PX column: Cincinnati has opportunity to permanently close streetcar amid coronavirus crisis. Would Trump administration forgive $45M?

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Cincinnati's streetcar is shut down. It should stay closed. Forever.

The magnitude of City Council's streetcar-before-people priorities has never been so glaring.

The city on Monday furloughed 1,700 employees indefinitely amid the coronavirus-induced financial free fall. The news came as the city also announced it is shutting down the streetcar during the health crisis.

How many of those temporary layoffs could've been avoided if the city had an extra $5 million? That's how much it costs to run a mostly empty streetcar each year.

It's days like Monday when everyone should clearly realize that, yes, it's real money being used for these pet projects. So is $100 million, which is roughly what it'll cost to keep the streetcar running for another 20 years. How many future cuts are going to come at the expense of a useless trolley circling around Downtown and Over-the-Rhine?

It's days like Monday when it's never been more obvious that the streetcar is both a luxury and a liability. The city faces a potential $80 million budget deficit in the coming months, and it can no longer afford ex-Mayor Mark Mallory and the progressives' streetcar.

This is an opportunity for Mayor John Cranley and City Manager Patrick Duhaney to try and stop the streetcar budget bleeding for good. They must call the Trump administration and ask for it to let Cincinnati out of streetcar prison. My apologies to the four people who regularly ride the streetcar.

The federal government gave $45 million to help build the $148 million trolley. The stipulation: Cincinnati would have to run the streetcar for at least 25 years or else the city would have to pay back the $45 million. It was a deal struck by the streetcar-loving Obama administration.

Cranley needs to ask while Washington is in a bipartisan giving mood in this time of crisis. The money needs repurposed ASAP for more important and pressing needs. Fortunately, police officers and firefighters weren’t furloughed. But those critical front-line employees may not be spared if the financial outlook worsens.

"Suffice it to say, these are extraordinary times," Cranley said when I pressed him about making an effort to permanently closing the streetcar. "We will work on those issues going forward with City Council."

I took that as Cranley's way of saying: It's on the to-do list.

Federal government forgiveness wouldn't totally free taxpayers of the streetcar burden. The city would still have to pay back the tens of millions it borrowed for construction. But those are foregone sunk costs.

Cincinnati didn't pay off its $6 million loan for the partially finished subway until the mid-1960s, nearly four decades after construction stopped. But killing the project saved tens of millions in ongoing annual operating money.

Unfortunately, the streetcar got finished – despite the constant warnings it would be a boondoggle. Decisions have ramifications whether they're recognized at the time or not. No one saw a pandemic coming when six council members made the ill-advised decision to move forward with streetcar construction back in December 2013.

But one of the basic functions of government is to be good stewards of the public’s money and be prepared for a time of crisis. It's not to build amusement park rides.

Cranley and many other pragmatists largely saw it to be a folly to pursue moving forward with the trolley. The streetcar has no transportation value, moving slowly along a 3-mile loop through crowded city streets. Its economic development impact has always been questionable, given that 3CDC was already years into redeveloping OTR.

Predictably, it's never met pie-in-the-sky ridership projections. Advertisers have mostly shied away. And thus, revenue projections have always fallen short. It's never going to get better.

It's times like this when you hope politicians at all levels of government can see the ramifications of pricey pet projects, which typically have little or no value for the greater good.

I hope the six politicians who voted to build the streetcar – councilmen P.G. Sittenfeld, Chris Seelbach, Wendell Young, David Mann and ex-council members Yvette Simpson and Kevin Flynn – learned a lesson on Monday.

People before streetcars.

For more Politics Extra columns, click here. Email political columnist Jason Williams: jwilliams@enquirer.com