Fast forward to today and nothing has changed. Property assessment data received from Jackson County through an open records request show the aggregate annual market value of Kansas City’s downtown streetcar Transportation Development District (TDD) is largely growing at the same rate as the county as a whole.

In other words, the streetcar is still not driving economic development in any substantial way. Were that the case, you’d see market values in the TDD rising at a much faster rate, as properties are quickly snatched up and redeveloped to take advantage of all that commerce and excitement.

There may be arguments for expanding the Kansas City streetcar. But those arguments aren’t about transit (all the streetcar routes were once and could be again served much more economically by buses) and they aren’t about economic development. And because 66% of Missouri electricity is generated by coal, the streetcar isn’t green, either.

Unfortunately, as the FTA reported, few streetcar operators actually check to see if their claims are true. That remains the case in Kansas City.

The post The KC Streetcar Still Isn’t Driving Economic Development appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Phase 1: Build the Kansas City Streetcar and make it free to ride.

Phase 2: Spend $25,000 to wrap a streetcar in a Barbie theme:

Kansas City, Missouri, unveiled a Barbie-themed streetcar, dubbed the “Dream Streetcar” earlier this month. The streetcar is decked out in familiar bubblegum-pink wrapping and even rewrites the city’s name as “Kensas City.” A lucky passenger can even choose a seat decked out to resemble characters from the recent Barbie film, like “Stereotypical Barbie, President Barbie, Cowboy Ken, and even Allan.”

Oh, and the whole thing cost taxpayers $25,000.

According to records obtained by KCUR, Kansas City’s NPR affiliate, the hefty public spending is due to the fact that the Dream Streetcar is not actually a sponsored ad for the blockbuster Barbie movie that premiered in July. Instead, it’s a project by the Kansas City Streetcar Authority (KCSA) to increase ridership, even though the streetcar is free to ride.

Phase 3: . . . Profit?

I’m of course kidding about “profit” even being a consideration here—this is government after all—but it is off-putting to see precious taxpayer resources being spent so frivolously. Ridership numbers on the streetcar have no bearing on anything except maybe the egos of city officials. Hit the link, too, for quotes from yours truly and Show-Me Institute alumnus Patrick Tuohey, now at the Better Cities Project.

The post Welcome to “Kensas City”: Barbie-Themed Streetcar Wrap Costs Taxpayers $25,000 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The question: how much over the $34.9 million budgeted for the project could 0.7 miles of rail cost taxpayers? The answer: another $10 million, and possibly more:

“We determined that both of the (contractors) were qualified, the technical proposals were sound, but their costs were above the estimate, and both of their costs were above the budget, significantly so,” KCATA Deputy CEO Dick Jarrold said during a Tuesday presentation to the agency’s Finance Committee. The KCATA is one of four groups heading the riverfront streetcar project, alongside Kansas City, the Kansas City Streetcar Authority and Port Authority of Kansas City. . . .

The Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) has authorized about $9.6 million in additional federal dollars for the riverfront streetcar through the Surface Transportation Block Grant program, and a MARC committee has recommended an additional $1 million in federal Carbon Reduction program grant funds. The programs require local matching funds, which Jarrold said are anticipated from Port KC and the Streetcar Authority in an as-yet undetermined amount. [emphasis mine]

Keep in mind that the estimate for the original plan to extend the streetcar to the riverfront was $22.2 million, meaning the apparent final (?) cost of the line is on course to double that estimate, with or without the local match considered.

Yet, that’s been the track record for this toy train for over a decade now. I wrote here in 2011, 2012 and 2013 and for Forbes in 2014 that the Kansas City streetcar was a profligate and bad idea. And yet, despite the many opportunities to prove naysayers wrong, the streetcar remains a remarkably poor fiscal and policy decision to this day.

The post To Nobody’s Surprise, Riverfront Extension of Kansas City Streetcar Going over Budget appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

On Thursday, contractors began to dig into the rail bed on the I-670 bridge to fix a piece of steel track that emerged from the pavement earlier this week.

