Editor’s note: This story is part of a collaboration between the Flatwater Free Press and The Reader examining Omaha’s future streetcar.
At the height of the modern streetcar boom, construction crews tore up roads in Washington, D.C., installed overhead wires in Atlanta and welded rails in Kansas City.
But that was more than a decade ago.
The urban transit trend fizzled once Obama-era funding dried up. Now, Omaha is belatedly hopping aboard to become the least populous metro with a modern streetcar. The estimated $478 million project has one benefit the others didn’t: hindsight.
Omaha has modeled its system after streetcar success stories and learned from others’ missteps, project leaders said.
The goal to drive development came from Portland, where the nation’s first modern streetcar helped turn an industrial district into a high-density neighborhood, said Steve Jensen, the interim director of the Omaha Streetcar Authority.
The downtown-to-midtown route mirrors Kansas City’s strategy of linking lively areas that appeal to locals and visitors, said streetcar operations manager Eric Miller.
Offering free rides follows a lesson learned by Oklahoma City, where ridership grew after fares disappeared, Miller said.
Armed with the historical playbook, Miller is aiming high — to make Omaha’s “the best streetcar in the world.”
But many critics still regard the project as a sweetheart deal for developers and big businesses without much public benefit. They say Omaha’s streetcar could end up like systems in Washington and St. Louis that didn’t attract enough riders to justify their huge cost.
“Streetcars basically are built for the stakeholders, but the stakeholders are not the riders (and) are not the taxpayers,” said Tom Rubin, a transportation consultant who grew up in Omaha.
There’s no perfect guidebook to a successful streetcar, said Peter Rogoff, who led the Federal Transit Administration during President Barack Obama’s first term. But there are examples across the country Omaha can look to, he said.
“I just hope that they’re learning from all of them,” he said.
Getting the green light
Is the public’s blessing needed to turn a proposed streetcar into a reality? In Omaha, Washington and Atlanta, the answer was no.
But nine of the other 16 modern streetcar projects had some kind of citizen mandate to move forward.
Portlanders and Kansas Citians living along proposed streetcar routes formed special tax districts, effectively funding the projects by taxing themselves.
Voters in Oklahoma City and Arizona’s two most populous counties approved spending packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars that included funding for streetcars. Cincinnati voters twice rejected anti-streetcar ballot measures to keep the project on the rails.
The lack of public consensus is still the Omaha project’s major shortcoming, said local real estate agent Ron Rubin, who is not related to Tom Rubin. In a 2023 letter to the Omaha World-Herald, he criticized the city for handing “profiteers access to citizens’ resources” without a public vote.
“There’s no sense of citizen input,” Ron Rubin said in an interview. “We’re just kind of in the dark.”
Omaha never voted on the streetcar because the project doesn’t rely on existing city funds or traditional public bonds, Jensen said. Instead, it’s paid for through a tax increment financing plan that draws on future taxes generated by new streetcar-adjacent developments.
“If you’re not paying for it, what are you voting on?” Jensen said. “It comes back to just a basic misunderstanding on the part of the public where they just can’t believe that they’re not paying for it in some way.”
No vote meant there wasn’t much public discussion before the project’s approval, which bred misinformation and skepticism, Jensen said. He estimates about 70% of Omahans are either against or unsure of the project.
Portland and Kansas City added another layer of public representation by forming diverse boards to govern their streetcars.
When construction began on the KC Streetcar in 2014, its board featured real estate developers, small business owners, a city councilman and advocates for local transit and specific neighborhoods.
Including non-governmental voices focused Kansas City’s streetcar on rider experience and community engagement, said David Johnson, a transit advocate who served on the board for 13 years.
Six of the seven Omaha streetcar board members are employees of the city or Metro Transit, and the lone private-sector representative is influential developer Jay Noddle. None of the members hold elected office in Omaha.
The board’s makeup should better reflect local stakeholders, said Clark Ross, who founded the Streetcar Impact Alliance earlier this year to advocate for construction-affected businesses and residents.
“It didn’t seem like we were asked (for input) in the first place, so I do know a lot of us felt unheard,” said Ross, the owner of downtown bar Mercury.
