[M II A II R II K]

Cities Use Federal Funding to Back New Routes but Some Call Projects a Waste


August 15, 2012

By CAROLINE PORTER

Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...844409848.html

Cities from Los Angeles to Atlanta are making big bets to revitalize their downtowns by bringing back a form of transportation many abandoned decades ago: the streetcar. Some cities are counting on help from federal stimulus dollars, but a few are going it alone.

- Late last month, about 500 residents in one part of Kansas City, Mo., voted to create a special taxing district to raise $75 million over about two decades for a streetcar. In the same week, Cincinnati officials passed a measure to allow about $15 million to be spent on a 3.6-mile loop. And in Los Angeles, the city council approved a plan to ask voters if they are willing to pay additional taxes for a four-mile downtown streetcar loop. Proponents say the streetcars would boost economic growth and catch the fancy of younger generations.

- But others see a waste of tax dollars on projects that, they say, offer little more than a way to move downtown workers from their offices to lunch. "I would love a rail system that actually gets people to work, not just to buy a sandwich," said Josh Spring, the director of the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition, which opposes the project there, which is backed by about $40 million in federal dollars.

- The revival in streetcar projects comes in part because of federal backing. In 2009, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood pledged $280 million for urban-transit projects, such as streetcars. During the past four years, the Department of Transportation doled out more than $450 million to 12 streetcar projects across the country, according to the Federal Transit Administration. Atlanta and Salt Lake City already have broken ground on streetcar projects with a total of $74 million in federal funding.

- Many cities point to streetcar projects like the one in Portland, Ore., which opened its first leg in 2001 and is expected to expand to 7.3 miles of track next month from four miles now. City officials in a 2008 report cited the streetcar as impetus for more than 10,000 new housing units and 5.4 million square feet of office, institutional, retail and hotel construction within two blocks. "Portland wasn't like a mecca before. It was another dirty midsized city," said Mr. Johnson of Kansas City, who says he has no problem paying an extra $200 per year for the streetcar to roll into his city of 480,000.

- Other cities have had less operational success with their projects. Last year, officials in Tampa, Fla., scaled back the hours of operation and the frequency of rides in order to balance the annual $1.3 million operating budget for a 2.7-mile streetcar, according to Marcia Mejia, public information officer for the area's regional transportation agency. Ridership numbers for a streetcar in Little Rock, Ark., were 112,000 per year, rather than the estimated 130,000. City officials say construction work hampered its usage.

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