A streetcar driver noticed the problem on July 4, when the rail popped out of the ground as a train was approaching the bridge. Donna Mandelbaum, a spokesperson for the Streetcar Authority, said the driver was able to stop in time to avoid further damage or injury.

Since then the Streetcar Authority and its partners have been examining the bridge and rails to find out what caused the problem. Mandelbaum said the rail had likely bent because of thermal expansion.

Since then and in the meantime, service along the streetcar will be provided by buses which, if you’re familiar with what Show-Me Institute analysts have said about the city’s streetcar projects over the last decade, is fitting. Buses are faster, cheaper to set up, easier to reroute, and easier to keep in operation. Simply put, they’re better. That for a decade Kansas City pushed to build the line and later expand it despite its obvious drawbacks is a testament to the city’s commitment to dubious transit schemes in service to questionable economic development objectives.

Kansas City may not be alone among municipalities in the misguided effort to resurrect old-timey transit—hello St. Louis!—but the absurdity of using rails like this in Kansas City is accentuated by this tale, where four feet of broken track has shut down four miles of transit service for, likely, four weeks. For shame.

The post More than a Metaphor: The Kansas City Streetcar Nearly Goes Off the Rails appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In October, RideKC buses served just under one million riders, while the streetcar served around 142,000 riders, according to city data. Less than 3% of workers in Kansas City, and 1% in the metro, use the bus to commute. [Emphasis mine] Earlier this year, Kansas Citians told the Star that there was a lot they love about RideKC, but infrequent or unreliable service and too few routes can make the system difficult to count on.

“It’s really a 50/50 for me,” rider Aaron Griffin told the Star over the summer. “Sometimes it’s good and on time, other times it’s late or early and leaves before it should. Every day is different.”

The article has a lot of really interesting reactions from Challenge participants this fall, and as someone who used public transit heavily at different points in my life, I can relate to many of the cheers and jeers of their transit experiences shared with the Star. Of course, your mileage may vary on the purpose of a “green” initiative like this, but in practice, the challenge also serves as an insight into the challenges that Kansas City’s physical layout can present to people without their own motorized transportation.

From the perspective of affordable housing, which we’ve discussed previously, widely available public transportation can be a mitigating factor to rising apartment and home prices, bridging the space between Kansas Citians and their jobs, their families, and their friends if their affordable housing is comparatively distant. Notably, Kansas City has adopted a zero-fare initiative for its buses that will run through 2023, so one hopes that people on fixed or very limited incomes are able to take that factor into account as the look for housing that meets their financial needs.

But as the article teases out, unreliable transit that’s free is almost as good as no transit at all – especially if it means you can’t get to your place of employment reliably and on time. It goes without saying that if your poorest residents are reliant on a public system that could get them fired because it’s unreliable, that’s a system that needs to be dramatically improved to ensure the buses at least arrive and depart on time.

That also means there remains an economic incentive for even low income Kansas Citians to buy a car of some kind, “green” or not. For good reason: the City of Fountains was and is built around the automobile. Only two other cities in the country have lower traffic volume per lane mile as Kansas City, meaning residents who choose public transit don’t do it to avoid gridlock on the roads that could be caused by private vehicle ownership. That fact also undermines any traffic-busting reasoning around fixed rail projects like the city’s streetcar, which continues to be more of a tourist attraction and an oddity than a practical means of transit for locals.

Whatever the reason one might choose to use KC’s public transit system—whether it’s to “go green,” to save money relative to car ownership, or because it’s one’s only viable transportation option—there remains the question of whether it’s a reasonable option for most people here. While public transit serves as a backstop for poorer residents, it isn’t necessarily a very good one, and its appeal to other potential riders is meager. Indeed, the car is still king in Kansas City, and will be for the foreseeable future.

