Streetcars on the Ballot amid Trolley Revival
A streetcar revival in American cities isn't just kicking up sparks from the tracks, they're flying down at city hall, too.
In Idaho's capital, a proposed $60 million trolley plan has become a major theme of local elections Nov. 3. Likewise, mayoral races in Charlotte, N.C., and Cincinnati hinge at least partially on whether they should build lines of their own.
What links Boise, Cincinnati and Charlotte – and Salt Lake City, Dallas, Atlanta and Kansas City, where streetcar tracks abandoned in 1953 still poke through the city's weathered asphalt – is they're among dozens of local governments hoping their modern street projects will benefit from federal grants, including $1.5 billion in stimulus funding due to be awarded by mid-February 2010.
In all, some 80 U.S. cities have streetcar proposals, the American Public Transportation Association says, a trend bolstered by President Barack Obama's signal he's more inclined to pump federal dollars into streetcars than was President Bush.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has been revising policies that had favored applications for projects that moved people further and faster, like rapid-transit buses, but downplayed attributes like economic development.
"The bottom line is, this administration wants more transit options for more people and that includes streetcars," LaHood told The Associated Press last week.
In late October, his agency chipped in $75 million to help expand Portland, Ore.'s 7-year-old streetcar system, marking the first time the Small Starts grant program for small-scale urban transit projects has been used for streetcars.
Still, the availability of federal cash hasn't quelled local debate.
Proponents see streetcars as economic development engines that will reduce congestion and air-pollution by turning back the clock: Streetcars largely disappeared from U.S. cities by the 1950s, as automobiles bullied them to the margins.
In Portland, for instance, its streetcar system is credited with helping create $2.5 billion in construction since the line was announced in 1997, including 7,248 new housing units within three blocks of the tracks.
Foes, however, dismiss trolleys as "toy trains" that benefit special interests and promote profligate public spending. The rush for easy federal cash, they argue, is obscuring the reality that cities will eventually rely on taxpayers to subsidize lines; federal dollars go only for construction.
Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory favors his city's $128 million streetcar plan, after traveling to Seattle and Toronto to see their urban rail projects. Brad Wenstrup, Mallory's challenger, calls the project "ill conceived" and compares it to Cincinnati's failed early 20th-century subway, where miles of tunnel were dug but no track ever laid.
Foes like the Cincinnati NAACP got a measure on the ballot seeking to require a popular vote before any streetcar could proceed.
"This is some kind of a dream sequence of people who want to pretend they are in Portland, Oregon," said Dusty Rhodes, the Hamilton County auditor and a vocal Cincinnati streetcar opponent.
Meanwhile, in Charlotte's mayoral race, Republican candidate John Lassiter said he likes the idea but insists there's no money to pay for it. Democrat Anthony Foxx contends a 10-mile line that could cost $400 million will help boost downtown's fortunes; last month, he voted to override the current mayor's veto of a $4.5 million engineering study.
The streetcar is one of the few areas where the two Charlotte candidates part ways.
Just days before Tuesday's city council election in Boise, David Litster, a Harvard-educated businessman who wants to kill the city's proposed 2.3-mile downtown line, mailed flyers suggesting his opponent TJ Thomson is in cahoots with streetcar backers like Mayor Dave Bieter. Bieter has endorsed Thomson.
"The streetcar is really just a symptom of a problem – keeping a careful eye on spending and keeping taxes low, and listening to voters," Litster said. "This trolley fails on both accounts."
Thomson, an Idaho Power Co. auditor who worked on Obama's 2008 campaign, counters Litster is misrepresenting his stance: Thomson is undecided whether to back the streetcar, especially before an economic study, and wants the matter to go to a vote.
He's also waiting to see if Boise gets $40 million of the proposed $60 million cost of the trolley system from the stimulus act, because it's competing with transportation proposals nationwide totaling $57 billion, 38 times what's available.
Litster "has run a one-issue campaign," Thomson said. "It's just not that simple. But he's done a good job of keeping it in the spotlight."
Lassiter, Foxx stick to their streetcars
In their first televised debate, Democrat Anthony Foxx and Republican John Lassiter Tuesday night continued to disagree over a $4.5 million streetcar study and the effect it has on an overall transit plan.
They met for an hourlong debate at Shalom Park, broadcast by WBTV and sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte.
The candidates agreed on some things: the need to diversify the city's economy while retaining current jobs, and to improve relations with Raleigh. They recounted differences over the 2006 city budget. Lassiter opposed its 9 percent property tax hike. Foxx supported the additional police officers and road improvements the tax allowed.
But while they both support a proposed streetcar, they parted ways on the council's decision last month to spend $4.5 million on an engineering study.
Foxx led Democrats in overriding Mayor Pat McCrory's veto of the money. He said a study showed that the streetcar, which would run from the Rosa Parks Transit Center on Beatties Ford Road to Eastland Mall, via Trade Street uptown, would bring $1 billion in investment to parts of town that badly need it.
"It would be the one investment the city could make that would trigger" revitalization, he said Tuesday night.
But Lassiter said he opposed the study because the city doesn't know where it would get the money to actually build the streetcar line, which is expected to cost more than $450million in local and federal money.
In addition, Lassiter said, it upsets what had been a carefully planned expansion of Charlotte transit that includes light rail to the UNC Charlotte area and commuter rail to Lake Norman. He said it sends the wrong signals to Washington and to commuter rail advocates in north Mecklenburg.
"It's a misplaced priority," he said of the streetcar. "We're seeing confusion in Washington about what our priority is."
Asked about that later, Foxx called it "ridiculous." He said officials in north Mecklenburg have assured him they have no problem with the streetcar.
The Charlotte Area Transit System originally planned to build all the rail lines but the recession has hurt revenues. The towns of Huntersville, Cornelius and Davidson recently began their own lobbying effort in Washington on behalf of the north commuter line.
Their decision has rankled some on the Metropolitan Transit Commission, which plans where and when transit will be built, and which seeks a unified voice.
Cornelius Mayor Jeff Tarte, a member of the MTC, said Tuesday night that he's more worried about competition for dollars from the proposed northeast light rail line. But he said moving ahead with the streetcar complicates the whole transit equation.
"John's right in that it adds a complexity and it throws a little bit of curveball at us," Tarte told the Observer. "Anthony's right that a streetcar is a good thing."
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Sources: Huffington Post, Cincinnati Ohio NAACP, Wlwttv, McClatchy Nrwspapers, Charlotte Observer, Youtube, Google Maps
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