San Antonio residents will have their chance to put their stamp on the future of rail in this city. For rail to have a future, the best vote is “no.”

After intense vocal opposition derailed VIA Metropolitan Transit’s downtown streetcar plan last year, city leaders promised to put a rail charter change on the ballot. The change would require any potential streetcar or light rail project to go to voters for approval. We recommend voters reject the charter change.

Given the history, future proposed rail projects do need to go to voters. But specifically carving out rail from other major transportation projects makes little sense, and such a charter change could create thorny planning issues in the future. It’s unnecessary. Opponents of rail need only look at their success killing the streetcar to see that a charter change isn’t needed to stop unwanted projects in this city.

Whether roads or rail lines are involved, transportation is expensive. The streetcar would have been a $280 million project, of which the city’s contribution would have been $32 million. Meanwhile, more than $220 million in Advanced Transportation District funds have been spent on transportation projects outside Loop 1604.

Perhaps inner-city residents should have complained. Critics of the streetcar decried its cost, but roads are expensive, too.

David Ellis, an analyst and research scientist with Texas A&M Transportation Institute, told us that, while it varies from project to project, on average, highways cost about $9.5 million per lane, per mile. That figure does not include right of way or maintenance. It also doesn’t include the cost, for taxpayers, of gas, insurance or vehicle maintenance. So, to build a four-lane highway would cost roughly $38 million per mile — without maintenance.

And, of course, there is never enough money for roads. The state is now considering toll lanes for a 15-mile stretch of Interstate 35 that would cost $1.3 billion. That’s $87 million per mile.

A fast-growing city such as San Antonio is going to need both roads and rail to accommodate growth, and this charter change would make the second part of that reality more difficult to accomplish.

The resistance to rail is perplexing. Our traffic is often gridlock. Given San Antonio’s aspirations as a “city on the rise,” the city’s lack of rail is an impediment. And San Antonio is an outlier in erecting these impediments. Other Western cities — with which we compete for young professionals and companies, and on quality of life — have light rail.

Voting for a charter change to formally show disdain for rail might be cathartic for streetcar opponents — one last nail in the coffin, so to speak — but it is not a vote that serves this community’s future.

San Antonio must be creative and flexible in addressing its many transportation needs. This charter change offers only gridlock in meeting those needs.