The post How Easy Is It to Commute KC without a Car? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Meanwhile, the KC Streetcar Authority has broken ground on a 351 million-dollar expansion, financed by $171 million in federal funds, with the rest coming from a new transportation development district (TDD). This special taxing district will levy a 1% sales tax on areas around Main Street, generating millions in revenue to maintain the streetcar’s “free” admission status.

As Show-Me Institute analysts have argued in the past, the KC Streetcar has failed to generate economic growth and raise property values and does not improve Kansas City’s transit system as a whole. Throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at expanding the streetcar not only continues to grow a poor transit system but also neglects the more valuable bus system. Between 2016 and 2020, buses were the primary form of transportation for about 8,500 commuters in the Kansas City metro area. In contrast, there were only about 250 commuters in the entire metro area who got to work using the streetcar. In addition, the KCATA has an annual operating budget of $57.6 million, which is only about a fifth of what is being spent to expand the streetcar.

Kansas City’s MAX bus system is supposed to be a form of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), but with buses only coming every half hour on two of the three MAX routes, it fails in this respect. These routes need more frequent service, which means more buses and more drivers. Instead of continuing to pour money into an overpriced, ineffective streetcar system, Kansas City should consider diverting funds to its buses, which could be improved at only a fraction of the cost of current streetcar spending.

Politicians like grandiose plans, shiny new objects, ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and spending exorbitant amounts of other people’s money. What their constituents need is a bus system that runs effectively so that they can schedule their day properly. Politicians seek the former at the expense of the latter, and it ends up hurting the very people they most often claim to be helping.

The post As Kansas City’s Streetcar Expands, Its Buses Suffer appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Kansas City, Missouri, made news around the country last month with reports that city officials had done away with fares on its municipal bus system. But neither the announcement nor the results the city can expect are as clear-cut as they first seem. The reality is that Kansas City has not adopted a fare-free bus system, nor has it considered the broader implications of doing so. In fact, city leaders have no idea how they will pay for it.

What actually happened: Kansas City’s City Council instructed the city manager to work with transit officials on a policy that would “include a funding request in the next fiscal year budget to make fixed route public transportation fare free within the City.” The city’s next fiscal year does not begin until May 1, 2020.

One reason for all this is the 2.2-mile streetcar the city completed in 2016. Its operations and administration are independent from the bus system and are funded through sales taxes, assessments on property along the route, and additional support from the city’s general fund.

The streetcar, which is free to ride, also receives $2 million from sales taxes meant to fund regular transit. It’s viewed by many as a free party bus for tourists, operating alongside buses that low-income workers must pay to use for trips to work and school.

Advocates of the free-fare transit proposal argue that the move to ditch fares on the bus system would address inequality without risking a drop in ridership that a streetcar fare would cause.

Locally, the idea has been making inroads for a while. Free bus passes became the norm for veterans two years ago, and last year the system offered the same to students. The Authority claims that over the past few years, 23 percent of riders have paid no fare.

Making the entire system free may be attractive to transit advocates, but it’s a move with risks—risks that seemingly haven’t been assessed. This was underscored when, in an interview with local newspaper The Pitch, Kansas City Area Transportation Authority CEO Robert “Robbie” Makinen offered, “Just because nobody else is doing it, that’s not a reason for us not to do it. What’s wrong with trying it? What’s the worst thing that happens? It doesn’t work, and Robbie gets fired.”

But the idea isn’t new, and that’s not the worst that can happen.

Other cities have tried fare-free bus service—and abandoned it. A 2002 study by Jennifer Perone and Joel Volinski of the Center for Urban Transportation Research concluded:

. . . (A) fare-free policy might be appropriate for smaller transit systems in certain communities, but is ill-advised for larger transit systems in major urban areas because experience shows that in larger systems, a tremendous amount of criminal activity, as well as a sharp increase in ridership, caused higher maintenance costs, labor costs, and operational costs and drove away existing riders.

