DDOT's streetcar acquisition: ready, fire, aim...

by Paul on Nov 18, 2009 10:06 am  

I assume they need to be moved from time to time, to keep the road-wheels from flattening out. I wonder where DDOT will do that?

by Steve on Nov 18, 2009 10:25 am  

Steve, couldn't they store them in a maintenance yard and move them forward a foot every week, and then back again? All they'd need is a short piece of unused track.

by ah on Nov 18, 2009 10:39 am  

They could store them on just about any available track. To move them around occasionally, you don't need a power source - they can push them with a front end loader or a diesel locomotive or some other vehicle.

I'm not sure about clearance with the third rail, but I'll bet they could store them in one of WMATA's yards if need be.

by Alex B. on Nov 18, 2009 10:49 am  

LOL Paul. This was definitely the result of a few crafty DDOT employees who scored a trip to Prague on the company dime. yeah yeah, we got a deal 'cause we bulk purchased with Portland. Well, they had tracks, special property taxes to fund it, and a clearly defined catenary wire rules. We aren't even sure if we can use catenaries in the L'Enfant city, so we may very well end up with two entirely different streetcar systems with two maintenance and repair guidelines, needing different parts and expertise. Complete repeat of DC street car history. *facepalm*

by JTS on Nov 18, 2009 10:54 am  

Is it my imagination, or does that look just like a Circulator bus? Were these made by the same people?

by mccxxiii on Nov 18, 2009 10:58 am  

@mccxxiii: Yeah, that's almost exactly the same as the Circulator color scheme and design. I think it's kind of cool, having one design for DDOT's own public transportation projects.

Anyone know how the streetcars will actually get to DC? I doubt the ship is going to go all the way up the Potomac. It will probably drop them off in Baltimore, then trucks will take them down to DC. I don't know, it'd be kind of cool if the ship pulled right up to the Navy Yard or something ...

by Tim on Nov 18, 2009 11:03 am  

At least they're not being sent to the Dominican Republic.

by Michael on Nov 18, 2009 11:05 am  

I don't know, it'd be kind of cool if the ship pulled right up to the Navy Yard or something ...

I'm sure the Department of Navy would just love to have their facilities be used for deliveries to the city government...

They'll probably be shipped into Baltimore and 18-wheeled down to DC. Are there even any commercial ports in DC?

by MPC on Nov 18, 2009 11:10 am  

Michael, give it a few years . . .

by ah on Nov 18, 2009 11:10 am  

do we have any more on order?
will our future cars be made in the us not that that is an option?

by a on Nov 18, 2009 11:29 am  

Citypaper says they're going to be kept at the Greenbelt railyard.

by Reid on Nov 18, 2009 11:33 am  

@on:

Oregon Iron Works received 2005 transpo funding to build a streetcar for portland, which was supposed to help spur domestic know-how for streetcar construction. Not entirely sure of the details, but I think they've inked an IP deal with Skoda or some other central European tram mfgr since then.

It is certainly possible that future contracts could be awarded in the US to Oregon Iron Works or other companies, although domestic sourcing is probably not as cost effective as buying European. Then again, all of those "buy america" provisions may encourage this type of behavior.

by JTS on Nov 18, 2009 11:42 am  

@MPC The Navy Yard was my closest guess to something that could serve as a commercial freight port. Other than that, SW Waterfront serves passenger ships and I think I remember reading that there's a water taxi dock near Nationals Park. So no, nothing that can serve freight, as far as I know.

by Tim on Nov 18, 2009 11:48 am  

@Paul Isn't that DDOT's approach to pretty much everything?

by Jacob on Nov 18, 2009 11:54 am  

I've definitely seen barges make their way up the Potomac. They are sometimes used to take away large amount of dirt in connection to large excavation projects. It's probably not an option for this purpose, but it's not as if the Potomac is completely free of commercial traffic.

by Reid on Nov 18, 2009 12:28 pm  

You can't bring a large cargo ship into DC. No way, no how. Plus, it takes more then water to dock an international cargo ship. You need an entire infrastrucutre for rail, trucks, cranes, fuel, US Customs, Coast Guard, etc.

You could, in theory, take the cars off of a cargo ship somewhere and then put them on barges and have tug push them up the Potomac. That would make for a nice photo-op but probably wouldn't be very cost effective.

