Why not make more PCCs?

SemperFidelis wrote: Many current designs owe their roots to work done during the development of the original PCC car.

Very true, but this is not particularly noteworthy. Remember, the original PCC car and its technology is almost 70 years old. Since that technology was a radical departure from the technology which had preceeded it, and since further developement was pretty much aborted by the wholesale bustitution of streetcar systems in the late 1940's, the 1950's and 1960's, I don't think it is at all surprising that most current LRV designs have their roots in PCC technology. Where else could one go to find a "jumping off" point for new light rail vehicle technology?

If one were to include the sentence preceding that quote, one would see that I was supporting certain conclusions of another person.

An alternative "jumping off" point might well have been found in the technologies of countries whose governments didn't pursue automotive mobility exclusively. Though many European designs would probably also trace their roots back to PCC, thus invalidating this small tangent of our thoughts, a newer "jumping off" point might well have been from one of their designs. Or, perhaps, an alternative "jumping off" point might have been to simply ignore PCC and begin from scratch with new technology.

This might well have already been mentioned, but Boeing/Vertol tried to standardize light rail vehicle design and failed pretty miserably. Their design has always been a maintenance headache for operators.

Perhaps, rather than simply "making more PCCs", we (as a nation) should focus our energies on attempting to find a standard code by which to "spec" future light rail systems. Since light rail system designs are generally governed by state governing bodies, systems are (for lack of a better term) custom designed for each buyer. Since these systems are custom designed the costs are exponentially higher than they would be with some sort of standardized design and there is little room to allow for a standard car design such as PCC.

Trying to design one light rail car for systems as disparate as Buffalo (6 mile, inner city, slow speed line), Baltimore (30 or so miles, some street running, some high speed running), Newark (tight curves, tunnels, street running, high speed running) and Philadelphia (much street running, tunnels, center of road ROW, tight corners on 15-Girard) is nearly impossible because the systems are all built with different sets of standards.

But I'm well off topic now.

You're not as far off topic as you'd think, SemperFidelis - what you're proposing is sort of a government version of the Presidents' Conference Committee.

Moderator's Note: As a reminder to everyone though, the topic is "Why not make more PCCs?" I take that to mean comparing the relative merits of the PCC with LRVs and other forms of rail transit.

SemperFidelis wrote: Trying to design one light rail car for systems as disparate as Buffalo (6 mile, inner city, slow speed line), Baltimore (30 or so miles, some street running, some high speed running), Newark (tight curves, tunnels, street running, high speed running) and Philadelphia (much street running, tunnels, center of road ROW, tight corners on 15-Girard) is nearly impossible because the systems are all built with different sets of standards.

This was the problem which the developers of the original PCC car attempted to solve. Prior to the development of the PCC car with its patented technology, car builders, generally, built cars which were designed by the streetrailway companies themselves to fit their individual operating conditions. This is why "conventional" streetcars, by their simple existence, often identified the cities in which they operated ( ex. the Philadelphia Nearside Car). And while there were several pre PCC attempts by car builders to come up with a standardized vehicle ( such as the Brill Master Unit, the St Louis Rail Sedan, the Cincinnati Curved Side Lightweight Car, etc.), the PCC was clearly the most successful of these attempts, though it had, as was indicated in an earlier post, at least 32 variations. Of course to the purists, a car cannot be considered a PCC car unless it is built using the patented technology developed ( and owned) by the ERPCC and its successor Transit Research Co. Since that technology is almost 70 years old, it wouild be very surprising for builders not to have come up with refinements and "upgrades" which would render any modern car non-PCC under this strict definition.

While I had no idea there were so many variations on the design, I'm inclined to believe that the differences which separate today's light rail lines would be far more challenging to overcome than many of the differences which caused such a wide offering of PCC designs.

With few exceptions, a streetcar line is a streetcar line. All operate under similar conditions (tight corners, traffic, need for high acceleration, need for strong brakes etc.). Light rail lines now are constructed to a standard that generally reflects heavy transit of earlier years (massive concrete structures, private ROW etc.). Because of this massive infrastructure, modifying it to match a standard railcar would be much more difficult than I imagine it might have been to modify a line for PCC use. This massive infrastructure, in the form of bridges especially, is almost always built to handle very heavy railcars, some weighing 30 or more tons. To build a standard railcar today, one would have to ensure that either the railcar was light enough to meet the weight standards of bridges on the least heavily constructed line or upgrade bridges while ensuring future bridges are built to that standard. I'm not disagreeing with anything anyone is saying here, by any means. I think we all know any such modern "PCC" would require huge changes in both the ways we think about and the ways we build light rail.