The city isn’t obligated to include business owners or neighbors on the board of a TIF-backed project, but leaders plan to create an advisory committee to gather those perspectives, Jensen said.
The public can attend meetings and engage with the board the same as any other government panel, Jensen said.
Mayor John Ewing said he didn’t want to change the streetcar board he inherited since it could have disrupted the project’s timeline and cost, but he recognizes the need for diverse input. The city has expanded its communication on the project to keep business owners and neighbors informed, he said.
Where (not) to run a streetcar
Before shovel meets dirt, backers of a streetcar must answer a question that could make or break its appeal to riders: Where will it go?
The most successful streetcar routes are intuitive to riders and blend popular destinations with undeveloped land for future growth, transit experts said.
Kansas City threaded that needle with a straightforward track that runs through downtown, said Miller, the Omaha streetcar operations manager.
But other cities’ routes have undermined their usefulness. Oklahoma City’s streetcar twists and turns in confusing loops, Miller said.
Atlanta’s streetcar runs through areas that are too underdeveloped to draw many riders, said Joel Mendez, an urban planning professor at the University of Kansas.
Other streetcars struggled because they had only enough money to build a short route with no real benefit for riders. Without political buy-in, planned expansions never moved forward.
That was the case in Washington, which shut down its streetcar in March.
The $200 million streetcar opened in 2016 with a 2.4-mile route bookended by Union Station and RFK Stadium. Washington relies heavily on public transportation, and leaders initially had plans for a 37-mile footprint.
But the DC Streetcar couldn’t compete with a parallel bus system. Daily commuters found the trolleys slow and unreliable. Compared to the streetcar, the nearby bus route saw an average of 8,000 more daily riders in February 2026.
It took more time to plan and construct Washington’s streetcar than the line actually ran, according to the Washington Post. An electric bus line is slated to replace the defunct route.
Omaha’s route takes a page from Kansas City by connecting two bookends — Blackstone and the Riverfront — in a straight line through downtown with plenty of developable land, Miller said.
All cities face the same challenge once they have designated a route: years of painful construction.
Portland set the pace in the early 2000s, building its initial 2.4-mile route in just over two years. Kansas City finished its first line in under three years.
Both cities later committed to more construction and roughly tripled the length of their routes.
California’s Orange County has been working on its 4.1-mile route since 2018. Delays and lawsuits ballooned the cost to more than $600 million and pushed back opening day until at least early next year.
Omaha’s streetcar is slated to open in 2028, about two years behind its original timeline.
If you build it, will they come?
St. Louis businessman Joe Edwards had a simple pitch: Revive a piece of the city’s historic trolley and bring tourism and new developments to a neighborhood on the rise.
The St. Louis streetcar opened in 2018 with the help of federal funding. Officials projected 400,000 riders in the first year of operation.
In reality, it sold about 17,000 tickets in year one, charging between $2 and $5 for passes. It shut down in 2019 because it was too expensive to operate.
But then the feds came knocking: Get the streetcar back up and running, or pay back the $37 million in funding. That line now runs seasonally. Total ridership in 2025 — about 10,300 — was lower than the worst-attended Cardinals home game that year.
And rides are free, a tactic of nearly all streetcars completed since 2016. Omaha’s will be the same.
Streetcars in Cincinnati and Oklahoma City saw ridership grow after axing fares in recent years, proving the model’s virtue, Miller said.
In 2018, Omaha streetcar ridership projections estimated between 820 and 1,060 daily boardings. That would be roughly half of this year’s daily ridership of ORBT, the eight-mile bus route connecting downtown Omaha to Westroads Mall.
Jensen dismissed the projection as outdated and meaningless. Miller said he hopes for “at least a few thousand a day.”
To Tom Rubin, the projections should have been the red flag that halted proposals. The streetcar route is redundant with the faster and farther-reaching ORBT, which has also fallen short of its initial ridership projections, he said.
“It will be filled somewhere between extremely rarely and never,” Rubin predicted.
A magnet for growth?
Keith Novorr didn’t buy the “build it and they will come” argument for the Kansas City streetcar.
The owner of Michael’s Clothing blasted the creation of a special tax district encompassing his family’s century-old shop. He criticized the “construction hell” that drove businesses like his to the brink.
