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The US Standard Light Rail Vehicle was a light rail vehicle (LRV) built by Boeing Vertol in the 1970s. The Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA) of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) promoted it as a standardized vehicle for U.S. cities. Part of a series of defense conversion projects in the waning days of the Vietnam War, the LRV was seen as both a replacement for older PCC streetcars in many cities and as a catalyst for new cities to construct light rail systems. The USSLRV was marketed as and is popularly known as the Boeing LRV (not to be confused with their prior lunar roving vehicles for NASA) and is usually referred to as such. ==History== The original concept of the LRV came to fruition in the late 1960s as the limited number of cities with PCCs in North America were looking for modern replacements for their aging rolling stock. When Muni in San Francisco, California and the MBTA in Boston, Massachusetts were looking at building new vehicles or import existing European vehicles, the UMTA created a committee (the BSF Committee) to design a standardized light rail car. At the same time, a flood of defense conversion projects came to fruition as the result of government encouragement to help keep defense suppliers busy as the Vietnam War was coming to an end. UMTA, under President Nixon's "Buy America" program, would not fund any transit vehicles which were not produced in the United States, nor approved by the Administration. By 1973, UMTA awarded Boeing-Vertol of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the contract to produce the LRV at a cost of approximately $300,000 per car. Muni initially ordered 80 cars and the MBTA ordered 150. Later, the orders were expanded to 100 and 175 respectively. The first demonstrator model was produced in 1975 and was intended to be an early Muni car.〔 The LRVs entered revenue service on December 30, 1976, on the MBTA's Green Line "D" Branch. In San Francisco, the first two LRVs were delivered in October 1977 and production deliveries started in December 1978. The first regular runs on the Muni system came on April 23, 1979, on a temporary shuttle service, with more extensive use beginning with the opening of the Muni Metro in February 1980. The LRV was also nearly purchased by the RTA in Cleveland, Ohio. The RTA was given a demonstrator LRV car which was tested for use on their former interurban lines for a brief period during 1976, but ultimately declined to purchase the rail cars and later purchased LRVs of a different design from Breda (who, ironically, later built cars that replaced the Boeings in both Boston and San Francisco). The Cleveland demonstrator subsequently became MBTA car 3401, but was withdrawn shortly after entering service due to damage to its articulation joint and scrapped. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania had also considered the car for its streetcar lines, but was unable to secure funding at the time and later purchased cars of their own design from Kawasaki. The car body shells and truck frames were built by Tokyu Car Corporation and the motors provided by Garrett, with assembly at the Boeing plant in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「US Standard Light Rail Vehicle」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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