TECO Line Streetcar System

The TECO Line Streetcar System is a heritage streetcar transit line in Tampa, Florida, run by the Hillsborough Area Regional Transportation Authority owned by the City of Tampa and managed by Tampa Historic Streetcar, Inc. It connects Downtown and Channelside to the historic Ybor City district. There is also an "In-Town" trolley-replica bus system that connects Downtown, Channelside, and Harbour Island.

The line opened on October 19, 2002. The line is 2.7 mi (4.35 km) long with 11 stations. The system is single-track with several passing sidings. The track mostly follows a reserved right-of-way at a cost of 13.7 million per mile including eight streetcars. The cars themselves costing $600,000 each. Annual insurance cost is $400,000 liability. (2012) most of that cost is the requirement by CSX Transportation for insurance to cross over their freight tracks at Fifth Avenue and also 13th street.

History

Tampa's first electric streetcars were introduced in 1892. Streetcars in Tampa reached their peak of popularity in the 1920s, with almost 24 million passengers carried in 1926. The first line shut down on August 4, 1946. The first streetcar system used the Birney Safety Car and, probably, other streetcar types.

Line

Line, lines or LINE may refer to:

Science and technology

Ybor City

Ybor City (/ˈiːbɔːr/ EE-bor) is a historic neighborhood in Tampa, Florida located just northeast of downtown. It was founded in the 1880s by cigar manufacturers and was populated by thousands of immigrants, mainly from Cuba, Spain and Italy. For the next 50 years, workers in Ybor City's cigar factories rolled millions of cigars annually.

The neighborhood had features unusual among contemporary immigrant communities in the southern United States, most notably its multi-ethnic and multi-racial population and their many mutual aid societies. A slow exodus out of the area that began during the Great Depression accelerated after World War II, leading to a period of abandonment and decay. After decades of neglect, a portion of the original neighborhood has redeveloped into a night club and entertainment district.

The neighborhood has been designated as a National Historic Landmark District, and several structures in the area are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 2008, 7th Avenue, the main commercial thoroughfare in Ybor City, was recognized as one of the “10 Great Streets in America” by the American Planning Association. In 2010 Columbia Restaurant was named a "Top 50 All-American icon" by Nation's Restaurant News magazine.

Tram

A tram (also known as tramcar; and in North America known as streetcar, trolley or trolley car) is a rail vehicle which runs on tracks along public urban streets (called street running), and also sometimes on a segregated right of way. The lines or networks operated by tramcars are called tramways. Tramways powered by electricity, the most common type historically, were once called electric street railways. However, trams were widely used in urban areas before the universal adoption of electrification; other methods of powering trams are listed below under "History".

Tram lines may also run between cities and/or towns (for example, interurbans, tram-train), and/or partially grade-separated even in the cities (light rail). Very occasionally, trams also carry freight. Tram vehicles are usually lighter and shorter than conventional trains and rapid transit trains, but the size of trams (particularly light rail vehicles) is rapidly increasing. Some trams (for instance tram-trains) may also run on ordinary railway tracks, a tramway may be upgraded to a light rail or a rapid transit line, two urban tramways may be connected to an interurban, etc. For all these reasons, the differences between the various modes of rail transportation are often indistinct. In the United States, the term tram has sometimes been used for rubber-tired trackless trains, which are not related to the other vehicles covered in this article.

Tampa, Florida

Tampa /ˈtæmpə/ is a city in and the county seat of Hillsborough County, Florida, United States. It is located on the west coast of Florida on Tampa Bay, near the Gulf of Mexico, and is part of the Tampa Bay Metropolitan Area. The city had a population of 346,037 in 2011.

The current location of Tampa was once inhabited by indigenous peoples of the Safety Harbor culture most notably the Tocobaga and the Pohoy, who lived along the shores of Tampa Bay. The area was explored by Spanish explorers in the 16th century, resulting in violent conflicts and the introduction of European diseases, which wiped out the original native cultures. Although Spain claimed Florida as part of New Spain, it did not found a colony in the Tampa area, and there were no permanent American or European settlements within today's city limits until after the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1819.

In 1824, the United States Army established a frontier outpost called Fort Brooke at the mouth of the Hillsborough River, near the site of today's Tampa Convention Center. The first civilian residents were pioneers who settled near the fort for protection from the nearby Seminole population, and the small village was first incorporated as "Tampa" in 1849. The town grew slowly until the 1880s, when railroad links, the discovery of phosphate, and the arrival of the cigar industry jump-started its development, helping it to grow from a quiet village of less than 800 residents in 1880 to a bustling city of over 30,000 by the early 1900s.