Then, the streetcar opened — and new buildings started rising up around his store.
Within a few years, a street “where you could shoot a cannon and not hit anybody” had transformed into a high-traffic business district lined with apartments, Novorr said. His new neighbors, many of them younger than his typical clientele, have become customers, he added.
“I was the naysayer the whole project, and now I’m eating crow because it’s really good,” Novorr said. “They were right. Economic development followed.”
Downtown Kansas City boasts more than $4 billion in development and at least 44% population growth since 2014.
Portland’s Pearl District is a glowing example of streetcar-driven development. Once a rail yard and warehouse hub, it’s now Oregon’s densest residential neighborhood, said streetcar spokesman Andrew Plambeck.
Despite the St. Louis streetcar’s struggle for riders, the city’s Delmar Loop — the business district along the trolley route — boasts new investments and commercial businesses in the last two years. Edwards believes the streetcar played a role.
Omaha claims the under-construction streetcar has already spurred $1.3 billion in development, with more to come. That growth justifies the streetcar, even if its immediate ridership doesn’t, Jensen said.
In the works along the line
Omaha has approved TIF plans for two dozen development projects near the future streetcar line.
(Editor’s note: A previous version of this story included an incorrect map of the planned streetcar route. It has been replaced.)
| Map location | Project name | Address | Year approved | Project cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 48th and Dodge | 4651 Dodge St | 2022 | $82,292,578 |
| 2 | Rows at Field Club | 3863 Marcy St. | 2026 | $11,000,000 |
| 3 | Leavenworth Lofts | 3612 Leavenworth St. | 2023 | $7,613,054 |
| 4 | 3552 Leavenworth | 3552 Leavenworth St. | 2025 | $25,000,000 |
| 5 | 3501 Farnam (WOWT) | 3501 Farnam St. | 2025 | $44,314,983 |
| 6 | Greenlake Midtown Apartments | 3511 Howard St. | 2025 | $2,894,186 |
| 7 | Digs Mason | 3066 Mason St. | 2023 | $46,087,630 |
| 8 | Digs Apartments | 522 S. 30th St. | 2023 | $8,635,736 |
| 9 | Square Apartments | 3001 Leavenworth St. | 2023 | $18,111,868 |
| 10 | 2901 Jackson | 2901 Jackson St. | 2025 | $2,243,000 |
| 11 | Oxworth Apartments | 2601 Leavenworth St. | 2025 | $43,000,000 |
| 12 | Flats on Howard | 2323 Howard St. | 2022 | $27,900,000 |
| 13 | The Muller | 2226 Howard St. | 2025 | $9,558,622 |
| 14 | Service Life Building | 1904 Farnam St. | 2024 | $23,106,666 |
| 15 | Keeline Building | 319 S. 17th St. | 2022 | $6,818,000 |
| 16 | 1501 Mike Fahey | 1501 Mike Fahey St. | 2022 | $56,782,391 |
| 17 | 1508 Marcy | 1508 Marcy St. | 2024 | $18,461,780 |
| 18 | The Duo | 222 S. 15th St. | 2024 | $163,700,000 |
| 19 | 1501 Howard / 500 S. 18th | 1501 Howard St. | 2024 | $24,733,348 |
| 20 | Project Beacon (Mutual of Omaha tower) | 215 S. 15th St. | 2022 | $443,125,000 |
| 21 | Dizzy Mule | 1218 Izard St. | 2022 | $42,600,000 |
| 22 | Millwork Hotel | 1201 Nicholas St. | 2024 | $57,233,684 |
| 23 | NODO | 1001 N. 12th St. | 2024 | $19,617,910 |
| 24 | 8th and Douglas (The Beam) | 610 Douglas St. | 2025 | $87,000,000 |
But streetcars don’t deserve all of the credit for spurring development, said Mendez, the Kansas professor. Cities usually pair streetcar projects with TIF and tax breaks, making it difficult to tell whether developers are responding to the new transit system or the other incentives, he said.
If a city’s primary goal is to encourage development, financial incentives might be cheaper and easier than a streetcar, Mendez said.
