Trolley crews are always 'wired' and ready to go

King County Metro Transit operates the second largest fleet of trolley buses in the nation - second only to San Francisco. For more than 60 years, the trolleys have been the backbone of Metro's service inside the city of Seattle. The electric trolley buses are clean, quiet, and efficient, yet they also have enough muscle to climb the city's steep hills.

But it's not just electricity that keeps the trolleys operating 20 hours a day, seven days a week. The real power behind these vehicles is the three dozen men and women who make up Metro's Trolley Overhead crews.

"Our trolley crews are a little like firefighters, in that they respond whenever or wherever they are needed," says Jerry Rutledge, Metro's manager of Power and Facilities. "If a wire goes down or a trolley stops running, they'll be on the street in a minute. Their goal is to keep the trolleys and the street traffic moving without significant delay."

It takes both skill and dedication - and not everyone is attracted to a job that requires you to work within inches of lines carrying 650 volts of direct current electricity. Yet, Rutledge says there is very little turnover in the crews and the group has a unique sense of camaraderie.

A trolley bus is both simple and complicated. It's one of the oldest forms of municipal transit, first appearing in the United States in the late 1880s, but really catching on around the turn of the 20th Century. Trolley service started as a demonstration in Seattle in 1937, and then became a permanent transit service in 1940. Today, electric trolley buses make up 10 percent of Metro's fleet yet carry 25 percent of all passengers.

Trolley buses have a pole that is topped by an insulated shoe. That shoe is only about five inches long with open ends and is grooved. The pressure from the spring-loaded pole keeps the shoe pushed up against the overhead wire, providing the electric connection that powers the bus. The open-ended design lets the shoe move and pivot as the wire goes around corners or shifts through an intersection criss-crossed with overhead wires.

In Seattle, there are more than 140 miles of overhead wire concentrated primarily in: Downtown; Queen Anne; Ballard; the University District; Capitol Hill; the International District; Beacon Hill; and the Rainier Valley. Metro operates five Trolley Overhead crews of four to six workers in each to handle all repairs and inspections of the overhead system.

"When they are not doing repairs, they are out doing routine inspections,' said Rutledge. "Some of the more complicated parts of our system - the busier intersections like 12th and Jackson or Broadway and Madison - get attention several times a week."

The Trolley Overhead crews are particularly busy this spring getting ready for the closure of the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel, and you'll probably be seeing them downtown more often working from their specialized elevated platform. The tunnel closes for up to two years on Sept. 24, which will send buses from the 21 tunnel routes up to surface streets. The increased transit traffic downtown means more maneuvering for the trolleys, which must always keep in contact with the overhead wire.

Currently the crews are dealing with three areas of pre-closure work. Along Pine Street, the overhead wires are being moved from one side of the street and then back so the trolleys can be rerouted around tunnel construction on the street. At Prefontaine Place, Metro is reconfiguring the overhead wire to allow for different bus movement. And in some areas, such as Fourth Avenue north of Jackson, there will be a new stretch of wire installed to accommodate a new transit island on the west side of the street.

Members of Metro's Trolley Overhead crew go through a rigorous apprenticeship program and have very specialized skills because they are working on a unique system that few transit agencies operate. Rutledge says the crewmembers' institutional knowledge of the 60-year-old system is invaluable, as is their willingness to respond to all trolley service calls anytime day or night, fair weather or foul.

"They are one of the most dedicated groups of employees we have," says Rutledge.