Jason Williams

jwilliams@enquirer.com

Cincinnati's streetcar is unlikely to receive a $5 million federal grant to help pay to run the system – a major blow in ongoing efforts to keep operating costs off the city's books.

The regional transit authority's grant application rated poorly in a standard scoring process completed by the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments transportation planning agency, according to documents obtained by The Enquirer.

"It is a very unfortunate situation because it pushes operating costs with exception of (private Haile) Foundation dollars back to (the) city budget," streetcar project leader John Deatrick wrote in an email to interim city manager Scott Stiles last week. The grant "could have covered most of the first two or three years" of operating costs.

No additional money has been identified to cover a projected operating deficit since December, when the deep-pocketed Haile/U.S. Bank Foundation and some private donors pledged $9 million to help run the 3.6-mile route through parts of Downtown and Over-the-Rhine for the first decade.

The federal grant is among several funding options that officials have considered to help pay for streetcar operations, and there's still time to find money to try to keep operating costs off the city's books. The $133 million project isn't scheduled to be finished until September 2016.

"We're working on it," Deatrick told The Enquirer in an interview on Monday. "We're leaving no stone unturned."

Streetcar operating costs have been an ongoing concern for Mayor John Cranley and some City Council members. They fear operating costs could compromise essential public services for an already cash-strapped city.

The Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority's application for a Congestion Mitigation Air Quality grant scored particularly low on cost-effectiveness and regional priority. The streetcar application ranked close to the bottom of the nearly 20 regional projects competing for the grant money.

"With the project just being inside the city, they didn't look favorably on the regional priority piece," Deatrick said.

The 117-member OKI board still has to vote on the grant applications. OKI Executive Director Mark Policinski declined comment. OKI scores the grant applications, but the Ohio Department of Transportation has the final say on how the federal grant money is distributed across the state.

Other streetcar routes across the U.S. have received Congestion Mitigation Air Quality money to cover operating costs, but transit funding for projects in Ohio continues to decline under anti-rail Republican Gov. John Kasich.

"The fact is rail transit is not a state priority at this point, and that's part of the problem," Deatrick said.

The regional transit authority, which will run the city-owned streetcar, estimates it will cost $3.8 million to operate the rail line during its first full year of operation. The first year operating deficit is projected to be around $2 million.

City Council's transportation committee continues to press streetcar project leaders and transit authority officials to find alternative funding sources to cover operating costs. The city has hired a Cleveland-based firm to look at corporate sponsors and naming rights. ■