Milwaukee is bound and determined to ram a streetcar system down the throats of the taxpayers.
Unfortunately this streetcar "idea" has taken on a life of its own: fancy website pages, fabulous artist's renderings, nifty quotes from "green" groups and other lefty philanthropists, colorful brochures, hundreds of hours of meetings, political speeches, and political capital expenditures. The largest contributors to the fantasy are the vociferous and romanticizing train pundits themselves.
This “snowball” concept of colorful tracked-metal conveyances started small and (with a well-intentioned, but ill-advised shove) is rolling downhill under its own weight; gobbling up all sanity as it seemingly cannot either be stopped nor reconsidered. It is a “one-track” solution to bringing some life and glitzy eye-candy to our downtown area. I agree (having spent time in other larger metropolitan areas) that Milwaukee lacks a certain “vibe” and “access” to its downtown that other cities have somehow achieved; however building a streetcar LINE is too costly (to taxpayers) and too disruptive (to businesses and the general public) to balance out any theoretical gains.
If Milwaukee truly wants a mass transit system to service (and promote) its downtown; there are multiple ways to reach that goal without the planned infrastructure of train tracks embedded in its streets. Consider the Orlando, FL system of LYNX. (www.golynx.com) It is not “track-based” technology, but rather 4-wheeled and mobile. Routes can be tailored to ridership and don’t require the loss of hundreds of choice parking spots. Talk about environmentally friendly; by definition public transportation is logically environmentally friendly. Just one full LYNX bus operating on new Biodiesel fuel is equivalent to 43 less cars on the roadway. The units themselves are designed and uniquely colored in an edgy way to promote ridership. LYNX operates a fleet of 290 buses on 65 routes, called Links, and has service every day of the year. These buses are usually random solid colors including red, purple, blue, pink, etc. and the rest are wrapped in advertising. The successful system has been in existence since 2004.
In short: If the City of Milwaukee is hell-bent to take and spend Federal taxpayer funds for a mass-transit system – create one that makes sense and would likely be embraced by a majority of the surrounding community on BOTH sides of the political (and ideological) aisle.
