Sacramento Regional Transit Debuts New Light Rail Art Cars

Dogs and butterflies have taken over some of the light rail cars in Sacramento Regional Transit's fleet.

The typical car is white with the Regional Transit logo. But now, four trains each have one car that is wrapped in a work of art.

The cars features trees, buildings, butterflies or dogs.

One of the artists, Kerri Warner, said it was a fun, interesting project. "It was such a different aspect ratio than I'm used to working with, just because of the length of the train,” she said. “So, I had a lot of different ideas in sketching things out. The dogs were the ones that worked the best because it's like little vignettes all along.

The four artists selected were paid a total of $10,000. Twenty-nine artists submitted proposals for the project.

Donine Wellman is one of the artists, who were chosen by the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission. Her car, titled “Here Comes The Train,” is yellow and includes city buildings, orange numbers, and inspirational messages.

"I like to put encouraging words on my art, sometimes overt, sometimes covert. But, on this particular case there are words that are motivating people, like dream, sing, you know, just to uplift people," she said.

Artist Linda Nunes, who created the tree car, hopes the cars will bring art to the people.

“Sacramento folks that will never set foot in a gallery will actually see art going down the street. It will be so wonderful,” she said.

Henry Li with Regional Transit hopes the cars will help improve people’s impressions of the city and increase ridership.

"We hope this will bring more fare revenue to the system,” he said.

The cars can be seen on the blue and gold lines. If the vinyl wrapping holds up, the art could last for as long as seven years.