The financial and developmental outcomes of a successful streetcar project aren’t guaranteed, Rogoff, formerly of the FTA, said.
“But I think it’s a bet very much worth taking,” he said.
22 Comments
Oh look, another Flatwater piece pumping public transportation.
The problem with comparing Omaha’s street car project to any other city, is that it’s a literal “apples to oranges” comparison. This is Nebraska, not Washington or California. What may be seen as normal public transportation policy in another state is highly unlikely to be seen as normal here.
According to the most recent Summer 2026 edition of Labor Trends published by the Nebraska Department of Labor, public transportation is extremely rarely utilized in Nebraska. Less than 1% of people report using public transportation to commute to work, while more than 80% drive their own cars. Most Nebraska workers have very short commutes to work by car and wouldn’t be willing to consider an employment change that added time to their commute (such as using public transportation).
The fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of people in Nebraska don’t want public transportation and wouldn’t be willing to use it if the government builds it against their wishes. Then combine that with points other people have raised in these comments sections on past articles about the trolley, which have pointed out that it serves a very narrow corridor that excludes most of Omaha. What we have here is not good public policy, it’s a wasteful virtue signal by costal elites who moved here from other states and want to make Nebraska more like the places they moved from (even though they ran away from those places for a reason).
The same thing happened to Colorado thanks to Hickenlooper. He moved in from the coast, asked why Denver wasn’t more like where he came from, and embarked on a lifelong political crusade to remake the entire state of Colorado in his image. And yes, public transportation was one of his major initiatives. Now you can’t get a 1 bedroom studio apartment in Colorado for less than the price of a whole house in Nebraska, but you can dodge bullets and panhandlers on Colfax street all day.
Don’t let people from the coast do to Nebraska what they have done to Colorado. The first step in preventing it is to stop asking how we can be more like big cities on the coast.
Your argument about Nebraska historically having very low transit utilization completely falls apart when you look at Kansas City, whose streetcar is now one of the most successful in the country, in a state that *also* previously had low transit utilization.
You can’t build better transit ridership unless you build better transit. Streetcars are undeniably better transit than buses, at least in the eyes of most Americans.
The argument that fell apart was the one made in the article itself, within just the first few sentences. The “modern streetcar boom” ended when Obama left office and stopped firing the government money catapult at it. The author then goes on to point out that not only is Omaha late to the party, but that it will be the least populous city to attempt such a project. Hence the entire reason why this becomes an apples to oranges comparison. Omaha is not in the same league or operating with the same criteria as the other cities the author wants Omaha to emulate.
Kansas is also different for this same reason, because the urban area where their project was built was more populous. And again, that brings us back to the author’s own admission that Omaha will be the least populous city to attempt this, in addition to being late to the party and lacking Obama money.
Your last claim has no support. Streetcars require more infrastructure to operate, their rails are permanently affixed to the ground, and by definition (as another commenter pointed out) a streetcar is a single car, while other forms of trains with multiple cars are likely be be categorized as light rail systems. On one side of the spectrum busses are more flexible and require less infrastructure to operate, while on the other end of the spectrum larger rail systems are likely to offer better transportation for a larger number of riders. The streetcar concept is a weird middle ground that doesn’t strike me as a better option than the alternatives.
You completely ignored the issue I pointed out that the streetcar will only serve a very narrow strip of Omaha while providing no benefit to the rest of the city.
And your entire argument is based on the presumption that convincing more people to use public transportation is actually a good thing. I disagree fervently, as I don’t believe that public transportation should exist at all.
And upon further reflection… Don’t you think you just said the quiet part out loud? If the goal of building public transportation is to force more people that don’t want public transportation to use public transportation… That sounds to me like another reason people probably don’t want it in the first place.
Thanks so much for this story! I mentioned during public testimony at City Hall last week during the budget hearing that the public really hasn’t heard a compelling story to support the street car development. If we expect people to be excited about using the street car in the future, how can we build anticipation in the meantime? And how can we invest in involving our community members who DO see that project’s potential for bringing more joy, community building and climate action to our lives here in Omaha? I saw this week that the Mayor and Public Works has hired Emspace & Lovgren to manage the Communication services. Kinda weird that it’s a sole-source request, but they seem experienced in projects like this. https://emspacegroup.com/ Hopefully they can build a narrative that gives Omahans something to look forward to. We could use a little hope around here.
