Sylvania and Arrowhead, and Bedford to downtown," Mr. Seney said. "Parking would be needed, and downtown would have to be made attractive enough for businesses to develop and businesses to move back downtown."

Local planners have offered several rail-transit ideas for the city in recent years, including a light-rail line linking downtown Toledo with the Toledo Zoo, another line focused on the University of Toledo, and a Summit Street shuttle with historic-looking streetcars.

Planners at the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments have also studied building a light-rail link on Monroe Street between downtown and the University of Toledo, potentially connecting to the university's conceptual Westside Technology Corridor.

Pushed by UT officials, the corridor is envisioned as running north-south between the Port Alexis Industrial Park on Laskey Road, south through UT's two campuses, and then farther south, crossing the Maumee River on the old railroad bridge next to the Ohio Turnpike river crossing. From there the passenger rail line would connect to Owens Community College.

The idea would be to give students, researchers, and employees of tech-based businesses located near the line a quick way to collaborate with each other and travel between sites.

The Westside project proposes to employ existing railroad rights-of-way, most of which are lightly used and parts of which are inactive. But because of the high cost of new right-of-way or building elevated structures, a downtown-university link likely would involve in-street construction on Monroe Street.

In late 2004, the metropolitan council estimated that between 1,000 to 2,000 people traveled daily between UT and downtown, and a light-rail or streetcar route between those points would also serve Toledo Hospital and the Toledo Museum of Art.

Other cities' transit projects, advocates say, have become development generators, attracting residential and commercial projects near stations. Tony Reams, the metropolitan council's executive director, made the same point last week.

"It's not just about congestion," he said. "You get businesses, retail, housing - you create communities around those stations."

A built-in audience

TARTA's Mr. Gee said if funding weren't an issue, a downtown-university light-rail link would be his first recommendation for rapid transit in Toledo, because a market among commuters and college students exists.

"It would have a built-in audience from Day One," he said. "If we could demonstrate that it would work there, it would be much easier to justify a second phase, say, out to Sylvania."

Mr. Seney agreed, saying last week that the reluctance some people have to riding a bus would disappear with light rail.

"A train is perceived as being modern, advanced. That's why people like trains over buses," he said. "A bus rocks back and forth and goes over all the bumps, and are subject to the same slowdowns as cars are."

The UT corridor proposal envisions following the old "Back Side" of the Toledo Terminal Railroad to link its main campus with its Health Science Campus, the former Medical College of Ohio.

That track, used infrequently by freight trains between Dorr Street and South Avenue and either inactive or removed between Port Alexis and River Road in Perrysburg Township, could be a natural corridor for light-rail transit, as could the long-inactive tracks paralleling the Anthony Wayne Trail between downtown and the zoo.

But money is a challenge and other Ohio cities' recent experiences planning light-rail projects have been sobering.

Some projects sidelined

Last July, Columbus' Central Ohio Transit Authority abandoned plans to pursue either light rail or "bus rapid transit" - buses operating on exclusive rights-of-way like trains do instead of sharing lanes with general traffic - because the estimated expense far exceeded federal cost-effectiveness standards.

In Cincinnati, an ambitious light-rail network proposal, which included some commuter "heavy rail" as well, fell by the wayside in 2002 after Hamilton County voters, by a 2-to-1 ratio, rejected local taxes to pay for the $2.6 billion, 30-year project.

And in Cleveland, the only Ohio city that operates light rail, the so-called "Silver Line" along 7.7 miles of Euclid Avenue on the city's east side will be bus rapid transit using dedicated lanes.

Cities that are building light- rail system are spending big bucks, such as $398.7 million for the first 9.6 miles of line in Charlotte, N.C.; $203.7 million to build 7.4 miles of light-rail transit in Norfolk, Va., and $381 million budgeted for a 1.2-mile extension of Pittsburgh's system - the latter including a crossing of the Allegheny River. The projected federal shares for those projects range between 48 percent in Charlotte and 57 percent in Pittsburgh.

In comparison to those projects, the downtown shuttle route envisioned in TMACOG's Regional Core Circulator Study would be cheap. The study estimated a trolley line from the Toledo Farmers' Market to Cherry Street and the Greenbelt Parkway, mostly via Summit Street, would cost $18 million for basic construction and equipment and another $15 million to $17 million for a transportation center at its north end that would have a station, parking, and maintenance facilities.

No cost estimate has been prepared for any other light-rail projects in Toledo.

While paralleling or using railroad rights of way seems like an obvious cost-saving solution for a transit network in Toledo, Mr. Reams and Marty Stutz, director of communications for the Columbus transit agency, noted that it also introduces costs not encountered with street-based alignments.

Between Hill and South avenues, the old "Back Side" track crossed what is now Norfolk Southern's busy Chicago-Toledo main railroad line at grade. Running a transit line along that route, Mr. Reams said, may require bridging Norfolk Southern.

Similarly, using the mostly idle rail route between South Toledo and Perrysburg Township would involve crossing a busy CSX line, not to mention restoring the railroad bridge over the Maumee River.

Up to $100M per mile

Joseph Calabrese, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority's general manager, said anyone proposing to build light rail should expect to spend between $50 million and $100 million per mile.

With the federal contribution usually capped at 50 percent, that means $25 million to $50 million per mile has to come from state, county, or local funds.

On that basis, the nonfederal share of paying for one mile of light rail would be close to, if not exceed, TARTA's annual budget of $28.3 million.

How much the price of gasoline would need to rise to induce the average American to significantly reduce driving appears to be a moving target.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll reported on Tuesday showed that nationwide, the per-gallon price would need to reach $4.38 for that to happen.

That's 22 cents higher than when the same question was asked last July, and the report noted that on the West Coast, where prices have generally been highest in recent years, that pain threshhold was also highest: $5.12 per gallon.

If heavily taxed fuel in Europe is a guide, those prices and more are not farfetched.

As of last month, Dutch drivers paid the most - the equivalent of $6.73 a gallon, while the French paid $5.80 a gallon, and most other European drivers shelled out more than $6 a gallon.

The soaring cost of gasoline may provide the push needed for Toledo-area communities to become more interested in mass transit, said TMACOG's Mr. Reams.

"I think that consensus may now be moving," he said last week. "As highway projects start getting pushed back because of the construction costs, we need to find other ways to start moving people around the region."

Contact David Patch at:
dpatch@theblade.com
or 419-724-6094.

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