Editorial: Trains grow in popularity

Friday, Nov. 24, 2006 | 7:04 a.m.

Denver opened a new commuter rail line last weekend, joining a growing number of cities that are showing that when it comes to transportation, what comes around goes around.

"We spent the 19th century building up a huge rail system, then tore it down in the 1950s, and today we are rebuilding it at a cost of billions," a Colorado historian recently told the Associated Press.

Trains and trolleys were a mainstay from the mid-1800s through the turn of the century. But with the increasing popularity of the automobile among Americans, urban train systems began losing money and had to shut down.

Now, as gridlock chokes the freeways and as parking in cities becomes increasingly difficult - and expensive - trains are fast becoming the transit wave of the future. Denver's newest line expands its existing system to 35 miles. And St. Louis recently added eight miles to its 38-mile rail system.

Voters in Kansas City, Mo., voted in favor of building a light rail system earlier this month. And voters in Salt Lake City approved expansion of their city's 14-mile system, which also connects to a light rail system that is to extend more than 40 miles in each direction, connecting Utah's capital to cities to the north and south. And Phoenix officials hope to open a rail system in 2008.

These aren't fussy, old-style cities back East. They are growing urban areas of the West - like Las Vegas. But plans to build a light rail system in Las Vegas, where commuters spend hours in traffic each day, have been floated, bickered over and scrapped on more than one occasion.

With price tags in the billions of dollars, light rail systems aren't cheap.

But the reasons Las Vegas Valley residents have given for opposing them - including fears that trains might be noisy or smell or add to traffic congestion when they cross major roads - have been successfully overcome by cities that, in many ways, have less to offer than the dynamic Las Vegas Valley.

Adding a rail system that could connect the valley's farthest reaches without adding cars to our overloaded roads would be another way to make this great urban center even better. But, for now, what comes around isn't coming to Las Vegas.