Good news! Ramsey County abandons pointless, expensive streetcar project

Back in 2018, I asked, “Why is the Ramsey County board going to waste up to $2 billion on a pointless streetcar?” This was in reference to the proposal “to spend up to $2 billion on a streetcar [running] from Union Depot to the airport and the Mall of America.” As I noted at the time, “the 54 bus already runs along exactly the proposed route” so why do we need this streetcar? In 2019, I noted that “The streetcar will serve fewer people than the 54 bus currently does” and that “will actually be slower than the bus.”

At the time this was lonely furrow to plough. As I wrote in March:

Both state and local authorities in Minnesota are currently in the grip of a manic desire to build vastly expensive transit which offers poorer service than the options currently available and for which there is no great desire whatsoever beyond a handful of activists: the Northern Lights Express is another example. This stems from two things: One is the desire to save the planet and the other is the desire to try and turn Minnesota, and the Twin Cities especially, into Europe (partly in an attempt to save the planet). It won’t work, but government is the slowest of learners and will burn through a lot of your money learning that lesson.

At the same time, I noticed that skepticism was spreading, stemming largely from the two issues I identified four years ago: cost and (lack of) speed. Now, that lonely ploughing seems to have paid off.

Last week, the Star Tribune reported:

Ramsey County said Friday afternoon that it is abandoning the $2.1 billion Riverview Corridor streetcar project that would have linked Union Depot in downtown St. Paul to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and the Mall of America.

In an announcement made on its website, the county said the “difficult” decision was based on feedback gleaned during a public engagement process with community members, businesses and other partners along the route, which would have largely followed busy W. 7th Street in St. Paul.

“For me, to continue to spend taxpayers’ money without solid support from our agency partners didn’t seem like the prudent thing to do,” said Ramsey County Commissioner Rafael Ortega, who long championed what would have been the first modern streetcar project in the state.

This is good news for the taxpayers of Ramsey County who would have been on the hook for a good chunk of the cost of this project. Hopefully, it is a sign that the mania is passing.