Brookville Equipment to land Dallas streetcar order

Dallas Area Rapid Transit is expected to select Brookville Equipment Corp. to provide two modern streetcars for the proposed Oak Cliff streetcar project. DART's Board of Directors may make the decision sometime this month. Preliminary approval by a DART oversight committee for a contract totaling about $9.4 million may occur this week.

If selected, Brookville Equipment Corp. would score its first major order for modern streetcar equipment, though the company has touted its ability to provide such a product, dubbed the Liberty streetcar, for some time. Brookville’s bid is one of three proposals submitted for the Dallas project, along with CAF USA and Czech Republic-based Inekon a.s. Eight streetcar manufacturers submitted initial Expressions of Interest.

Brookville, Pa.-based Brookville Equpment has long supplied rehabilitated heritage and heritage-style replica streetcars to numerous U.S. locales, including systems in New Orleans, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. But it has competed vigorously with other emerging streetcar suppliers, including Clackamas, Ore.-based United Streetcar and CAF USA, as well as larger players KinkiSharyo and Siemens Mobility, all of which have begun actively courting the potentially lucrative U.S. streetcar marketplace.  

The DART oversight committee also is expcted to approve a design-build contract to a joint venture comprised of Stacy and Witbeck, Inc. and local Dallas concern CARCON Industries and Construction, worth roughly $28 million. Federal TIGER grant funding is expected to cover about $23 million of the project cost.

The 1.6-mile streetcar route, support for which was generated largely by Dallas’ Oak Cliff neighborhood, would link Oak Cliff to Dallas Union Station, with four stops on the route.