Gregory Scruggs hops aboard a street car in El Paso to find out how the revival of this transportation option has struck a chord with the locals. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Modern streetcars have a checkered reputation in North American cities.
They're often seen as economic development projects disguised as public transport and cost a hefty amount that critics argue, could deliver more bus services for the same price.
But one recent streetcar revival in El Paso, Texas, has struck a deeper chord.
You're listening to tall stories on Monocle Production, brought to you by the team behind the Urbanist.
I'm Andrew Tuck.
In this episode, Gregory Scruggs hops aboard a passing car in El Paso to find out more.
A little over a decade ago, posters started popping up around the desert city of El Paso in West Texas.
They advertised the pending return of the city's streetcar, which was abandoned in 1974.
Sube Al Futuro, they declared in Spanish.
The future is arriving on time on the border again, they said in English.
For nearly a century, trams crisscrossed the Rio Grande, the river that defines much of the US Mexico border, carrying passengers back and forth between El Paso and neighboring Ciudad Juarez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
These two cities have a unique and symbiotic relationship.
Historically, they have operated more like one city than two.
Their respective downtowns are just a short walk away from each other over an international bridge.
Above all, the streetcar stitched them together.
El Pasoans and Juarenses moved back and forth freely with families living on both sides.
But as US cities divested from public transport after World War II, the El Paso streetcar was another casualty.
Still, its legacy loomed large in the El Paso imagination, especially as a symbol of free movement across the border, something that has become far more difficult in the decades since.
Hence the posters, which were entirely fictitious.
El Paso native Peter Svarsbein created them as an art school graduate thesis and installed them guerrilla style on the walls of his hometown.