As for the ship making port in Baltimore. Remember, these cars are about 10% of the total cargo being transported on that ship, so they may be offloaded in any number of ports where the ship is stopping.

by metronic on Nov 18, 2009 12:47 pm  

Looking at the paint scheme for these cars brings up the question of advertising. When the Circulator (same basic paint scheme) started, some members of the Council wondered aloud why there wasn't advertising on the outside of the busses to bring in revenue. Dan Tangherlini, in charge of the project at the time said that the ads would ruin the unique paint scheme which was designed to make the busses attractive to new users.

Will the same logic hold for the streetcars? I would plaster every inch of these things with ads. Wrap them with ads. Who really cares what they look like. This entire project is expensive enough without turning up our noses at ad revenue.

by metronic on Nov 18, 2009 12:49 pm  

metronomic you are wrong.

There are two container port facilities in Alexandria-
and DC actually did , within recent times, have the capacity for ships to offload cargo in SW onto rail- but this infrastructure was allowed to deteiorate and it was taken out when the new national stadium was built. The Navy Yard was capable of handling the USA's first aircraft carrier- which was berthed in the Anacostia for the catapault to be tested- and the Navy Yard regularly hosted quite large ocean going vessels thru the early 1980's when it was discovered that the river bottom silt had among the highest recorded PCB levels on the planet - a result of the heavy steel manufacturing for the giant naval guns that went on until 1963. This discovery forced the EPA to step in and ban futher dredging- which had the be done periodically- as any river port needs. In NYC the aircraft carrier Intrepid had to be dug out of the muck - the Hudson also has this problem.

Much of this is in the book "From Roundshot to Rockets"
This is out of print- but lays to rest the idiotic notion that DC never had industry or ocean going port capability.

There is a great photo in this book of the entire US Atlantic destroyer fleet docked at the yard- numerous ships all quite large.

Just because DC looks the way it does now should now lead one to make false assumptions about our history.

by w on Nov 18, 2009 1:51 pm  

w,

I didn't see any assumptions about DC's history. The simple fact is that there's no place to offload streetcars from a boat in DC today. Nor would it be logical to do so.

by Alex B. on Nov 18, 2009 1:57 pm  

BTW, you don't even need any kind of truck or locomotive to move a streetcar. One or two reasonably strong people can push a PCC on level track without too much difficulty, so I imagine it can't be that much harder to move one of these at least a few feet that way. Rail really is that efficient!

by anonymouse on Nov 18, 2009 2:10 pm  

About that aircraft carrier. If you're referring to USS Langley, she wasn't much of a carrier - half the size of the smallest prewar carriers, a midget compared to what we understand as a carrier today, and blessed with a shallow draft.

USS Langley (CV-1)
converted from a collier around 1920
11,500 tons displacement
542 ft length overall
18 ft, 11 in draft

USS Enterprise (CV-6)
launched around 1933
19,800 tons displacement
809 ft length overall
28 ft draft

USS Nimitz (CVN-68)
launched 1975
101,000 tons displacement
1092 ft length overall
37 ft draft

Enterprise is probably the best match for a modern cargo ship.

by David Ramos on Nov 18, 2009 2:13 pm  

a beautiful sight for a city that loved it's streetcars for so long. i remember taking a streetcar as a child from Georgetown to JFK's funeral.

by Tom Coumaris on Nov 18, 2009 2:52 pm  

Cargo ships can be as long as 1200 feet, and three streetcars would definitely constitute less than .5 percent of the cargo that they are capable of holding. Expect these guys to land in Norfolk or (maybe) Baltimore and be trucked here rather unceremoniously. Save the photo ops for when they are actually placed on the tracks in Anacostia.

by JTS on Nov 18, 2009 3:18 pm  

How many cars did DC purchase, it might have just been better waiting for the next order and send them all at that time.

by Kk on Nov 18, 2009 4:02 pm  

David Ramos

A baby flat top is still an air craft carrier - and it is still a weapon of war. Carriers just like the Langley won WW2 .You cannot dismiss my previous statement just because it isn't the George Bush or the Abraham Lincoln. There are few ports that actually handle such ships and many times when visiting a place they stay off shore a ways.

All that I was saying was that a lot of people are not aware of the very interesting history of maritime DC and many people out of hand dismiss this place as so much has been lost or has changed over the years.

