Portland Streetcar has embarked on its next expansion project, a 3.3-mile extension that will take streetcars across the Willamette River and down the east side to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI).

The first phase of the of the project got underway within the last two weeks with the start of utility relocation along Northeast Grand Avenue. Projections call for operations to begin in the Spring of 2012.

The route will diverge off the north end of the existing streetcar line, near Portland Union Station, cross the Broadway Bridge, then loop through the Lloyd District and the Central Eastside along Martin Luther King Boulevard and Grand Avenue to and from OMSI.

Follow-on plans are for the line to cross the Willamette again on the new multi-modal transit bridge planned as part of TriMet's MAX light rail extension from downtown Portland to Milwaukie, tentatvely planned for a 2015 opening.

Meanwhile, the agency has received the first of six new, made in U.S.A. streetcars. Car #015 is the first car completed by United Streetcar, a subsidiary of Oregon Iron Works, a Portland-area company, and is the first commercial streetcar built in the U.S. since the early 1950s. The car is built to specifications provided by the Czech company Skoda, which constructed the cars in the existing Portland Streetcar fleet.

Tucson, Ariz. has also selected United Streetcar to build the cars for its planned streetcar operation.