It has been more than 53 years since Vancouver’s last streetcar ran through the city. But with interest in rail growing around the region, could we be on the brink of a rebirth? If so, we have the Downtown Historic Railway to thank for getting the wheels rolling.
On April 21, 1955, the #14 made its final run along Hastings St, and with it ended Vancouver’s first streetcar era. But it looks increasingly likely that modern streetcars will soon be running along city streets again. Yes, the Canada Line and the Sea-to-Sky Highway have garnered most of the attention in terms of Olympic transportation projects. However, the big news for streetcar fans was the March announcement that the City of Vancouver was going to pony up $8.5 million to upgrade the rail line between Granville Island and Canada Line Olympic Village Station for use as a modern streetcar line during the Olympics.
Then in September we heard that Bombardier Transportation would be providing two Bombardier Flexity Outlook streetcars on loan from the Brussels Transport Company (STIB) to run on a trial basis between January 21 and March 21, 2010. Depending on the reaction of Vancouver’s citizens, the system could be expanded from Olympic Village station to Stanley Park, with possible extensions along Pacific Boulevard and the Arbutus Corridor.
While the Olympics have been a catalyst for the return of the streetcar, the groundwork was laid years ago by Dale Laird and the Downtown Historic Railway. Laird is the current vice-president of the Transit Museum Society (TRAMS), which operates the Historic Railway. He has over 36 years of experience as a bus driver with BC Transit and for 25 years also took on the roles of line supervisor and safety representative. It was Laird who first conceived of the idea of running historic streetcars along the old Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) line back in 1981. While driving the #50 False Creek bus route along the south side of False Creek that followed the railway tracks, he would think to himself: “What a great place for a streetcar route.” But at the time it was only a dream. Although Vancouver city council was talking about running a modern streetcar along False Creek to encourage transit use in this newly-residential area in the early 1980s, nothing came of the idea until more than a decade later.
The spark was an article published by the Vancouver Courier in the mid-1990s, in which Dave Rudberg, the City’s General Manager of Engineering Services, expressed an interest in using the CPR line as a demonstration project for the City’s downtown streetcar proposal. The line had been used for carrying freight to the industries lining False Creek since the turn of the century, but hadn’t been in use since 1985. As luck would have it, Laird already knew of an original Vancouver interurban car that was sitting unused in the Port Coquitlam transit shop.
Next time: Vancouver interurbans return from south of the border
Many thanks to Dale Laird of TRAMS for his invaluable help with this series of articles. Check out the Transit Museum Society website for more information on the Society.
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John Calimente is the president of Rail Integrated Developments. He supports great mass transit, cycling, walking, transit integrated developments, and non-automobile urban life. Click here to follow TheTransitFan on Twitter.