The US Standard Light Rail Vehicle (SLRV) was a light rail vehicle (LRV) built by Boeing Vertol in the 1970s. The Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA) of the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) promoted it as a standardized vehicle for U.S. cities. Part of a series of defense conversion projects in the waning days of the Vietnam War, the SLRV was seen as both a replacement for older PCC streetcars in many cities and a catalyst for cities to construct new light rail systems. The US SLRV was marketed as and is popularly known as the Boeing LRV and SLRV and should not be confused with their prior Lunar Roving Vehicles for NASA.

The SLRV was purchased by the public transportation operators of Boston and San Francisco. In service by 1976, the US SLRV proved to be unreliable and scrapping started as early as 1987, but the SLRVs were not completely replaced on both systems until 2007. Although the SLRV itself was not successful due to poor reliability, it did set the general size and configuration for succeeding LRVs in the United States.

History Origin

The original concept of the SLRV came to fruition in the late 1960s as the limited number of cities with PCCs in North America were looking for modern replacements for their aging rolling stock; the last PCC had been manufactured in 1952. In 1968, the MBTA in Boston, one operator of PCC streetcars, created a mockup for one end of a proposed "Type 6" streetcar out of wood; the Type 6 program was discontinued after MBTA decided the cost to produce it was too high. Meanwhile, Muni in San Francisco, released a request for proposals in 1971 to purchase 78 new cars, designed by the rail transit engineering firm Louis T. Klauder and Associates (LTK), to replace their aging PCC fleet. The new cars, which Muni called subway-streetcars, were touted as "specially designed for San Francisco, adaptable to both subway and surface conditions and seating more passengers than the present [PCC] streetcars." Muni received two bids in November 1971, with a low bid price of per car from Boeing. Both bids were rejected as being excessively costly because potential builders were forced to recoup development costs over a relatively small number of vehicles.

Duewag had built a prototype as a demonstrator for the Hanover Stadtbahn in 1970 (Hanover car 601 ); in June 1971 MBTA ordered two more prototype "Hanover" cars, to be partially paid using a grant from UMTA. However, under the Nixon administration's "New Economic Policy" introduced that fall, UMTA was not allowed to fund the grant. That policy, codified as "Buy America" in Title IV of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1978, stated that UMTA could not fund any grants exceeding $500,000 for transit vehicles that were produced outside the United States unless an exception was approved by the Secretary of Transportation. direct URL Instead, Boston (MBTA) was directed to join with San Francisco (Muni) and Philadelphia (SEPTA) to design a new streetcar that could meet the needs of all three cities.

In response to the failure to procure the Type 6, Duewag, and LTK/Muni streetcars, UMTA organized the BSF (Boston and San Francisco) Committee to design a standardized light rail car to reduce per-unit costs, using the same concept under which the earlier PCC streetcars were designed. The Standard Light Rail Vehicle (SLRV) specification was developed by UMTA based on the 1971 LTK design for Muni in conjunction with potential operators (who were all currently operating PCCs) in Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia (SEPTA), Cleveland (Shaker Heights), Pittsburgh (Port Authority), New Jersey, El Paso (City Lines), and Toronto (TTC) as well as industry consultants at Parsons Brinckerhoff and Louis T. Klauder and Associates. At the same time, a flood of defense conversion projects came to fruition as the result of government encouragement to help keep defense suppliers busy as the Vietnam War was coming to an end.

Contracts awarded UMTA awarded a grant for to MBTA on October 20, 1972, towards the purchase of 150 SLRVs. On April 23, 1973, MBTA signed a contract with Boeing Vertol for the 150 SLRVs. On May 1, 1973, UMTA awarded Boeing Vertol of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the contract to produce the SLRV at a cost of approximately $300,000 per car, each for the Muni configuration and each for the MBTA configuration. Muni initially ordered 80 cars and the MBTA ordered 150, and production commenced the same day the contract was awarded at a combined cost of .Boeing bids low on Light Rail Vehicles Railway Age February 26, 1973 page 8 MBTA was scheduled to receive its first SLRV for testing in February 1975, and the majority of its cars in 1976. The MBTA portion of the contract cost for 150 cars; MBTA later increased the order to 175 cars, adding an additional to their total cost (MUNI had likewise increased their order from 80 to 100 cars at that time), of which UMTA awarded MBTA on June 10, 1974. The SLRV was the first American-built trolley since 1952.

In late 1974, the first new SLRV was operated on a short test track at the Boeing plant. The first demonstrator model was produced in 1975 and was intended to be an early Muni car, and it was used for testing in Boston for eleven weeks. Three cars (two in the Muni configuration and one in the MBTA configuration) were shipped to the Transportation Test Center in Pueblo, Colorado in fall 1975 under a contract awarded to Boeing Vertol for engineering testing. MBTA received its first car for testing in September 1976, two years behind schedule. This first car was delivered with trolley poles in addition to the pantograph, as the MBTA was still in the process of reconfiguring its overhead lines to accommodate the latter.

