Light RailLight Rail Light rail transit (LRT) is a form of passenger urban rail transit characterized by a combination of tram and rapid transit features. While its rolling stock is similar to a traditional tram, it operates at a higher capacity and speed, and often on an exclusive right-of-way. In many cities, light rail transit systems more closely resemble, and are therefore indistinguishable from, traditional underground or at-grade subways and heavy-rail metros. There is no standard definition, but in the United States (where the terminology was devised in the 1970s from the engineering term light railway), light rail operates primarily along exclusive rights-of-way and uses either individual tramcars or multiple units coupled to form a train that is lower capacity and lower speed than a long heavy-rail passenger train or rapid transit system. A few light rail networks tend to have characteristics closer to rapid transit or even commuter rail, some of these heavier rapid transit-like systems are referred to as light metros. Other light rail networks are tram-like and partially operate on streets. Light Rail History The world's first electric tram line operated in Sestroretsk near Saint Petersburg, Russia, invented and tested by Fyodor Pirotsky in 1880. The second line was the Gross-Lichterfelde tramway in Lichterfelde near Berlin in Germany, which opened in 1881. It was built by Werner von Siemens who contacted Pirotsky. This was the world's first commercially successful electric tram. It initially drew current from the rails, with overhead wire being installed in 1883. The first interurban to emerge in the United States was the Newark and Granville Street Railway in Ohio, which opened in 1889. Light Rail Postwar Many original tram and streetcar systems in the United Kingdom, United States, and elsewhere were decommissioned starting in the 1950s as subsidies for the car increased. Britain abandoned its tram systems, except for Blackpool, with the closure of Glasgow Corporation Tramways (one of the largest in Europe) in 1962. Light Rail Revival Although some traditional trolley or tram systems continued to exist in San Francisco and elsewhere the term "light rail" has come to mean a different type of rail system as modern light rail technology has primarily post-WWII West German origins. An attempt by Boeing Vertol to introduce a new American light rail vehicle in the 1970s was proven to have been a technical failure by the following decade. After World War II, the Germans retained many of their streetcar networks and evolved them into model light rail systems (Stadtbahnen). With the exception of Hamburg, all large and most medium-sized German cities maintain light rail networks. The basic concepts of light rail were put forward by H. Dean Quinby in 1962 in an article in Traffic Quarterly called "Major Urban Corridor Facilities: A New Concept". Quinby distinguished this new concept in rail transportation from historic streetcar or tram systems as:
The term light rail transit was introduced in North America in 1972 to describe this new concept of rail transportation. Prior to that time the abbreviation "LRT" was used for "Light Rapid Transit" and "Light Rail Rapid Transit". The first of the new light rail systems in North America began operation in 1978 when the Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta, adopted the German Siemens-Duewag U2 system, followed three years later by CTrain Calgary, Alberta, and San Diego, California. The concept proved popular, and there are now at least 30 light rail systems in the United States and over 40 in North America. Britain began replacing its run-down local railways with light rail in the 1980s, starting with the Tyne and Wear Metro and followed by the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) in London. The historic term light railway was used because it dated from the British Light Railways Act 1896, although the technology used in the DLR system was at the high end of what Americans considered to be light rail. The trend to light rail in the United Kingdom was firmly established with the success of the Manchester Metrolink system, which opened in 1992.
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