Of course there was the difference in voltage, but generally that was a matter of volts DC. I would imagine that, due to the technology of the day, most systems were 600 volts DC or 750 volts DC. Today we have DC lines of 600/750/1200 volts and AC lines of many differing voltages. Any "standard" car would have to have many different offerings in the form of electrical equipment.

Accessibility is another place where a "standard" would fall far short of being "standard". Some systems require low floors to load from street level, others require wheelchair lifts to load from curbside/street level, still others require high level platform loading, and most require a mix of a few loading options. Even leaving aside the just and fair requirements of ADA (whose existence is maligned by the ignorant every day), this variation in accessibility would cause many problems for anyone attempting to realize savings from a standard design. I suppose someone might be able to find a way to allow all such methods to be allowed through one design, but I'll leave that for someone whose intelligence exceeds my own. Throw into that design the ADA's requirements and you are looking at one hell of a complex system to protect all options.

Again, I would think it would be much easier to approach this from the infrastructure end. National governing authority not being the "in" thing with many voters right now (most of whom really like the benefits of their interstate highways), I can't imagine anyone making an attempt any time soon to federalize standards for light rail line construction. It's either that approach or we look for cheaper methods to allow the return of streetcar service for which a PCC design might be offered. Streetcars are not about to make any real comeback until we find a way to address the ridiculous price-tag per mile. The 7 some odd miles of my favorite, long gone line (29-Bloomfield) would be nearly a billion dollars if I was to build it using the prices of other lines in my home state.

There was nothing all that special about the PCC design. It was basically just a last ditch attempt to come up with a modern, common design to reinvigorate the electric traction industry and simultaneously decrease costs, while increasing sales, for the struggling builders. The real problem was that the interurban/street car industry was in an irrecoverable decline, and had been since even before WWI. Oddly enough, in the 1920s, streetcars had become less advanced and less comfortable, with two axle models making a comeback to cut costs. In comparison, the PCC looked and rode like a modern bus. Automotive styling was a selling point, since by the 1930s, most Americans considered buses to be more comfortable than streetcars. It's hard to believe today, but the interurban/street car industry was widely hated and ridiculed. Investors had been defrauded, the workers had been paid substandard wage and were left without pensions when the companies folded, and Americans had grown to hate, and I do mean HATE, both the streetcars themselves and the streetcar corporations. By the 1920s, the average woman preferred an automobile with an electric starter to waiting in the elements to board a street car, suffering what we now call "sexual harrassment" onboard and then deboarding in the middle of the street, into heavy traffic. At least a bus pulled over to the curb.

I have to admit that the PCC was a technical success, but no design could have been a commercial success. It wasn't a matter of building a better streetcar, sincve the industry was dying. Today, the North American light rail transit sector is so small, it doesn't make any sense to produce the LRT cars in this country. It doesn't even make sense to produce the girder rails in this country.

Perhaps Newark was something of an odd case then, because the Public Service workers were rather well compensated and always had their hard work rewarded with pensions. Public Service was much more than a streetcar operator, of course, so perhaps things were different.

When speaking of the desirability of trolley service vs. bus service, it seems to be more case by case for Newark's once vast system. The routes that allowed for access to the City Subway's private ROW and fast trip to downtown remained very popular right up until the final runs of the last streetcar lines in March of 1952. The bus service that replaced many of the exlusively street-running lines was very popular because of the reasons mentioned. The busses were newer, the service was curbside, and the busses could simply drive around the double parked delivery vehicles whereas there was no such way for trollies to proceed. However, ridership plummeted on the few lines that fed into the City Subway and stuck around to 1952 before being converted. No one likes it when their ride to work/home gets 10 to 20 minutes longer.

From what I recall from my Pop-Pop's many stories,Public Service was a rather popular organization with the riders. If my memory serves me correctly, some of this might have been from some of the liberal repayment plans that Public Service Electric and Gas had for its customers should the need to miss a month/payment arise.

Overall though, I'd have to agree. Trolley companies weren't held in very high regard in many communities. As soon as automobile culture took hold, like most things in our petty-minded nation, the older "fashion" became nothing more than a nuisance to many. It's interesting to point out, though obvious to most of us, that the vast majority of Americans view public transit as a necessity and little more. I've had numerous arguements with railfans about the 15-Girard line in Philadelphia concerning their obessive beliefs that riders on the line overwhelmingly prefer the trollies. Sure, some of the kids like it more. And sure, some of us adults get a kick out of it. But I've ridden the line dozens of times during rush hour and cannot overstate the level of discontent among the riders that the trollies cannot avoid double-parkers, nor rapidly service the many disabled residents due to faulty wheelchair lift design. To most people a trolley is a way to get to work and nothing more. Looking back a century and more, who wouldn't want to take a newer bus that could cut travel times by avoiding traffic snarls?