Gird your loins for the comments
Thanks for the excellent article on the Omaha streetcar. I’m wondering if you looked into the impact on parking. It was my understanding that the street car was supposed to decrease people driving downtown yet. The new Mutual of Omaha building “will also include parking for 2,200 vehicles. The parking garage will be run by the city. Mutual associates will use the garage during business hours and it will be open to the community during evening and weekend hours.” This certainly doesn’t address the number of people who will drive downtown instead of take the street car.
Flatwater reports the streetcar’s sales pitch more than it tests it
Flatwater’s story asks whether Omaha is “on the right track,” but too often it reports the streetcar proponents’ sales pitch instead of testing it.
The fundamental premise is that the streetcar will create development. Yet the article never establishes that. Development was already occurring in Omaha and will continue with or without a streetcar. The relevant question is how much additional development the streetcar itself causes. The article never answers it.
Steve Jensen says Omaha’s goal “to drive development” came from Portland. The article then calls Portland’s Pearl District an example of “streetcar-driven development.” But that isn’t the unqualified success story the article implies. Portland’s streetcar was explicitly conceived as an economic-development tool. When those underlying economic assumptions change, the city is left with an expensive, slow and inflexible piece of infrastructure whose costs continue regardless of whether the promised development materializes. Calling that a model for Omaha requires considerably more scrutiny than this article provides.
And the University of Kansas research by Joel Mendez should have prompted exactly that scrutiny. His study of four streetcar systems found that systems that prioritized economic development in their decision-making tended to perform poorly, while the stronger systems prioritized taking people to places they already wanted to go. Mendez found that locating streetcars where officials wanted development to occur could maximize development potential while limiting the streetcar’s ability to serve the public. The poorly performing systems he studied had twice as many vacant parcels and properties along their corridors. He also warned that anticipated development can take time — “if it does come to fruition” — leaving empty streetcars in the meantime. University of Kansas study
That’s a particularly important warning for Omaha. The logic seems to be: “Look at all that undeveloped land along Omaha’s route — that’s why the streetcar will be successful.” But Mendez’s research suggests that putting a streetcar where officials want development to occur can be precisely the wrong approach for building a successful transit system.
Instead, the article reports that Omaha has “already spurred $1.3 billion in development.” But the existence of $1.3 billion in projects doesn’t establish that the streetcar caused them. How much of that development would have happened anyway? The article never asks.
That’s especially striking because Mendez himself says streetcars commonly involve multiple goals and that development-focused decisions can conflict with transit performance. If the causal relationship between a streetcar and development is difficult to establish, that should be the central issue of the story — not something the reader is left to infer.
The same problem appears in the treatment of Kansas City and St. Louis. Development occurred near their streetcars, and the article uses that development as evidence of streetcar success. But development following a streetcar does not prove the streetcar caused the development. A business owner saying “economic development followed” is an anecdote, not a causal analysis.
The financing description is also highly misleading. The article says:
“Omaha never voted on the streetcar because the project doesn’t rely on existing city funds or traditional public bonds.”
That’s incomplete. The Nebraska Auditor of Public Accounts says Omaha authorized $490 million in bonds for the project, with $70.85 million issued as of June 10, 2024. The Auditor also says the redevelopment plan authorized at least $356.4 million in TIF proceeds.
More importantly, the Auditor found that Omaha’s plan authorizes the city to divide taxes on every property within the 1,030-parcel TIF district to capture increases in valuation attributed to the streetcar. The properties extend roughly six blocks from the route. And the Auditor noted something particularly revealing: TIF proceeds were already being collected before streetcar construction began, from increases in property valuations that could not have been attributable to the streetcar.
So Jensen’s “If you’re not paying for it, what are you voting on?” deserved a challenge, not simply a place in the story.
TIF is not a pot of free money. It temporarily diverts increased property-tax revenue from other public purposes to pay redevelopment costs. The Auditor specifically explains that those diverted revenues are unavailable for other public purposes while being used to pay the redevelopment debt.