In a 2012 book, “Implementation and Outcomes of Fare-Free Transit Systems,” Volinski detailed a fare-free pilot program in Austin, Texas. Ridership increased by as much as 70 percent, but there were issues of, “overcrowded buses, disruptive passengers, and unhappy bus operators.” The program was discontinued. Denver tried a similar program, saw the same results, and discontinued the effort.

Riders get it. According to a 2019 TransitCenter surveys of passengers around the country, “most low-income bus riders rate lowering fares as less important than improving the quality of the service.” (KCATA is undertaking its own “comprehensive review and redesign of transit service,” which included a survey, but as of this writing, KCATA has not completed the review or shared with me any questionnaire of passengers.)

Then there is the cost of going fare-free, estimated between $8 million and $12 million annually in Kansas City.

Given the ridership increase in other places that have tried it, the transit authority will need to cover not only its current fare box revenue, but also the costs of serving increased demand. During legislative discussion on the resolution, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas suggested returning the $2 million currently diverted to the streetcar. Councilwoman Kathryn Shields offered an amendment, adopted by the Council, that also instructs the city manager also to report how this potential budget outlay will impact other city services.

Again, none of this is known.

Good policies go beyond good intentions—they serve a public need with as few negative consequences as is possible. Our national experience with large-scale, fare-free transit has been a bumpy ride. Kansas City needs to consider all the options and trade-offs before adopting such a significant policy change. Reporting on the matter suggests that this has not yet been done.

The post Fare Free Public Transit? Not so Fast appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

These additional streetcars will be added to the current fleet of four that travels the two-mile loop from Union Station to the River Market. While the fleet currently has four streetcars, only three are usually in use; the remaining streetcar is brought out only during busy occasions. The two streetcars that were just ordered would increase the normal number in use from three to four.

Mike Hurd, the marketing director for the Downtown Council of Kansas City, explained the purchase:

We have so many times of the year that we have big events going and the current rotation of streetcars really is not enough to handle the demand. So being able to add streetcars and still being able to keep the service free is just fantastic.

Hurd’s comments need a correction. While the streetcar may not charge a fee to riders, it is not a free service—it is paid for by taxpayers. Instead of receiving funds from a small user fee, the Kansas City streetcar is funded by special taxing in an area called a transportation development district (TDD). Researchers at the Show-Me Institute have written frequently about these districts, and previously explained how a TDD is created.

The taxing rates within this TDD are not going up to pay for these new streetcars. Instead, the official position is that the KC Streetcar Authority will be using existing funds saved  from previously received TDD income. This raises a question: If the Authority is able to save more than $10 million dollars from this TDD, doesn’t that indicate that the district tax rate is higher than needed to fund normal operations?

Additionally, no data has been released to confirm wait times will be significantly reduced by adding two new streetcars to the fleet. If the goal is to add an extra streetcar to the daily rotation and hold two back for special events, why not test the idea by running the current fleet of four streetcars on a daily basis and measuring the results? It appears Kansas City officials are touting an untested solution to a potentially nonexistent problem, and using taxpayer dollars to bring it to life.

If there really are $10 million dollars in excess funds, maybe the Streetcar Authority should lower the tax rates in the TDD. Instead, residents are being asked to pay for expensive additions to an already expensive scheme. Is that really a good idea?

The post Should Taxpayers Pay $10 Million To Reduce Streetcar Waiting Times? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It’s gotten me thinking: Could this “Uber, but for scooters” thing catch on? And if it does, how would it fit into our short-term, or even long-term, public transit future?

For Kansas Citians and St. Louisans, whether scooters catch on is an important question in light of the rail plans that both cities have pursued in recent years and may yet continue to pursue. As we know, streetcar lines are fixed, stop often, and can be dramatically impacted by traffic. Scooters are much more tailored to the user’s needs, though heaven help you if it rains.

