Streetcars are making a comeback — with federal backing:
In 2009, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood pledged $280 million for urban-transit projects, such as streetcars. During the past four years, the Department of Transportation doled out more than $450 million to 12 streetcar projects across the country, according to the Federal Transit Administration.
Atlanta and Salt Lake City already have broken ground on streetcar projects with a total of $74 million in federal funding.
Minneapolis is preparing to apply for more federal money to get a project under way after receiving a $900,000 federal planning grant in late 2010, said Peter Wagenius, a policy director for Mayor R.T. Rybak. “These streetcar lines are short not because they should be, but rather because cities have been doing what was possible with available funding,” Mr. Wagenius said.
This is an idiotic idea, as you would expect from Lahood. You spend a ton of money for a project that requires construction that will gridlock traffic and which results in what are essentially buses that can’t change routes as population needs change and which require a ton of expensive upkeep.
It’s so stupid that only the SWPLs love the idea.