And that creates a troubling circularity the article never confronts:
The streetcar is justified partly by development. TIF is used to finance the streetcar. And development receiving TIF is then cited as evidence that the streetcar is generating development.
That’s not proof of a streetcar effect.
The transportation case isn’t tested much better. If the streetcar is primarily a transportation project, where is the analysis of ridership, travel-time benefits, cost per rider and less-expensive alternatives? If it is primarily an economic-development project, the KU research suggests that making development the priority can actually undermine streetcar performance.
The article does include cautionary examples, which is good. But the same skepticism isn’t applied to Omaha’s proponents. Their predictions are reported; their assumptions are rarely challenged.
That’s the real problem with this story.
Buildings near a streetcar don’t prove the streetcar caused them. A developer’s assertion doesn’t prove it. A city official’s projection doesn’t prove it. And development in Portland, Kansas City or St. Louis doesn’t prove it will happen in Omaha.
The central issue isn’t whether Omaha will develop. It will.
The issue is whether Omaha is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a streetcar and using TIF to subsidize development that would have occurred anyway.
The article’s own expert raises the very causal problem that should have been investigated. The KU research raises a serious warning about making development the priority. And the Auditor’s report shows that Omaha’s financing itself rests on the assumption that the streetcar will accelerate property values.
Yet the story largely accepts the proponents’ interpretation of all three.
For a story asking whether Omaha is “on the right track,” that is the track it should have investigated.
Do you mean to say that Flatwater published a shallow article focused on using anecdotal claims and promoting a pre-conceived political viewpoint, rather than actually investigating the facts of the situation? Because I’ve said that for months now, much to the chagrin of the editor.
As you said, an effective public transportation system would focus on taking people where they want to go, rather than trying to force a particular destination based on the economic agenda of certain leaders. Therein is the exact problem with this streetcar project. It will only span a very narrow strip of Omaha, in which very few people actually live and only some work. If the streetcar doesn’t connect where you live to where you work, why would you use it? Anyone who wants to use this streetcar still has to get in their car and drive to the streetcar first, at which point you may as well just drive to your destination.
With all due respect San Diego started its modern ‘streetcar’ system in 1979 with its little red trolley. It’s been expanding ever since. Check it out. It’s been very successful.
The success of this project will hinge on subsequent extensions such as from the 40th Street western end to Crossroads at 72nd Street and clear links to north and south transit operations from stops already planned.
If nothing else, the streetcar construction has generated enough negativity to remain unpopular long after the orange cones disappear. Too many businesses have suffered or bit the dust. The planned developments are heavily weighted toward apartment buildings. Mutual of Omaha compounded the problem with their construction. Speaking of Mutual, it won’t be over when their building is done—the next step will be redeveloping The company’s existing campus in Midtown.
I believe that a major driver for the street car was Mutual of Omaha and a need for them to entice 100s of young highly educated professionals to work in Omaha by creating a vibrant urban environment.
If by “vibrant urban environment” and “young highly educated professionals” you mean that this whole thing was a very expensive virtue signal to convince college kids that Omaha can be more like Seattle, then sure, I agree with you.
