THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULDN'T
Lots of talk about streetcars again (or still). Sometimes I wish the streetcar and train fans would take the next Amtrak out of town and not come back (I'm sure they think the same of me). I know, I know, streetcars bring development and development brings jobs and jobs bring housing and housing brings tax base. And for every fifty cents in tax base it will cost $100. If Warren Buffet gave the city a streetcar system serving downtown and the cultural district it would still cost more to operate than it would make in revenue.
It sounds tempting to have the government offer $25 million to get started. All we need is another $25 million of our city tax money and we can have a streetcar that goes two blocks. With $200 million we might be able to go from the T&P all the way to the cultural district. Trouble is all those things that streetcars bring are already there - the development, the jobs, and the housing. Not the tax base though. I think we gave much of it away already in TIFs and abatements. This city is good at giving away money. Hire fifty people out of the inner city and we'll give you $5 million in a tax abatement. It only makes sense when the Chamber of Commerce comes to explain it. When put into practice you hear that sucking sound of tax money being swallowed up by special interests.
And so it will be with the little train. There was an interesting article in the Economist magazine recently about how America's freight trains are the best in the world and how they'll probably go to hell in a handbasket because the government wants to finance passenger trains that will operate on the same tracks but at different speeds and gum up the freight service.
Streetcars and light rail will work if you start a city from scratch and put in the rails as you put in the streets and make the main train station in the center of the city. All we need is land and money. Think of the development, the jobs, the tax base and all that. In only a thousand years it will all be paid for. Can't wait.