Look!\u00a0 In the street!\u00a0 Is it slow?\u00a0 Is it expensive?\u00a0 Then it must be a federally subsidized streetcar project!<\/p>\n
Randal O\u2019Toole<\/a> (pdf), a transportation scholar at the Cato Institute, explains how the Obama Administration is literally rewriting the rules to make an inefficient mode of transportation easier to fund:<\/p>\n The Obama administration is currently rewriting the rules for Small Starts [a federal program to subsidize local mass transit projects], and the draft rules, issued January 25, 2012, effectively eliminate the cost-effectiveness requirement.\u00a0 Instead, the administration proposes to judge projects by how well they promote \u201clivability,\u201d which Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHoood defines as, \u201cIf you don\u2019t want an automobile, you don\u2019t have to have one.\u201d\u00a0 In this case, it evidently also means, \u201cIf you don\u2019t want to take a bus, taxpayers will provide an expensive rail alternative.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Why the need to change the funding criteria?\u00a0 O\u2019Toole explains:<\/p>\n When the [Federal Transit Administration] applied the [cost-effectiveness] rules to the Small Starts program, however, streetcar advocates complained that the rules discriminated against streetcars because streetcars did not save time.\u00a0 Instead, advocates argued, the FTA should evaluate streetcars based on their perceived contributions to livability and economic development.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Among other uses \u201clivability\u201d is code for \u201chigh density,\u201d a term that translates into smaller living spaces crowded together in apartment buildings instead of single family homes with a yard.<\/p>\n California Governor Jerry Brown is notorious for preaching an \u201cera of limits\u201d<\/a> that lets the state\u2019s freeway system decay in order to force people into high density housing in the urban core.\u00a0 With everybody living on top of each other, cars become unfeasible and mass transit suddenly becomes relevant.<\/p>\n But even in this Orwellian vision, streetcars like the ones favored by the Obama administration don\u2019t make economic sense because buses can go faster, seat more people and cost less to operate because they don\u2019t depend on railway lines to move.<\/p>\n