Downtown El Paso set to ride streetcar revival

Beginning in 2018, El Paso residents will be riding the rails again. Streetcars, once a staple in El Paso, will return. A $97 million grant from the Texas Transportation Commission and $4.5 million from the City of El Paso is funding the 4.8-mile route. The revamped streetcar system is an example of art becoming reality. A graduate thesis by City Council Representative, Peter Svarzbein, was the impetus for the project.

Posters call for trolleys to unite border cities instead of more fences

EL PASO – A multimedia artist from New York City is on a mission to revive the historic trolley system that once breached the borderline joining Ciudad Juarez to the Sun City. “I’m a firm believer that we should build trolleys, not walls,” said native El Pasoan Peter Svarzbein. His one-man ad campaign – the El Paso Transnational Trolley Project, – is provoking talk about a future connection between the sister cities. Public transportation in El Paso and Juarez began with that trolley service in 1881. They were not electric streetcars, but rather horse and mule-drawn trolleys.