Silver Line (San Diego Trolley)

Silver Line
Car 529 at Convention Center station (March 2014).
Overview
Type	Light rail, Heritage streetcar
System	San Diego Trolley
Status	Currently running limited Mid-day service on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Weekends, and select Holidays only.
Locale	San Diego, California
Termini	12th & Imperial Transit Center
Stations	9
Ridership	32,944 (FY 2015)
Website	San Diego Vintage Trolley
Operation
Opened	August 27, 2011; 5 years ago (2011-08-27)
Owner	Metropolitan Transit System
Operator(s)	San Diego Trolley, Inc.
Character	Unidirectional clockwise at-grade loop around Downtown San Diego
Rolling stock	2 PCC streetcars (5 additional cars pending longer-term restoration)
Technical
Line length	2.7 mi (4.3 km)
Number of tracks	Travels on only 1 track of 2
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) (standard gauge)
Electrification	600 V DC Overhead lines
Operating speed	45 mph (72 km/h) (max)
Route map Zoo Place Prado Naval Medical Center Presidents Way Interstate 5 San Diego High School Park Boulevard City College Fifth Avenue Park & Market Civic Center Transit Center 12th & Imperial Transit Center Orange Line Blue Line America Plaza (Storage and Maintenance Yard) Green Line Gaslamp Quarter Seaport Village Convention Center

2 PCC streetcars

The Silver Line is a 2.7-mile (4.3 km)heritage streetcar light rail line operated by the San Diego Trolley, an operating division of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System. It currently operates the "downtown loop"; a circle of tracks around Downtown San Diego, and is operated using renovated PCC streetcars. Service for the line currently only operates every 30 minutes on Tuesdays, Thursdays, weekends and select holidays during midday hours.

The line is one of four lines in the Trolley system, the others include the Blue, Orange, and Green lines.

The Silver Line is the fourth line in the San Diego Trolley system as well as the first circular route with service beginning in 2011. Planning for the Silver Line dates back to the early 1990s, upon the completion of the Downtown Loop, consideration was given to providing a downtown trolley service that circles around the loop. MTS (then MTDB) originally considered using three Vienna Class N1 cars formerly used on the Wiener Stadtbahn in Vienna, Austria, but their age and limited power proved incompatible with the present trolley system, and renovations to make them so were considered unfeasible.

Eventually in 2005, MTS would settle on using PCC streetcars; which were formerly used by the San Diego Electric Railway, San Diego's former transit service, in the 1930s and 40s. Between 2005 and 2010, MTS acquired six PCC streetcars formerly used in San Francisco and Philadelphia, and would partner with the San Diego historic streetcar society, a non-profit organization developed to educate the public of the history of the San Diego Electric Railway, to help restore these streetcars for use on the eventual line.