Yes- it was the Langley- correct- but it was still a large vessel and one can see that the Anacostia was being maintained as a port of call in order to be able to accomodate such a ship.

I have seen very large ocean going vessels dock in Alexandria. There was a cruise ship of the Crown Lines docked there once and it was a monster.

If you do not want to take me at my word, then you should get a copy of Roundshot to Rockets- it is a real eye opener.

by w on Nov 18, 2009 4:42 pm  

there was discussion back in the 90's of bringing the Hornet- another aircraft carrier- up the Potomac to the Navy Yard to act as a museum ship- but it was scrapped instead. I believe that it was the last surviving baby flat top left from WW2 still afloat at that time.

by w on Nov 18, 2009 4:46 pm  

JTS - Even if we lose the overhead wire issue in the L'Enfant city, it will be cheaper to use wires elsewhere and have two systems than it would be to use the more expensive wireless system everywhere.

I don't think it's a problem.

by BeyondDC on Nov 18, 2009 4:53 pm  

@JTS: You make some good points. This is definitely a case of 'the tail wagging the dog'. These were bought back in 2005 ... Why would you buy a streetcar when you don't know what kind of streetcar system you're going to have, much less whether you're actually even going to have a streetcar system? ...

The worst mistakes are made when one tries to justify past mistakes.

by Lance on Nov 18, 2009 5:27 pm  

@BeyondDC: When you have a system that is wireless in some parts of the city and wired in other parts of the city, you need a special car that can accommodate both types of power sources. It's not like you're going to want to have passengers changing streetcar lines everytime they reach the L'Enfant City border. Are these cars capable of handling the two types of power sources? (i.e., overhead and underground).

by Lance on Nov 18, 2009 5:30 pm  

Lance, Take a look at the streetcar map. Two of the lines, including the Anacostia one for which these cars were purchased, never enter the L'Enfant city. It would be an unnecessary expense to pay for dual power capabilities on railcars running on those lines.

by BeyondDC on Nov 18, 2009 5:49 pm  

Yes. There are two shipping terminals in Alexandria. One is at the foot of Duke and Wolfe Streets, the other at the foot of Pendleton and Oronoco Streets. The one at the foot of Pendleton has a rail siding (off the CSX mainline) along its north side. I believe that most of the cargoes unloaded at these terminals consist of newsprint for the Washington Post.

I don't know if a crane could actually be positioned to hoist a streetcar off a ship docked at the northern terminal and onto the rail siding. Even once they'd be gotten onto the rail siding I don't know if they can be hooked together and hooked to a diesel locomotive. But it would be very nice to see them unloaded in Alexandria and then run along the railroad into Greenbelt.

If only to embarrass Alexandria into getting some of its own.

by jim on Nov 18, 2009 6:15 pm  

@Beyond: Not-withstanding that two of the proposed streetcar lines do not enter the L'Enfant City, how can you say it's necessarily cheaper to use these 2 streetcars as part of an overall system that would require some streetcarsline areas to be wireless? Operating two sets of systems means you lose economies of scale in many areas. For example, you'll need two sets of maintainance procedures, and possibly even two sets of maintaince crews. You might need to different sources of suppliers (one in the Czech Republic and one in Portland) ... and require two sets of 'District dime paid for' trips ... one to the Czech Republic and one to Portland ... For all I know you might not even be able to use the same sort of track between the two different kinds of systems. And THAT is the issue, we don't know enough yet to know that we needed these streetcars. And that is now. We knew even less when they were ordered back in 2005. At this point, we're not even sure we're going to have a streetcar system at all ... much less what kind of streetcars we need. This is the tail wagging the dog. You wouldn't see Alexandria doing such an irresponsible thing. I.e., it would be an embarrassment for US, the District, for these things to be unloaded there. Like everywhere else they'd say 'You ordered streetcars for a system you don't even have approval for yet?'

by Lance on Nov 18, 2009 7:15 pm  

For all I know you might not even be able to use the same sort of track between the two different kinds of systems. etc.

Then I guess we'd better make sure that the entire system is compatible, hadn't we? There's still time to solve this problem before any lines in the L'Enfant city begin being laid.

by wmata on Nov 18, 2009 9:04 pm  

@Lance: I'm on the fence as to whether we "need" streetcars, but I'm not on the fence with regard to whether these would be a tremendous benefit to the city. It's possible to have a city of our size run with only buses (I've lived in Houston and at the time it was bus-only). However, streetcars offer a lot of advantages and are an important intermediate transit choice between buses and heavy rail. I think DDOT is justified in developing a streetcar network, and rail cars happen to be a long-lead item, so they had to be ordered before the tracks get started.