But that said, during my Nightcrawler-esque scooter-gathering pursuits it has been fascinating to see so many people using rental scooters zip past Kansas City’s streetcar as the publicly financed, free-to-ride trains trundle on their tracks, from stop to stop, at roughly the same speed. And, according to the Dallas News, it seems the scooters are catching on just about everywhere they’ve been introduced:

Only last week The Atlantic ran a piece about [micro-scooter inventor Wim] Ouboter that said scooters aren’t the future, but only because they were the present long ago. They might have been sold and marketed as kids’ toys—even winning, in 2001, the award for “best toy designed for outdoor play.” But as The Atlantic’s Sarah Holder just wrote, the scooters were always intended “to fundamentally change urban transportation.”

Until now Razor has ceded that transformative micromobile marketplace to Bird, which has 3,000 scooters in Dallas, and Lime, which replaced most of its green-and-yellow rental bikes with around 2,000 rental scooters, according to docs prepared for the briefing. Clearly [scooter manufacturer] Razor grew tired of missing out on the business it essentially created—especially now that Bird is up to $1 billion in funding, making it what CNBC recently called “the burgeoning industry’s first unicorn.”

Lime and Bird have already shown these things work. The companies gave the city stats that show rides span just more than a mile and take, on average, about 13 minutes. The companies say people are riding twice as far on the scooters as they did on the rental bikes—yet their rides are six minutes shorter. Nothing in those docs indicates that scooter riders are less sweaty. But I can attest, yes, you do tend to smell better after 13 minutes on a scooter than 19 minutes on a bike.

What the scooter companies will tell you is that they’re in the business of solving the “last mile” problem in urban areas—that is, replacing the walk from public transit to your home, with a scooter ride instead.

But I also wonder to what extent, at least in Kansas City, the scooter is not just replacing the last-mile walk, but also the first mile of public transit. Granted, the scooters aren’t free to use like the streetcar, but they meet a need that the streetcar doesn’t—transit flexibility over short distances. Keep in mind that in Dallas the average trip is about a mile, which makes the two-mile length (north to south) of the streetcar line in Kansas City particularly notable. And that’s to say nothing of the east-to-west flexibility that scooters provide that Kansas City’s streetcar would seem unlikely to ever satisfy.

Will private rental scooters, or something similar, end up replacing the publicly-financed streetcar? It’s a possibility that I think city leaders here in Missouri and elsewhere need to consider before starting or expanding their urban streetcar systems.

The post How Do Rental Scooters Fit into the Transit Paradigm? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Taxes will not be collected until construction is ready to begin.

But the tax funds will not come close to covering the cost of building the new line. The KC Streetcar Authority will also seek $100 million in federal funds. Earlier this year Congress rolled back the Trump administration’s proposed deep cuts in transit funding. But the outlook for help from Washington remains uncertain.

That assertion isn’t wrong, but it is woefully incomplete. As we’ve reported previously, the Jackson County court ruling allowing for the creation of the transportation development district that will levy taxes for the streetcar includes an important restriction: No taxes or assessments are to be collected from within the district until enough external funding—in this case federal funds—is available.

And those federal funds are indeed uncertain. The Trump administration position seems to be that it won’t hand out construction money for transit capital grants unless a previous administration signed a full-funding grant agreement, and no such agreement is in place for Kansas City’s streetcar. The Federal Transit Administration has previously called for the New Starts/Small Starts grant program—on which the Kansas City effort is dependent for funding—to be scrapped. As of now it is authorized only through 2021, after which it will cease to exist. Congress seems unwilling to reauthorize it.

Even if the occupants of Congress or the White House change significantly in 2018 or 2020, we are a long way from receiving any federal money for the streetcar, money necessary to permit the TDD to collect taxes and assessments. In the meantime, expect streetcar advocates to start looking elsewhere for their financial support.

