OGDEN -- Self-proclaimed streetcar "cheerleader" J. Craig Thorpe presented his streetcar primer Thursday night as a featured guest of Weber County Heritage Foundation's community forum: A Desire Named Streetcar.
Screeching brakes from the FrontRunner outside Union Station were coincidental, yet eerily ironic as progress met nostalgia.
WCHF board member Shalae Larsen and other area residents invited the streetcar-visioning expert to give a presentation after meeting Thorpe last month during a three-day streetcar conference hosted by the America Public Transportation Association in Seattle and hearing his lecture about another streetcar project he was involved with in Issaquah, Wash.
"This is all just meant to be very open and informative and to really promote the aspect of the streetcar, which is the place-making," Larsen said of Thursday night's forum.
Place-making, Larsen explained, referred to the positive impact that having a streetcar in an urban setting like Ogden would have on quality of life through increased traffic in "P.E.A.R.L.S," or places everybody already really loves.
"It's really about bringing people back to the streets," she said.
"Streetcars are so conducive to pedestrian and bicycle activity and getting people out of their cars."
WCHF plans to host more forums following a Utah Transit Authority study and an application by the city for a federal grant from the Federal Transit Administration that would likely require Ogden to match up to $6 million to help fund the $25 million project.
City funds would be pulled from a sales and use tax increase voters approved in 2007.
An artist by trade, Thorpe uses his renderings of streetcars in urban settings to help depict the aesthetic and vibrancy that inherently follow this specific type of public transportation, he explained.
"When you have an image in front of you, it tends to clear the air of a lot of perceptions, and even though it may not contend to be the final view, it does help focus discussion."
Thorpe's short lecture highlighted different examples of lines, stations and streetcars that are successful in cities like Little Rock, Ark., San Antonio, Texas, and Kenosha, Wis.
Larsen explained that while residents' concerns about installing a streetcar system in Ogden have been raised, the forums sponsored by WCHF were meant to be educational.
"UTA is getting close to finalizing their decision and will be coming back soon to ask for the public's feedback on the routes they've selected," she said. "We just want to inform and educate people."
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