Tracks: You seem to have a concern that we'll build one set of tracks to one gage or standard and another set to another standard. This isn't hard to specify and I would be incredibly surprised if the whole system were not standard gage. It would allow the greatest variety of manufacturers to make our streetcars, which is good for the bidding process. Because overhead-powered streetcars are the worldwide standard, it may even be cheaper to operate a mixed fleet of cars because you save money getting standard cars that compensates for the costs of operating a mixed fleet.

We're already losing some of the economy of scale by building two segments of track that are not connected to each other. This means that we'll need to build two maintenance facilities and keep two sets of staff for working on the two fleets of cars (alternatively you could have people that work at either facility depending on the amount of work at each). At WMATA, maintenance workers appear to be based at a particular rail or bus maintenance facility, which makes sense. The streetcar system will likely have the same organization.

In terms of needing to write different procedures, I would assume that maintenance procedures are written by the manufacturers, similar to other engineering equipment (pumps, air conditioners, valves) that I deal with in my day job. From my experience in equipment procurement, you usually write this into the delivery contract for the manufacturer to provide the procedures. I've seen similar provisions in WMATA contracts I've read (for example, the contract for the smartrip readers).

The travel required to inspect vehicles before delivery is going to happen regardless of where the vehicles are sourced, and in any case has already happened for the Czech Republic vehicles. If the next batch is made in Germany or in Portland, we'll be sending project managers and senior engineers there to inspect them before shipment, too. The alternative to separate trips would have been to order all of the vehicles DC will ever need at once and inspect them all at once. That wouldn't make much sense.

Tracks are in the ground, this isn't a system that isn't approved yet, it's being built.

by Michael Perkins on Nov 18, 2009 9:47 pm  

Alex B.

The cars are 2.460m (96 7/8") wide X 3.460m (136 1/4") tall. WMATA's third rail plus the overhanging cover is roughly 49' from the track center line. That leave roughly 1 1/2" of clearance between the car body and the over hanging third rail cover.

WMATA could hang a length of wire over one of their yard storage if they wanted to move them under their own power.

As to the speculation of which port the cars will off loaded at. It will more then likely be the Port of Baltimore. The car will then be loaded aboard a lowboy trailer and shipped to where DCDOT has chosen to store them.

by Sand Box John on Nov 18, 2009 11:34 pm  

Atlantic Container Line Vessel Schedules:

Atlantic Conveyor
Departs Hamburg Sun, Nov 22 @ 05:00 PM
Arrives at Baltimore Thu, Dec 10 @ 12:00 AM

Vessel Atlantic Companion
Departs Hamburg on Sat, Nov 28 @ 12:00 AM
Arrives at Baltimore on Thu, Dec 17 @ 12:00 AM

Vessel Atlantic Concert
Departs Hamburg on Sat, Dec 05 @ 12:00 AM
Arrives at Baltimore Thu, Dec 24 @ 12:00 AM

by Sand Box John on Nov 18, 2009 11:51 pm  

>how can you say it's necessarily cheaper to use these 2 streetcars as part of an overall system that would require some streetcarsline areas to be wireless?

Because I know exactly how expensive wireless streetcar systems are. The difference is not small.

by BeyondDC on Nov 19, 2009 10:24 am  

@BeyondDC: Are you privy to cost studies (and alternatives comparisons) that the rest of us aren't privy too?

by Lance on Nov 19, 2009 11:29 am  

even though most new-comer to DC people are in disbelief that DC ever was any kind of a port- it would be an excellent amenity if the city would put re-establish a cargo capacity of some kind and take care of the PCB problem so that, once again, US Navy ships could be commissioned at the country's oldest Navy Yard.

I have been to commissionings of Navy ships in Alexandria- and this is a half- assed version of what used to happen in DC proper. It would be a great tourist draw- and would put us back on the map again - bring back some of the vitality that my grandma used to talk about- when everyone would go to the Navy Yard to see the new ships at harbor.

She also talked a lot about the old streetcars....

by w on Nov 19, 2009 4:56 pm