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Clang, Clang, Clang
An echo of Elm City's past, new trolleys are clean and green (and red)
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Business New Haven
6/24/2002
By: Michael C. Bingham
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If New Haven is as boosters claim a city on the move, new transportation initiatives unveiled earlier this month surely bolster the assertion.
On June 6 the new State Street commuter rail opened, offering greater accessibility to downtown offices for what are hoped to be swelling numbers of Shore Line East commuters (NEWSBRIEFS, BNH, June 10).
Then, on June 10, the long-awaited downtown trolleys commenced limited service, ramping up to a full six-day weekly service beginning July 1. It marked the culmination of a project four years in the making.
Manufactured by Ebus Inc. of Downey, Calif., the four 22-seat electric vehicles (three to be in active service at any one time, with one as a backup) provide a quiet and emissions-free ride on a circuit including State, Chapel and Elm Streets, Broadway and the Audubon arts district. The trolleys will run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily except Sunday. “Best of all,” said Mayor John DeStefano Jr., “the service will be free” - at least to start.
Similar to Ebus vehicles in service in Atlanta and Mobile, Ala., the red-and-green vintage replica trolleys are handsomely appointed with oak paneling, brass railings and leather straps. Total cost of the trolleys, fast charger and support items was $1,066,900.
Funding for the project included $1.2 million in federal funding, plus matching funds from the city. Private sponsors also aided the project, including New Haven Savings Bank and the United Illuminating Co., which are lending financial support to the service leading up to July 1.
New Haven's first trolley line opened in 1892, and the vehicles quickly replaced the horse-drawn hack and shod foot as the transit method of choice throughout the city and into suburban communities. By the 1920s, one could travel from New Haven to Boston merely by changing trolleys.
But within a half-century, demographic changes and geographic shifts, fueled in large part by increasingly affordable private automobile ownership, sounded a death knell for trolley in New Haven and elsewhere. The last Elm City trolley ran to the Yale Bowl on September 28, 1948.
In homage to that legacy, DeStefano said that when the trolley idea was hatched in 1998, city officials at first explored the possibility of a hard-rail system, but costs quickly proved to be prohibitive. The new Ebus trolleys are essentially electric buses traveling on rubber tires.
The vehicles' environmental friendliness was key to the city's ability to obtain federal funding for the project. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had designated New Haven a “non-attainment area” for ground-level ozone and PM-10 diesel particles.
Moreover, the area has high levels of asthma, particular among children, which has been linked in many studies to poor air quality from polluting trucks and buses.
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