The post The Asterisk in Streetcar Reporting appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It is noteworthy that in the age of driverless cars, some want to look backward to the inflexible fixed-rail technology of the 19th century. In Kansas City, when we get icy weather, the streetcar system is shut down and replaced with buses. And when even a single streetcar is involved in an accident or breaks down, the whole system is shut down. Streetcars cannot reroute themselves; they cannot drive around an accident. As neighborhoods grow over time, fixed rail routes cannot shift as demand shifts. Streetcars are literally and figuratively stuck in a rut. And on top of this, streetcars cause traffic congestion because they are so large and slow moving. Streetcars also fail to remove cars from the road. Research shows that streetcars really just move people away from buses, not out of their cars.

Because streetcars are such an inefficient and expensive transit option, proponents instead point to the economic development they purportedly create. Every new development is met with satisfied nods as evidence of the streetcar’s success. The research around the country and our experience in Kansas City tell another story. It’s not the streetcar that drives development, but all the taxpayer money handed out to encourage construction along the route. Abatements, cash handouts, tax credits and tax increment finance subsidies litter the streetcar route here.

On top of the subsidies, there’s the price tag on the streetcar itself. The cost of a streetcar is many times the cost of simply adding a new bus route. It is almost humorous that Kansas City raised taxes to fund a large portion of the approximately $110 million cost for 2.2 miles of track, then lowered taxes for developers to entice them to invest along the route. Imagine what would have happened if the city had skipped the streetcar and instead lowered taxes for everyone!

Omahans should be aware that Kansas City voters have been rejecting streetcars for decades. Due to an odd artifact of Missouri law, small groups of citizens can create transportation development districts and tax themselves. As a result, fewer than 400 votes cast in the district committed all of Kansas City to supporting a $110 million project. In response, activists circulated a petition requiring a city-wide vote before the Council could spend any tax money on streetcars. The petition collected the necessary number of signatures, was verified, and was passed by a vote of the people in August. But our Council declared the petition unlawful and appropriated more funds to the streetcar anyway.

Before the Obama Administration, few if any federal funds were available for streetcars. Since then, however, the spigots have been flowing—and the result has been a boom in streetcar spending in cities across the country. In several cases the percentage of people who use transit in those very cities has actually dropped.

Streetcars do look fun, however. One pundit in Kansas City refers to ours as a party bus. It’s free to ride, looks sleek, and is something new on the street. But it doesn’t help the city grow or efficiently move people where they want to go. It requires a lot of money to build and operate and requires even more subsidies along the route to create the illusion of economic growth. In Kansas City, the few (if any) benefits of a streetcar have not been worth the significant cost. Omaha taxpayers should be wary.

The post A Streetcar Undesired appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Trump’s budget, which would go into effect in October if Congress approves it, would eliminate the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant program, a nearly $500 million grant program run by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The streetcar expansion plan is reliant on federal support. According to a 4-page document put out by the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance, $100 million of the $227 million expansion cost to expand the downtown streetcar line would be provided by the federal government through the Small Starts program. But that program is also facing a funding freeze:

The New Starts program, which helps fund local transportation projects costing over $300 million (a sister program, Small Starts, assists with projects under that threshold), would be frozen. New applications to the program, which currently has $2.3 billion to spend annually through 2020, would be outright rejected, limiting any new grants and placing the onus on local and state government to fund additional projects. [Emphasis added.]

This means the Kansas City request for streetcar money could be rejected outright. And that money is required for the extension to take place. According to the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance,

The project will require federal grant funding, and the applicant and recipient would be the City just like with the starter line. If federal funds are secured, public involvement in the engineering and design is required.

The language from the court ruling allowing the new transportation development district (TDD) throws another wrench in streetcar advocates’ plans: no taxes or assessments can be collected from within the district until enough external funding—in this case federal funds—are available. The Trump administration has made the availability of federal funds highly unlikely. Congress could seek to continue federal New Starts funding, according to Rich Sampson of the Community Transportation Association of America, but it will be an uphill climb. And even if streetcar funding is provided by Congress, the administration may choose not to spend it.

