Built at a cost of $51 million, St. Louis’ streetcar line made its last run in December, 2019 when the organization operating it ran out of funds. Fittingly, it broke down on its very last run and its passengers had to walk the last few blocks of the route.
Built at a cost of $51 million, the trolley opened in November, 2018 after a decade of planning and construction. Proponents predicted it would carry 400,000 riders in its first year. In fact, it carried only about 20,000 and fare revenues didn’t come close to covering operating costs.
Streetcar lovers hoped that St. Louis’ regional transit agency, which can’t seem to decide whether to call itself Metro (the name used by numerous other transit agencies) or Bi-State (which is boring but at least original), would take over the streetcar. Last week, Bi-State’s CEO said he was prepared to take it over provided he could require every business along the line to buy a monthly pass for all of their employees.
That was a non-starter, particularly since few employees would find the 2-mile line to be a useful part of their journey to work. So, it wasn’t surprising when, a couple of days later, the Bi-State board of directors voted down a proposal to run the trolley.
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Should the FTA try to get its money back? On one hand, failing to do so might encourage more cities to build ridiculous trolley lines with federal funds. On the other hand, demanding that the funds be returned will discourage other cities from saving money by shutting down their streetcar boondoggles.
My sense is that the proponents of projects like these can’t imagine that they will fail, so they won’t take the threat that the feds will want their money back to be a serious problem. But if more cities shut down their projects, opponents elsewhere can use such closures to argue totheir city officials that streetcars are losers.
In other news, the District of Columbia has abandoned plans to expand its failed streetcar line. That’s not as good as shutting it down, but it will save money in the future. The bad news is that it is halting efforts on the project only “for the foreseeable future.” But we can foresee that if a transit-friendly administration is elected to office, DC will be one of the first to pull out its plans and seek federal funds.
Nothing wrong with a transit friendly attitude.
When they have an economics grasp first
From the description of the project here, the FTA was extremely negligent in approving federal funds for this project. How could they approve money for a project where the proposers didn’t even have a plan for funding its operations beyond the first year?
Trying to claw back the $25 million they already spent is irrelevant, since those costs are already sunk. And what is to stop them from using the funds they manage to claw back on funding for a similarly useless and unworthy project? Federal funding for streetcar projects should stop, period. There is no compelling federal interest in these projects and the provision of federal funding seems to create all sorts of moral hazard.
Trying to recover taxpayer funds is not “irrelevant.”
When fire stations have to close, or sanitation suffers, then the good citizens of St. Louis will realize that Plato was right when he said that “of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
Having thus suffered, the good citizens will not allow such stupid decisions to be made next time.
“one of the penalties”