Second streetcar arrives in El Paso
El Paso now has two streetcars waiting in the wings. They’re still being prepared, but we may see them on the rails this summer.
Streetcar 1512 arrived in the Sun City Sunday sporting the light green and orange color scheme, with four more on the way.
“We’re planning to get about one a month, so we’ll probably get one in late May, June, July, August, September, so around there we should have all six of them,” said Sun Metro Director Jay Banasiak.
After three hours of waiting the streetcar finally rolled down the ramp, being taken to it’s storage area at the Sun Metro transfer center.
They’ll be running for a trial period during the summer, but it won’t be until around fall El Pasoans will be able to ride in them.
“It’s gonna take a few months to get to revenue service. There’s a lot of requirements the federal government has we have to make sure we’re all safety certified, that all the cars are safety certified,” Banasiak said.
While this car has the same colors as the first, each two cars will sport different schemes and they could end up running different lines. It all depends on what Sun Metro learns during the trial period.
“We may just keep four vehicles down here and take two up north, and that’s when we may say maybe just one color goes up north and two stay downtown,” said Banasiak.
Passengers won’t be allowed during the trial, something Sun Metro says will help have tight wait times from the beginning.
“If we just put one or two out there it’s gonna take a while to do a round trip and people are going to be waiting waiting waiting for a car, and I think when we start we want to make sure the headways are ten, nine minutes max for downtown,” he explained.
