Lewis BarbaraLight rail is defined in the United States (and elsewhere) as a type of electrified (or, in some exceptional cases, diesel) rail transportation. usually urban in nature, which is characterized by operating on routes with usually exceptional, though not necessarily grade separated, right-of-way. This differs from “heavy rail” systems, also known as rapid transit or “subways” (such as subways and/or overpasses), which are completely separate from other means of transportation. and which are characterized by greater passenger capacity than light rail. Perhaps traditional streetcars (also known as trolleybuses in North America or as streetcars outside North America, especially in Europe), which are railroads that run on public roads with vehicular traffic and therefore are not operated with exclusive right-of-way, can be considered part of light rail, although the two modes of transportation are often considered different in the United States.
According to the American Public Transportation Association, about 30 cities with light rail systems in the United States, light rail systems in six of them (Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland (Oregon), San Diego and San Francisco ) reach more than 30 million unconnected passenger transit trips per year.
The United States has several light rail systems in the middle the size of major cities. In the oldest legacy systems, such as Boston, Cleveland, Newark, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco, light rail is a vestige of the first generation streetcar systems of the 19th and early 20th centuries, but was spared the fate of other streetcar systems because these systems had some separation from traffic and high ridership. A number of second-generation light rail systems opened in the 1980s, beginning with San Diego in 1981, several more were built in the 1990s, and many more have opened in cities with lower traffic densities since the early 2000s.
From the mid-nineteenth century onward, streetcars (or horse streetcars) were used in cities around the world. The St. Charles Avenue streetcar line in New Orleans is the oldest continuously operating street railroad in the world, having begun operating as a horse-drawn system in 1835.
Since the late Beginning in the 1880s, electrically powered street railroads became technically feasible after the invention of the current collecting cart system by American inventor Frank J. Sprague, who installed the first successful electrified cart system in Richmond, Virginia in 1888. They became popular because the roads were then poorly paved, and until the invention of the internal combustion engine and the advent of motor buses, they were the only practical means of getting around cities.
Streetcar systems built in the 19th and early 20th centuries usually operated with only one car. Some rail lines experimented with multi-unit configurations where streetcars were combined into short trains, but this did not become commonplace until later. When lines were built for long distances (usually with a single track) before good roads were commonplace, in North America they were usually called intercity streetcars or radial railroads.
In the United States, most of the original streetcar systems were decommissioned from the 1950s and the automobile rose in popularity until about 1970. Although a few traditional streetcar or trolleybus systems still exist today (such as New Orleans), the term “light rail” has come to refer to a different type of rail system. Modern light rail technology is largely of German origin, as Boeing Vertol’s attempt to introduce a new American light rail system proved to be a technical failure. After World War II, the Germans kept their streetcar networks (Straßenbahn) and turned them into model light-rail systems (Stadtbahn ). With the exception of Hamburg, all large and medium-sized German cities have light rail networks (Stadtbahn).
The revival of light rail in the United States began in 1981, when the first truly light rail system of the second generation was born. was opened in the United States San Diego Trolley in California, which used the German light rail Siemens-Duewag U2. (This was just three years after the opening of the first North American second-generation light rail system in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 1978, which used the same German Siemens-Duewag U2 Vehicles such as the San Diego).