Milwaukee Streetcar

The District is seriously considering scrapping its current D.C. Streetcar vehicles, just two years after they first carried riders https://t.co/qbh7BwSGil pic.twitter.com/qWTx8fg9Jd

— WTOP (@WTOP) February 26, 2018

From WTOP:

Only two years after the D.C. Streetcar launched, the District is already seriously considering a plan to replace its vehicles.

In responses prepared for a D.C. Council hearing Tuesday — which happens to be the two-year anniversary of the first passengers’ trips down H Street NE — the District Department of Transportation said there have been problems already with getting spare parts to complete repairs in a timely manner. One manufacturer is out of business, and the other is overseas, so the issues are likely to continue.

“Long term parts availability will likely require reverse engineering parts,” DDOT officials wrote to the council’s Committee on Transportation and the Environment. The agency said it is exploring a strategy of acquiring vehicles in the future that “considers the feasibility of disposal of the current fleet.”

Federal Transit Administration guidelines set a streetcar’s typical lifespan at 31 years. Even if the current fleet runs for another five years, it would still have only been in service for seven. The cars arrived a few years before the line opened for passenger service.

Is this the kind of stuff we can expect in Milwaukee?

Wonderful.