While it is certainly true that not charging fares increases ridership, another reason not to charge is that the cost of collecting the fares would greatly exceed the fare revenues collected. Given that, two blocks over, ORBT is faster, operates more frequently, goes much further West so people don’t have to transfer as much to use it, and most heavy users ride on a pass anyway, hard to say how much influence those free fares will have. However, “free fare” means that there is no justification for requiring a rider to leave in the absence of prohibited behavior, which leads to heavy, even all-day riding by the disadvantaged, including homeless, those with mental health and/or recreational pharmaceutical/substance abuse issues, particularly during warm summers and cold winters. This can reduce ridership of other potential riders. While the name of the operator in San Diego is San Diego TROLLEY Inc. (SDTI), with trolley generally being used as a synonym for streetcar in the transit industry, what SDTI actually operates is light rail, which, despite many similarities, is not the same thing. Light Rail generally operates larger vehicle, frequently in two-car or longer trains, at considerably higher speeds, over far longer distances, with far fewer stops. Although light rail evolved from streetcars, in the present day, light rail is primarily for large numbers of riders traveling longer distances TO central business districts (CBD), while streetcar is for shorter trips around destination areas, including CBDs and entertainment areas. To put this in perspective, in 2024, U.S. National streetcar passenger miles totaled 65 million, two-thirds of which was in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and New Orleans, which run “traditional” streetcar lines on two-way long routes, not “modern streetcar,” generally run on far shorter one-way loops. Light rail totaled 1,805 million passenger miles, over two dozen times as much. Given that there hasn’t been a ridership projection for the Omaha Streetcar since 2018, when it was projected at 820 to 1,060 per day on opening day (in 2021), it appears that each round-trip daily streetcar passenger is directly producing several million dollars in downtown development. Of course, the developers might believe that the substantial TIF and other benefits offered by the City have something or other to do with these decisions. For example, Mutual and the developers of its new downtown headquarters building were strongly supporting streetcar as a reason for their move downtown — but then negotiated that the City would pay $99 million for the construction of the dozen floors of parking in their building, then pay for the costs of operating it and risks that it will lose more money — AND the City paying another $44.8 million for the parking at the OLD Mutual headquarters. Could it be that Mutual building downtown perhaps had less to do with the City putting in the streetcar and more with taxpayers throwing money at Mutual with both hands? The multi-million-dollar annual operating subsidy for the streetcar will be paid by increases in parking fees. Finally, given that, if the anticipated streetcar ridership does appear (which is somewhat questionable for a variety of reasons), the taxpayer cost per passenger will exceed $60 (not including the recent construction cost increases) for a trip under one-and-one-half miles, the taxpayers might be better off finding the under 500 daily round-trip riders and leasing each a new car, paying the registration and insurance, paying for fuel and maintenance — and paying for parking at all the excess CBD parking lots that the streetcar proponents are trying to convert into high-rise developments BY PROVIDING MAJOR TIF AND OTHER CASH SUBSIDIES.
Tom Rubin, you forgot the $62M in TIF granted to Mutual of Omaha for building the Tower. Of the $600M tower, taxpayers are paying $200M. Don’t we all wish we could do a deal like that?
The most obvious answer: start/end at the AIRPORT. Go out to MCC-Elkhorn. Places you can’t get to by bus. Everybody would find a use for it then.
This “contention” about a street car is just Flatwater staff bickering with each other to farm engagement.
Well, I have a different interpretation, but I don’t entirely disagree with you.
Flatwater publishes a LOT of articles about Public Transportation, none of which have been very good (and at least one of which was particularly bad). I don’t believe that they bicker among themselves, because it seems pretty universal that they blindly support Public Transportation, even to the degree of ignoring all legitimate criticism of the topic.
But are they intentionally publishing these contentious articles just to stir the pot and see who responds? Internet rage bait articles? A kind of professional level trolling? Yeah, I could believe that.
You get more U.S. cities if you search for Modern and Heritage Streetcar Systems.
You should also search for European cities with streetcars.
The numbers are striking!
The most logical argument and statment is that S-Car is simply a bus on a track — and, an inferior bus at that, as it can’t take any other route. It is just like a bus because it looks like a long bus, it goes the same speed as a bus, it drives on the same roads as a bus, it needs an operator like a bus and on the inside looks, smells and feels like a bus. The cities own study in 2014 showed bus lines would be one quarter of the cost. Oh wait, there is a difference: the “bus-on-rails” is free. But, there is nothing magical about making a S-car free to ride that is inherent to an S-car. The city could have made any bus route within a developmental district free to ride to anyone to encourage people to live in the zone – at a quarter of the cost. The only beneficiaries to a S-car are the developers who have a green light by TIF motivated by the city council to aquire land and old properities to build owned apartments – which the developers will own and profit from.
I agree with the above, which is to say that the street car is not actually some revolutionary concept and that it is in fact inferior in many ways to other forms of public transportation.
Two things I would add:
1. Public transportation is itself inferior to owning your own vehicle.
2. The only other conceivable reason to build an inferior transportation option (other than the aforementioned monetary motive for developers) is as a virtue signal. Adding more busses to a city that already has busses wouldn’t make the news. But build something silly like a street car and call on your pals at Flatwater to write articles about it, now you have everyone’s attention.