"Isn't it wonderful? I've been trying to really get that into people's minds for about two and a half years now. This year when we had our council goal setting [meeting] I made my pitch to the council and they put it in as one of their goals," Taylor said.

From 2001 to 2004 the idea of a trolley was kicked back and forth between various committees and task forces. Initially, the big sticking point was finding funding for a feasibility study to determine if Salem had the infrastructure to support a trolley line. Former task force member and downtown business owner Roy John Balduc and others were pushing for hard track lines, while others looked at the much cheaper rubber tire version.

While bigger communities like San Francisco and New Orleans are better known for their car lines, the task force discovered other, smaller communities succeeded in establishing what are called "hard track" streetcars (cars that run on set rails rather than rubber tires).

"What we found in our research was that anywhere a community put a streetcar line property values went up, livability went up, and the number of cars using your streets went down," Balduc said. "However, we were warned that rubber tire trolleys don't work. They don't have the same success."
City leaders thought Salem could be the next success story. After all, there was a historical precedence for trolley service in Salem; not necessarily a financially successful one, but a precedence nonetheless (see "A brief history" sidebar).

"In the feasibility study, three options were laid out. One tied the rail station to Willamette University and one looked at using the rail bridge to connect West Salem to the downtown core. The third talked about rubber tire trolleys, which we found were successful, but only in the short term," Senior Transit Planner, Glen Hadley said.
With hard tracks the route is set and can't be changed. Rubber tire trolleys operate like buses, and their routes can be changed at the whim of city council or businesses with political and financial clout.

"Hard track lines run at a consistent speed and can actually hold more people. What you see is the trolley becomes a part of the daily routine for people who need to get around downtown. They can count on it always having the same stops at the same time," Balduc said.

Once the $61 million price tag came in, the proposed hard line trolley project lost steam. The rubber tire camp saw the project could be done for cheaper without tracks. The hard track camp insisted that all the long-term research and projections showed that only hard track trolleys have been successful in revitalizing neighborhoods and business cores. There was a falling-out that couldn't be reconciled and the trolley project stalled. That is, until the mayor brought it up in conjunction with Vision 2020.

Annie Gorski, a project coordinator for Vision 2020, said the trolley was just one of many things her team is surveying the public about. She stressed that Vision 2020 is in its conceptual stage and details are still vague. Gorski also said that the survey does mention a rubber tire trolley and that present feedback suggests support.

"We don't have a lot of details yet... the most important thing people are saying is that it needs to be frequent and reliable. It would be a focused route within the downtown core. I haven't heard anyone complain about the idea of a rubber tire trolley, but again we are in the initial stages and we haven't gotten to the details yet," Gorski said.

Taylor said she thinks rubber tire trolleys are more likely to be established at first.

"I'd love to do the rails. But I'd at least like to see us get everyone so dependent on the tired one that they'd buy into the rails," Taylor said.
According to Hadley, the city has tested a rubber tire trolley in the past. A few years ago, the transit department borrowed a trolley from the city of Corvallis to use during the first Wednesday event.

"We saw a lot of the issues that the feasibility study had warned about. Namely, once the initial novelty wore off, ridership dropped off because the route was being changed around so much. I think it changed four or five times in one year. Riders didn't know where it was going to end up, so they opted to walk," Hadley said.

"I haven't seen all the Vision 2020 surveys so I can't speak for sure, but if people aren't asking the right questions about the trolley, it's because they see that the rubber tire option is cheaper. My fear would be that we would bring in the rubber tire trolley and after a year, if it wasn't sustainable, then the community might decide that Salem isn't ready for a streetcar. I don't believe that is the case," Hadley said.
Salem officials are holding another Vision 2020 public forum in December. Gorski said it's important for citizens to come forward with concerns and participate, because if issues aren't addressed now, the vision for Salem might not be one everyone wants.