"Detroit's former vintage trolley line was a 3/4 mile (1.2 km) line completed in 1976 to revitalize a five-block section of Washington Boulevard, downtown Detroit's historic, upscale shopping avenue which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Along with the addition of the trolley, the street was also turned into a pedestrian mall. They line was extended by 1/4 mile in 1980 so as to reach then recently-completed Renaissance Center. It was operated by the Detroit Department of Transportation in a sidewalk right-of-way. The line include nine narrow-gauge trolleys, seven of which were imported from Lisbon, Portugal (as in the pic, taken in 1977). One was a Swiss car, and the last a double-decker car from England. In all, the system cost $2.72 million to build. It posted a peak ridership year in 1979 with 75,000 passengers for that year, but by 1998 it only recorded a little over 3,000 riders. By 2001, there was only one car still in use, with it only operating once per hour.
"The city announced in late October 2003 that it would be discontinuing the system to reopen (fully) traffic to Washington Boulevard, and sell off the cars. The trolley barn in Washington Boulevard was demolished in 2004. Apparently, some of the old railcars sit abandoned in one of DDOT's garages, and the ones sent to Seattle to be refurbished, were, but haven't made it back to the city. Actually, no one really knows where those ones are."
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