The Vision for GARP

Lower Grand Avenue appears to be an ideal place to re-establish a historic streetcar line. Historically, Grand Avenue was a part of the streetcar system before it was abandoned in 1934.

Traffic patterns on Lower Grand Avenue are fairly predicable. The street layout today has four traffic lanes (two in each direction) and a center left-turn lane. For most of the day, the street carries only occasional traffic, easily serviced by two lanes. In fact, the traffic lanes adjacent to the curbs currently allow parallel parking for most of the day. During “rush hours,” the street is very heavily travelled toward downtown in the morning and away from it in the afternoon.

With careful planning and operation, it appears that the addition of a streetcar within the center turn lane would not affect automobile traffic capacity. The street could continue to operate as it does now. It is likely that trolley operation would be restricted to low-traffic periods, nights, and weekends.

GARP is envisioned to operate much the way Tucson's Old Pueblo Trolley does. The tracks would occupy the center turn lane at grade, allowing the lane to continue to be used for turning. Stations would be located about every 1000 feet and would be constructed as crosswalks to a central raised island to provide waiting pedestrians with some safety from wayward traffic. The existing light poles will need to be analyzed to determine if they are capable of supporting the catenary power system. Along Lower Grand, 30-foot light poles occur every 140 or 150 feet along each side of the street, staggered; at a minimum, additional poles would need to be added for catenary support on the opposite side of the street from every pole. If the existing poles are determined to be structurally insufficient to support the power system, they would have to be reinforced, replaced, or supplemented with additional poles.

The Trolley Shed and Museum are critical components of the system. A suitable location must be found for this core element that is secure and economical to develop for the relocated facility. While most of the property along Lower Grand Avenue is already developed and would be costly to acquire, there is an abundance of publicly owned land (controlled by ADOT) around and beneath the Interstate 10/Grand overpass at the northern extremity of Lower Grand Avenue. ADOT also owns several buildings in this location. The museum could be developed as a rehabilitation of one of the ADOT buildings, or a new museum building could be constructed. The existing Trolley Shed could be moved from the existing location on Central Avenue. Other areas beneath the overpass could be used for parking for the trolley museum or even as a park-and-ride lot for the trolley.

The GARP system would be developed over a number of years in a phased manner. The first phase would be to relocate the Trolley Museum and Trolley Shed to its Grand Avenue base, to provide facilities at least equal to those currently occupied by the museum. The tracks, power system, and stations would be added as funding becomes available, with the first leg to the 15th Avenue/Roosevelt intersection and the second leg to the 7th Avenue/Van Buren intersection. It may be possible to extend the rail line an additional half mile along Van Buren in order to connect it to the Central Station traffic node at 1st Avenue, which would enhance GARP by linking it with the entire city bus network as well as the Metro light rail station there.

(c) 2009 Motley Design Group LLC