Money needed for Winston-Salem streetcar project

Winston-Salem city transportation and planning officials are looking for stimulus money to jump-start a streetcar project.

The idea to bring back streetcars to the city has been floating around since 2003, when a preliminary study showed that streetcars were feasible in Winston-Salem from an engineering standpoint. A 2006 study showed a detailed route between Piedmont Triad Research Park and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

Several months ago, the Winston-Salem City Council requested that the transportation and planning departments aggressively go after stimulus money to provide planning and engineering for the project.

The city hopes to apply for a discretionary grant through the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program from the U.S. Department of Energy as soon as funds are available. Winston-Salem would be in competition with other local governments for the money.

"The idea is to get the planning done so that we are more ready if and when there are funding opportunities that present themselves," said Paul Norby, the director of the city-county planning department.

If the city gets the grant, it would still need money to build the streetcar system.

The initial phase of the project, estimated at $65 million, calls for a route of 2.6 miles with track running primarily along parts of Fourth, Fifth, Liberty and Main streets in a figure-eight pattern downtown. The streetcars, which would run with traffic, would be guided by rails in the road and powered by electricity from overhead lines.

"This is a lighter, smaller vehicle and lighter gauge rail than even light rail," Norby said. "So, it's one third of the cost of light rail and it runs through the street."

Stan Polanis, the project manager for the streetcar project and the director of the Winston-Salem Transportation Department, said having streetcars is not intended to get people direct to their jobs from home.

"The intent of the system really is to move people around once they are in the downtown," Polanis said.

Moving around downtown

The aim is to create a streetcar system that would eventually complement other mass transit proposed for Winston-Salem, Forsyth County and the broader Triad region. For example, the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation, known as PART, is considering a commuter-rail system between Winston-Salem and Greensboro, and the streetcar system could tie into that project.

Future extensions of the streetcar system include the Coliseum/Wake Forest University area, Winston-Salem State University area and the Southeast Gateway area that includes Salem College, Old Salem and the UNC School of the Arts.

Polanis said that if commuter rail takes off, then people coming to a commuter-rail hub in Winston-Salem from Clemmons or Greensboro will need a way to get to their specific workplaces.

"This system ties to that commuter rail and gets them to where they need to go," he said.

Norby said that a streetcar system also can provide parking options for people when they come out of town for sports events.

"They could park in the thousands of spaces downtown and ride the streetcar there," he said. "That would provide some benefit as well to downtown. It would give people something to do before and after the games."

Ridership estimates

The streetcars are being considered at a time when the city has the West End Trolley, which circulates downtown.

According to the Winston-Salem Transit Authority, the West End Trolley, a bus that looks like a streetcar, carries 37 people a day and 9,205 a year. The city also has two bus routes that go from downtown to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Route 18 carries 536 people a day and 162,823 a year. Route 20 carries 724 people a day and 220,135 a year. That totals 1,297 daily riders and 392,163 a year.

In 2006, city-county planners estimated that the streetcars, if the initial phase of the system was completed in 2010, would have 5,800 riders a day and 2.1 million a year. By 2025, ridership would be 9,500 a day and 3.5 million a year, the planners estimated.

Polanis and Norby said that comparing the West End Trolley to a rail streetcar is like comparing apples to oranges.

"I don't think you can compare rubber-tire trolleys to this system because they don't connect as many places," Polanis said.

He also said that once streetcar systems are in place, development around them tends to intensify.

Norby said that cities that have put in rail systems of any kind see ridership numbers well beyond their initial expectations.

"I have read and heard that there's something about a rail-type system that makes it very attractive for a diverse population," he said.

Research by the transportation and planning departments shows that streetcars have been magnets for economic development in cities across the U.S.

"For every dollar of public investment you have, the cities that have done these have gotten private investment of anywhere from 10 to 30 times the public investment within a block of the streetcar route," Norby said.

Glenn Simmons, a principal planner for the planning department, said that the state demographer projects an additional 100,000 people will move into Forsyth County within the next 20 years.

The question is, he said, how to accommodate them and maintain diversity in the county's living environments, keeping up rural areas and building up urban areas.

"This is one way to begin to provide the framework so that the city grows over time, that we've got a way to accommodate that kind of growth," Simmons said.

Kirk Ericson, a project planner for the planning department, agreed.

"There has to be some concerted strategy to find a place to put all those people, and if we can take advantage of existing public infrastructure and existing development patterns some of that should go in an urban context."

■ Fran Daniel can be reached at 727-7366 or at fdaniel@wsjournal.com.