By: Kolby Granville

This white paper is about the modern streetcar being proposed.  My entire policy on this can be summed up in a sentence.  I support the modern streetcar, in concept, but I cannot support the streetcar with its current alignment or its current lack of concrete funding.  The streetcar is a good idea.  It is a visionary idea.  However, even a visionary idea, with incorrect implementation can become bad policy.  Even a visionary idea, at the wrong price, and with the wrong funding stream, can become bad policy.  It is bad policy to say that a good idea, at any price, is still the right choice.  This is the very thing I have said in the forums and to the city council, time and time again.  However, the council has voted 7-0 to move forward.

Alignment

I believe the modern street car should start at Gammage auditorium and head north on Mill Avenue to Rio Salado Drive.  It should then split and head west to the Tempe Center for the Arts, and east to Tempe Marketplace along Rio Salado Drive.  When I brought this very route up to the council, I was told to go to Portland to see their streetcar.  And, to the credit of Mayor Hugh Hallman, he went the extra mile and set up meetings for me with city staff and developers in Portland to make sure every question was answered.

Tempe is not Portland.  Downtown Portland has density and an urban population.  The Portland streetcar was developed not by the city, but by the development community because they wanted the added land values.  The land owners voted for, and largely paid for, the Portland streetcar to be built.  In Tempe, it will be the federal government and valley taxpayers who pays to build the streetcar, Tempe residents who pay to operate it, and landowners that benefit from the increased property values and rents.

The purpose of a modern streetcar is to move people around an urban core.  I believe Tempe should have an urban core where people live and work.  Mill Avenue is that urban core.  The Tempe Town Lake, which has almost no density restrictions, will become part of that urban core.  In fact, it has to be part of the urban core because development along the lake is what will ultimately pay to maintain the lake.

A modern streetcar along the lake will encourage development, encourage density, and encourage an urban core.  It will help revitalize Mill Avenue by making it a destination location.  Mill Avenue south of Gammage auditorium is not now, and should not be, part of that urban core.  Revenue, of the type needed to support the running of a modern streetcar, can only come through the accompanying population density along the line.

My concern, put in its most basic form is this:  a modern streetcar south of Apache on Mill Avenue will encourage the extension of the urban core (and density) into areas where it is not, and should not, be.

Operating Costs

The capital cost to build the 2.6 mile modern streetcar is estimated at $160 million, to be paid for by a mix of regional, Proposition 400 sales tax revenue, and funding from the federal government.

The ongoing operating and maintenance cost of the modern streetcar is $3 million per year.  The city estimates that revenue for the streetcar will start at $600,000 a year, and rise to $1.3 million a year by 2023-24.  That means, all things being equal, when other cost savings and revenues are taken into account (like cutting redundant routes), the city estimates the street will operate at a loss of roughly $2.1 million a year.  Divide that by 160,000 residents in Tempe and that means every man, woman, and child in Tempe will pay $13.13 per year for the ongoing operating costs of a 2.6 mile streetcar.

I am not anti-public transportation.  I would have voted in favor of the light rail.  I would have voted in favor of the Orbit system.  I did vote in favor of Proposition 400.  I also readily agree that all forms of transportation are subsided.  A gas tax pays for the roads.  The true cost of pollution from cars is not factored into their purchase price.  That said, I have three issues with the funding of the modern streetcar.

First, $2.1 million a year is too much money to spend on an incorrect alignment.  If the route were along the Tempe Town Lake, I could agree to it.  It would encourage development, it would encourage density, and it would encourage revenue that would allow for the funding of the maintenance of the lake.  The current alignment puts the city in the difficult position of having to extend the urban core to where it does not belong so as to create riders to help subsidize operations.

Second, the residents of Tempe are being committed to a huge amount of money without being directly asked if they want the service.  Tempe is a relatively progressive city.  It is important to trust the residents to know best what they want, and what they are willing to pay for it.  Perhaps Tempe residents, as a whole, are willing to pay $13 a year, forever, for a 2.6 mile modern streetcar.  Perhaps I am willing to pay for it, but when you commit me to that kind of long term, non-essential expenditure, you should have to ask me first.  Not public forums, but a vote, and that has never taken place.

Third, the current proposed funding mechanisms for the streetcar are inappropriate.  Right now, the streetcar operations are to be paid for by (among other things) adding advertising to bus stops and by raising the price of youth transit passes.  This is being done while bus routes are being cut.  If advertising on bus route stops are good enough to pay for a modern streetcar, why are they not good enough to save cutting bus routes?

Additionally, the operating costs are to be paid, in part, by the use of non-recurring funding sources; the sale of land along the light rail and other transit owned parcels.  I can not support paying ongoing costs through the use of one time funding sources.

Conclusion

A modern streetcar to move people around our urban core is a good idea.  It is a visionary idea.  However, extending our urban core where it does not belong, committing residents to long term/discretionary costs that they did not vote on, and paying for ongoing operations through one-time revenue sources, is simply bad policy.

It is for these reasons that I have spoken against the modern streetcar in its current form.  This can be done, but it has to be done right.

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http://www.tempe.gov/tim/TempeStreetcar.htm#Background

Final Note:  I was once told, by a very wise friend, that governance is not a Disney movie; that there are not pure “good guys” and “bad guys.”  There are simply people, trying to make the best choices they know how, because they care about their community and, sometimes, reasonable minds simply differ.  Likewise, there are rarely pure “good choices” and “bad choices” for the city.  The modern streetcar, perhaps more than any choice in recent city history, lives in that shade of gray.  If the streetcar is built, there will be many benefits to Tempe.   If the streetcar does not get built, there will certainly be losses for Tempe.

In this white paper I could have “politic’d” my answer, rather than given my concrete thoughts on the subject.   I suspect that is what other candidates will do.  However,  in the final measure, I owe it to you to tell you how, at the end of the day, I would vote on the proposal, as currently written.  That is what I have done.  And I have to trust that you,  as the voter, will appreciate my candor, respect it, and demand that other candidates do the same.