Streetcar Cincinnati

How does a concerned citizen of Greater Cincinnati approach the streetcar plan, an idea which is meant to generate tourist dollars in the chronically underdeveloped and often less-than-entertaining downtown Cincinnati area?

Judging from the many of the comments attached to an Enquirer editorial from last week, the idea is not being received well partially due to the typical knee-jerk conservative Cincinnati style ingrained in our Midwestern DNA: Don’t spend money, we don’t need it, everything is fine, let’s stay 10 years behind the rest of city-dwelling America.

For example, diligent Enquirer reader phrank proclaims:

“I can’t help but wonder how much it will cost me to park my car downtown so I can ride the streetcar. On second thought, I’ll just drive my car to where I need to go in Clifton.”
Either phrank does not understand the concept of public transportation, or phrank’s car rides on rails and picks up passengers for a fee. If this is the case, phrank is far ahead of the curve and should be studied by Mayor Mallory’s crew, the same group who recently blazed a trail to Oregon in order to assess the Portland streetcar system as a model for our very own streetcar line.

Delhidad chimes in:

“What problem is this trying to solve? What gaps do we have with the existing metro line? What’s the ROI/NPV? Who will pay ongoing operational costs year over year. These are real tax payer dollars…and must be spent wisely and bring real financial benefit to the city. Building something to be like 200 other cities, doesn’t make sense. You build it because it brings financial benefit based on the City of Cincinnati demographics and layout.”

I will use the Cincinnati Streetcar Feasibility Study from May 30, 2007 to attempt to address some of phrank and delhidad’s deeply felt concerns.

“What problem is this trying to solve/What gaps do we have with the existing metro line?” The study informs us:

There are two key reasons why adding more buses will not work as well as the streetcar for circulation: 1 – The number of buses required to equal the capacity of one streetcar makes buses more expensive to operate and maintain, 2 -Examples show that streetcars attract new riders, people who otherwise would not ride a bus, because of the convenience, comfort, attractiveness and reliability of the streetcar – thus, the streetcar increases the number of people who will use transit.

“What is the ROI/NPV?”

ROI (Return on Investment) is unknowable at this time, but according to the editorial $180 million is the cost estimate when the uptown (Clifton) routes are included, which they have been. Wikipedia claims that at the time of its closing in 1948, the Mt. Adams Incline was the most popular tourist attraction in Cincinnati. Wikipedia also states that around that time San Francisco’s streetcar system was threatened for many of the same reasons as ours, but that the people voted to keep the streetcars and the result has been a system which carries over 7 million passengers per year and generates $20 million in revenue over the same span. Cincinnati’s line would clearly operate on a smaller scale, but the successes of other streetcar lines suggests decent-to-good potential for economic stimulation. And that’s what it’s all about, right? The Enquirer piece suggests

…in the near term, the streetcar can’t be considered a major economic stimulus. It will add jobs for planning, architecture, construction of street cut-outs, environmental study and the like, but if it is to bring big benefits, they are down the road. Actual construction of the line wouldn’t begin until 2012, at which point an economic recovery likely will have taken place.

This suggestion ignores, at least partially, the Keynesian economic model which calls on the government to tax and spend in a countercyclical fashion in order to maintain growth. So when the economy is down, the government spends money on projects which are meant to create jobs and invest in local infrastructure while increasing revenue. The streetcar project is a prime example of a creative infrastructure project intended to spur intelligent investment and generate revenue by providing a desirable service. In fact, the Enquirer editorial presents this as well:

Indeed, government works best when it encourages smart development that creates wealth and increases tax revenues.

But of course, the timing is off, as always in Cincinnati (The Banks project). Wait until the economy recovers, which it surely(?) will. With no new projects to stimulate that recovery this seems an article of faith. The nameless Enquirer writer presents nothing else to replace the streetcar project and seems to desire to wait out these dark economic times. Not a proactive approach, when a proactive approach seems to be just what we need. In other words, we probably need to do something instead of waiting for Uncle Sam to reach into his wallet, the one that used to contain too many credit cards whose balances are owed to China, but now carries a great deal of printed paper called money, which is worth much less when a government prints a great deal of it as our government has.

Cincinnati is dealing with a near $30 million dollar budget shortfall. What hasn’t been accepted yet by the auto-objectors native to this area is that a) creative projects which spur economic growth and create new revenue streams alleviate stagnation, especially when federal government stimulus can be used for those projects (though the availability of this money for the streetcar project is not guaranteed), and b) waiting for the economy to recover while doing nothing is not an answer, because waiting achieves nothing more than prolonged stagnation. A stagnant economy can’t grow, generate new revenue, or put anyone to work. Yes, deficits will increase in the short term, but so will the availability of jobs and in the long term the streetcar system could represent the redefinition of Cincinnati’s downtown that the city so desperately needs.

Here’s what we need to encourage City Council to do: green light the streetcar project. At worst, no one will want to come to Cincinnati no matter what we build or how we market ourselves, which means we’re doomed anyway. At best, we can jumpstart our economy while laying the groundwork for Cincinnati to become the destination city that it deserves to be.