St. Louis Streetcar May Live Again

Everyone from the Wall Street Journal to Reason magazine to Planetizen seems to be worried about the future of the St. Louis Loop Trolley. Nearly everyone in St. Louis agrees that it was a failure, but the Federal Transit Administration has demanded that the city keep running it or repay the $37 million in federal funds used to build it.

The trolley trundles down Delmar Boulevard. Photo by Paul Sableman.

There is supposed to be a good reason for the federal “claw-back” policy: if local officials know they will be required to fund operations, they might be reluctant to ask for federal funds to build a project in the first place. Unfortunately, elected officials have time horizons measured in election cycles, so they really don’t think far enough ahead to worry about operating costs.

The real problem is that St. Louis leaders were told a bunch of lies about how Portland built a streetcar that generated billions of dollars in new development — without anyone mentioning that all of that new development was subsidized. If anyone is to pay back the federal government, it should be the consultants and engineering firms that oversold the project in the first place.

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The city would have to pay for insurance and might have to pay for electricity. But it can let the museum decide on operating hours, fares, and schedules. This would save a lot of labor costs, and museum volunteers should also be able to maintain the trolley car in good condition at little expense to the city.

Cities like Portland already allow non-profit groups to run their streetcars. I think these non-profits are a scam since they aren’t really run by streetcar enthusiasts but by people with political connections eager for an easy, high-paying job. The CEO of Portland’s streetcar got paid $160,000 in 2019, which is pretty good considering that the system spent more than $20 million on operations and maintenance but collected only a million dollars in fares.

In short, let the people who love streetcars keep the St. Louis trolley going. This will meet federal requirements while it saves taxpayers’ money.