Light rail update 2003: virtually every North American city with light rail is either planning or building new extensions.

Decades of decline through the mid-20th century brought the virtual extinction of electric streetcars and interurban railways; but 1975 marked the start of a new era, when several hundred professionals and advocates attended the first National Conference on Light Rail Transit (LRT). Sponsored by the Transportation Research Board (TRB), this gathering was held in Philadelphia, one of only eight North American cities--seven in the United States plus Toronto--that had retained portions of once-larger networks.

Elsewhere, it appeared the future of transit would be limited to buses on public highways, with heavy rail rapid transit and/or commuter rail in just a handful of the largest metro areas. There was no vision for a practical intermediate technology until the Philadelphia conference introduced a new term light-rail--to describe the modern, mostly-surface electric rail systems that had evolved from older streetcar systems in Western Europe, explained how such systems fit between buses and heavy rail in the …