Voters are being asked to take the risk of expanding the TDD and levying on themselves a special property tax assessment and a sales tax contingent on the Trump administration coughing up 40% of the total streetcar expansion cost. Laying aside the merits of the policy at hand, voters should be wary of approving something that is dependent on a funding source that may be little more than wishful thinking.

The post Can the Kansas City Streetcar Expansion Be Built Even If It Wins? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Patrick Tuohey Discusses New Legislative Session On KCPT’s Ruckus appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post KC Taxpayers Being Taken For A Ride-Again? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It looks like the city’s “frugality” will be overshadowed by the massive costs of a proposed expansion that would extend the current line 3.75 miles south from Union Station to the Plaza and UMKC.

The projected construction costs for the extension are estimated at $227M (in 2019 dollars), and the downtown line cost $102M (in 2014 dollars) to build. After adjusting for inflation, on a per-mile basis, that makes Kansas City’s proposed expansion one of the most expensive streetcar projects in the nation.

All figures in 2014 dollars

As the chart above shows, the cost per mile of the proposed expansion is over 20% greater than that of the downtown starter line. Even if the city got a good deal—if we can call it that—on the downtown line, it surely won’t if expansion occurs.

The only streetcar more expensive than Kansas City’s proposed expansion is Washington D.C.’s 2.4 mile H-St. line, which cost over $200M to build. But besting D.C.’s line isn’t much to brag about—it’s been described as one of the most poorly handled streetcar projects in the nation. 

So as efforts mount to expand the streetcar beyond downtown, Kansas Citians should ask themselves: Are we willing to pay higher sales and property taxes to fund one of the most expensive streetcar projects in the country?

Although the rail boosters hope to garner a $100M grant from the feds, the city itself will be on the hook for $130M. More on the financial breakdown of the proposed expansion in my next blog!

Note: Figures adjusted to 2014 dollars with CPI deflator, assuming 2% annual inflation 2017-19. 

The post The Ballooning Cost of Streetcars appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For one thing, councilmembers are concerned that it’s too early to know if expanding the streetcar system is a prudent investment. It’s true that the tentatively scheduled election wouldn’t be held until summer 2017, but the downtown starter line only started carrying passengers in May. If Kansas City’s streetcar is anything like other modern streetcars, ridership might drastically drop in the coming year.

Katheryn Shields, at-large 4th-district councilwoman, was concerned about streetcar expansion in generalShe was keen on pointing out the streetcar vote would be on the same ballot as a city-wide infrastructure ballot question. The bond proceeds from the latter measure (should it pass) would pay for sidewalks, roads, bridges and other basic infrastructure. Other councilmembers, including Councilwoman Canady and Councilman Fowler, seconded Shields’s worry.

So, as rail advocates try to convince Kansas Citians to invest their hard-earned money in a slow, inefficient rail project—in a corridor already served by bus rapid transit—they should ask themselves: Which is the better use of limited municipal resources: basic infrastructure that ensures the safe and efficient travel of residents, or outdated rail projects that cost over $60M per mile?

The post Secret Streetcar Plans Unveiled, Raise Concerns appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Not as triumphantly as its advocates might hope (or try to suggest).

On an average day in 2015, over 41,000 trips were taken on KCATA’s system. Since its opening in May, the Kansas City streetcar has had an average daily ridership of 6,365, or 15% of total transit ridership. That’s a significant number of boardings, but still substantially lower than a busy bus route (the #70-Grand in St. Louis has over 9,000 boardings a day) and many times more expensive.

Buses outperform the streetcar in others ways, too. First, the streetcar is primarily moving passengers who are already near their destination downtown; it isn’t usually getting people from home to work, etc., like buses currently do. More importantly, the streetcar route has been served by MAX bus-rapid-transit service and local bus service for years. And the streetcar travels in traffic, at the same speed as buses. From a transportation perspective, the streetcar is redundant and unnecessary.

