Portland City Council Considers Adding Trolleycars. No Word On Dirigible Docking, Whether Heavier-Than-Air Flight Might Be Practical

PORTLAND — Tony Donovan, a commercial Realtor and rail transit advocate, stood on a busy section of Commercial Street last Friday afternoon talking about how a streetcar system would improve the city. “This is not nostalgia,” Donovan said. “This is the future.” As he talked, he counted cars with only single occupants passing on the street that was itself once a streetcar thoroughfare, with evidence of its rails still visible in places. At one point, seven consecutive vehicles without passengers backed up behind a crosswalk.  “It will make it so much better,” he said, heavily emphasizing the last three words. People could come to Portland by rail, by bus, by ferry, and never even get in a car to travel around the city, he said. A few days before, the City Council’s Transportation, Sustainability, and Energy committee had taken up a brief agenda item to discuss forming a task force on creating a streetcar system. Donovan, who works with the Maine Rail Transit Coalition, and several others attended the meeting to express support for exploring steetcars. (read more at TheForecaster)

The committee declined to take immediate action on the item. Councilor Kevin Donoghue said he wanted to find funding for a feasibility study on streetcars before establishing a task force; Councilor Cheryl Leeman was skepticla that a form of mass transportation abandoned in Portland more than 70 years ago would be a viable contemporary transit solution.

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Posted by Aubuchon Connery on Jul 25 2012. Filed under featured, Mind Your Own, Queer Doins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.