[LINK] "Tunnel Visions - The Kenosha Electric Railway"

[rfmcdonald]

While on his way to his new home in Vancouver, Andrew Barton stopped off in Kenosha, Wisconsin, there exploring that city's streetcar system.

I'll admit first off that, in this case, the name of this series is a misnomer - at no point does the route of the Kenosha Electric Railway go underground. It may still work if you consider it metaphorically, though; despite it being one of the United States' newest light rail transit systems, it doesn't seem like overly many people are aware that streetcars once more ply the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, a city of just less than a hundred thousand people on the northern fringe of the Chicago commuter belt.

"Incongruity" doesn't begin to describe it. It seems utterly unbelievable that streetcars not only exist in modern Kenosha, but were reintroduced in 2000 nearly seventy years after the first system's removal, when that same transportation paradigm is under assault in places where it's been a mainstay for generations. Not only is it a tourist attraction in its own right, since streetcars aren't nearly as common in the Midwestern United States as they used to be, but an example that there's more than one urban design philosophy that works.

Yet they do. They do, and it's great. I was able to pay a short visit to Kenosha and its streetcar system on my way west to Vancouver - and beyond indulging my transit interests, it helped me say goodbye to home.

Go, read his thorough analysis and look at the cool pictures. (And yes, those are ex-TTC streetcars.)