Operators

The first four SLRVs (3415, 3416, 3418, and 3421) entered revenue service on December 30, 1976, on the MBTA's Green Line D branch. However, revenue service with the SLRVs was suspended on April 16, 1977, due to numerous derailments, with 31 SLRVs delivered at that point. In San Francisco, the first two SLRVs were delivered in October 1977, and as with Boston's first car, these cars featured trolley poles as conversion to pantograph collection was not yet complete. Production models were delivered starting in December 1978, these cars having only pantographs, at which time the two pilot cars were returned to Boeing, and later re-delivered without the poles. The first regular runs on the Muni system came on April 23, 1979, on a temporary shuttle service, with more extensive use beginning with the opening of the Muni Metro on February 18, 1980.

Because the layout of Muni had several branch lines converging into the Twin Peaks Tunnel at West Portal and more lines merging near Church, Muni SLRVs were intended to couple into consists of up to a four cars as they entered the tunnel and underground portions of the route; as they exited, they would uncouple to continue on their assigned lines. However, due to slow door cycling and a three-second delay between the operator signal and actual brake release, the Muni SLRVs proved to be slower than the PCCs in surface operation, and Muni was unable to meet the planned four-minute headways on individual lines that would allow two-minute headways with coupled trains underground. In addition, trains could not be turned around to meet two-minute headways at the terminal Embarcadero Station. A new Muni Metro Rail Center (later renamed the Curtis E. Green Light Rail Center) was constructed for storage and maintenance near the Balboa Park station after Muni decided to purchase the cars the MBTA had rejected.

The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority tested MBTA car #3401 on former interurban lines in mid-1976 but ultimately declined to purchase the US SLRV, instead buying custom LRVs of a different design from Breda Costruzioni Ferroviarie. When Cleveland released a request for quote in September 1977, Boeing Vertol bid per SLRV, exceeding Breda's winning bid of per car. Search for Accession Number PB295070 Ironically, Breda would later construct light rail cars that would replace the SLRV's in both San Francisco and Boston (see Replacements and retirement section). SEPTA was initially interested (especially because the SLRV would be locally produced) but purchased custom LRVs from Kawasaki because the US SLRV would not clear the City Hall loop. SEPTA tailored the bid by specifying the vehicle width to be narrower than the SLRV specification to exclude it from consideration. The Kawasaki cars for SEPTA were assembled at the Boeing Vertol plant to meet "Buy America" requirements.

While Pittsburgh, New Orleans, and Newark collaborated with UMTA in designing the SLRV, and already had traditional streetcars, they ultimately did not buy the cars, nor would any newly built light rail systems, such as San Diego. Pittsburgh converted their legacy low-entry streetcar system into dual-entry light rail, in a similar fashion to San Francisco's Muni Metro, and bought (at the time) custom Siemens SD-400 light rail cars, these being derived from the Siemens–Duewag U2 design originally built for the Frankfurt U-Bahn and later adapted for the newly built light rail systems in San Diego, Edmonton, and Calgary. Newark would continue to operate PCC's until 2001, when they were replaced with new low-floor LRV's built by Kinki Sharyo vehicles. Press Release 326. New Orleans, which had never adopted the PCC design, continues to operate its 1920's vintage Perley Thomas-built streetcars, supplemented by modern custom-built replicas. All subsequent newly built light rail systems have likewise bought customized equipment from Siemens, Kinki Sharyo, Breda, and other builders that have since entered the US light rail market.

The US SLRV design also influenced the early design of the Canadian Light Rail Vehicle.

Operator Year Built Fleet Series Quantity Year of retirement Notes MBTA 1976–1978 3400–3534 144 1987–2007 3417, 3448, and 3453 were converted to maintenance of way equipment. 3424 was sent to Seashore Trolley Museum in 2009. 1977 3535–3543 Part of the initially rejected option of 40; 31 of these were later delivered to Muni and 9 were delivered to MBTA in 1983. 3541 was sent to the U.S. Army in 2000. Muni (LRV1) 1978 1200–1299 131 1996–2001 Two prototype cars were delivered in October 1977, numbered 1220–1221; they were later renumbered 1212–1213. 1222 and 1252 were damaged during subway testing on Nov 12, 1979; these cars were scrapped for parts, which were used to finish ex-MBTA 3565, renumbered to Muni 1252 (II) and delivered on Jan 27, 1982. 1212 wrecked into 1255 at the Van Ness junction in the Muni Metro subway in 1987. The good halves were converted into a new 1255 and the bad halves were scrapped in February 1994. 1977 1300–1329 31 cars in total. The first car from the rejected MBTA lot (ex-3565) was procured to replace two wrecked cars from the original order of 100 and reassigned number 1252. The other 30 ex-MBTA cars were numbered 1300–1329 and entered service in 1981–1984.

Issues

Before they were delivered, Boeing claimed the US SLRV would be reliable and virtually maintenance-free. From their earliest days of service, however, the SLRVs proved to be very mechanically and financially taxing. After the initial three months of service, the MBTA was forced to halt all light rail service on April 16, 1977, for nine or ten days due to equipment unavailability. The MBTA was unable to retire their PCCs; instead, MBTA instituted a PCC rebuilding program to augment the SLRV fleet and maintain Green Line service. In San Francisco, the problems with the SLRVs led to the Muni Metro not reaching its full potential until 1982.