“But streetcars have a greater capacity than buses!” rail advocates reply. Streetcar vehicles can purportedly hold up to 150 passengers; however, articulated buses, with over 50 seats and standing room, can accommodate 75 passengers. The City could simply run two buses for each streetcar to match capacity and enjoy significant cost savings (an articulated bus costs 18% of what Kansas City paid for each streetcar vehicle).

In essence, the streetcar offers a more expensive way to move people along a short, 2.2-mile route that Kansas City’s bus system already serves. Is this really the best use of taxpayer money?

The post Streetcars: Suddenly a (Poorly Performing) Transportation Service appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Ethics reform in the Missouri legislature
• Battles over education spending
• Pension risk for Missouri government employees
• The Kansas City Streetcar
• MetroLink expansion in Saint Louis
• Professional licensing

Click on the link below to read it all.

The post Show-Me Institute’s July 2016 Newsletter appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In making the case for expanding the streetcar, Kansas City officials have claimed that the streetcar (despite the fact that it only recently opened) has spurred development within the rail’s transportation development district (TDD). But the data on the market value of property within the TDD tell a different story. In fact, as the chart below shows, property values within the streetcar’s TDD follow largely the same trajectory as property values did in the county as a whole. According to data provided by Jackson County, market values grew in the early 2000s, fell during the recession, and began rising again in 2014. While the market value of property within the TDD has grown faster than values in Jackson County as a whole from 2000 to 2015, that growth occurred before the TDD’s creation, and is mainly due to the construction of the Power and Light District (which opened in 2007).

If we simply look at market values after the streetcar’s TDD was finalized in 2012, Jackson County as a whole performed better than the TDD. This directly contradicts the idea that the Kansas City Streetcar is boosting development downtown:

So why the disconnect between city hall’s streetcar rhetoric and the actual property data? Findings from the latest report from the Federal Transit Administration on streetcar development may shed some light on the situation:

Almost all [civic] representatives interviewed believed that streetcars positively affected the built environment, particularly in attracting new development or enhancing revitalization, although the degree of impact varies. Few systems, however, reported the types of ancillary changes in the built environment, such as reduced parking garage construction, increased pedestrian or bike lane investments, or explicit parking reductions that often are associated with light rail systems. Few, if any, streetcar system operators seek information on their impact on economic activity, although most interviewed consider economic-related questions to be vital and desire further research on this topic. [emphasis added]

Put another way, never let the truth get in the way of a good story.  

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Why is ridership so high? The Star has at least twice ascribed it to the “novelty” of the new system, both in the story linked above and here. The Star is likely correct, considering the experiences in two other new streetcar markets. Atlanta, for example, was crowing about its better-than-expected ridership numbers last year, and proponents were urging the city to consider expansion,

With this early success and ridership exceeding expectations by more than 20 percent, it’s never too soon to look ahead to Atlanta’s future.

Yet a year later, the system is being threatened with closure due to a list of problems, not the least of which being a decline in ridership,

After offering free fares for a year, the streetcar started charging $1 in January. Ridership plummeted. About 91,000 people rode the street in the first three months of this year—48 percent less than the same period in 2015.

The same plight has befallen the streetcar system in Tucson, Arizona. Last March, the system was said to be carrying more riders than forecast 7 months after its launch. Yet last week, the Tucson streetcar announced it was curtailing its late night service in the name of “passenger efficiency.” The Tucson system is not free to ride either, charging $1.50 for a one-way fare.

The streetcar in Kansas City is free to ride, and for now it's a novelty. It may be months before ridership levels settle into their long-term levels as they have with older systems. Only once those numbers are known, and the impact of a fare is included, should policymakers decide if this is something worth extending to UMKC or beyond. Otherwise, the city risks wasting millions of dollars that could be better spent elsewhere.

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