Has the Streetcar Boom Reached the End of the Line?

Kevin Robillard writes that the American streetcar renaissance is "threatening to run off the tracks — imperiled by cost overruns, lower-than-expected ridership in some places and pockets of local resistance."

"From D.C. to Atlanta, from San Antonio to Salt Lake City, streetcar projects have run into delays, cutbacks and other snags, and some have been scrapped altogether. The most dramatic recent example was November’s demise of a $550 million, state-aided streetcar project in the liberal, traditionally pro-transit D.C. suburb of Arlington County, Va., which had turned politically toxic as its price tag more than doubled."

Robillard presents streetcars as a product of the Obama Administrations collection of urban initiatives, supported by funding from TIGER grants. Former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, however, is quoted in the story explaining the political agenda behind the nation's rapidly expanding portfolio of streetcar projects: "former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a major streetcar booster, is defiant. While the Obama administration changed its funding guidelines in 2010 to make more streetcar projects eligible for federal grants, the boom happened 'not because President Obama or Ray LaHood wanted, but because these communities wanted them,' he said. 'This is what mayors wanted. This is what city councils wanted.'"