At the August 19 County Commissioners Meeting, the Commissioners approved the 2009 Lancaster County Urban Enhancement Funds, a $2 million package that includes a $20,000 grant contributing to a feasibility study regarding the installation of a streetcar system in downtown Lancaster. The Commissioners passed the funding, but appended deliberate requirements that the study be an independent and comprehensive analysis of such a system’s technical and financial feasibility.

The study was discussed at length by the Commissioners at their August 18 Work Session, as previously reported by NewsLanc.

Prior to the vote, Mayor Rick Gray addressed the Commissioners to stress that this study is being requested by the City of Lancaster and not any private group committed to the installation of downtown streetcars. Gray asserted that the proposed streetcar project is, in no way, a foregone conclusion on the City’s part. Gray also noted that the study will be considering a broad range of options, which could include the use of cars smaller than the one displayed on North Prince Street.

A NewsLanc reporter noted that, with the scarcity of working streetcar systems in the United States, there may be few—if any—firms qualified to undertake such a study with appropriate scrutiny and objectivity. The Commissioners were asked whether they might consider retaining “veto power” in the eventual selection of this firm. The Commissioners stated in response that they do not typically play such a role, however they did note that the Planning Commission will remain involved with the funding allocation process, which would include the selection of a firm.

Gray also responded by claiming that, with other US cities now introducing streetcar systems, there are a number of firms throughout the country that are qualified and experienced for such a study.

Before taking the final vote, Commissioner Stuckey asserted that the Commissioners’ approval of funding for the streetcar feasibility study does not mean that the Commissioners presently support the project. Stuckey described himself as “skeptical.” Scott Martin stated that the approval of this funding should not be viewed as an act of project “ramroding.”

The Commissioners approved the funding, but attached the following set of conditions:

Measurable Outcomes That Relate To This Project:

• Downtown Revitalization

Determination of Project Success:

The economic impact analysis and the engineering study will show if a streetcar system would be sustainable without reliance on taxpayer dollars.

Condition:

That this be an independent, comprehensive study that will assess the impact of a streetcar system in the downtown, and that the preliminary engineering study will assess the impact of a streetcar system on the City’s infrastructure and streetscape. The identification of strategies for ensuring the long-term financial sustainability of a streetcar system with and without public subsidies should also be determined in this study.

Mayor Gray said that he agreed with the added conditions.

Citizens Bill Bonano and Bonnie Miller each strongly voiced their disapproval of the $20,000 expenditure, citing that it would simply encourage the spending of $150,000 on what they considered to be an absurd project. Bonano took a particularly firm tone with the Commissioners, asserting that he was “very disappointed” in their decision.

For more NewLanc coverage of the proposed downtown streetcar project, please click here.

Despite the valid concerns they raised during their discussion at Tuesday’s work session, the County Commissioners are taking a giant step towards being taken for a ride by the streetcar idiocy.

Streetcars were taken off Lancaster streets many decades ago because they were no longer practical. We can recall tracks remaining in the streets.

Anyone who looks at the streetcar that has parked downtown can envision what an obstacle they would be when utilizing one of the two lanes available for traffic.

They run without noise, thus presenting a real danger to children and adults getting out of cars or crossing streets.

Not many people ride the faux rubber wheel streetcars, so why suddenly would there exist a demand for trolley cars? The current mock trolleys hardly generate enough revenue to pay the drivers wage, which is only a small fraction of the overall cost.

Streetcars still exist elsewhere, especially in Eastern Europe. But they are located in major urban areas, run down private right-of-ways in the middle of wide boulevards, have islands for picking up passengers, and are heavily subsidized. The situation in Lancaster could not be more different.

Every example of streetcars cited as successful elsewhere, there were either dedicated right-of-ways, ridership was free, streetcars had failed to generate expected downtown development, and/or they were bleeding money.

And what national firm is expert in this field so that their findings would be reliable? In the hotel industry, there are four or five international prestigious specialists that perform hundreds of such studies each year. The successful performance of the hotels built is testimonial to their accuracy.

Since there is no firm with such experience, let alone national prominence, the streetcar advocates will hire a firm after making certain they are predisposed to write a study supporting the project. This would be unethical? Look at the lies and deceptions, the violation of public trust, and possible criminality that swirled around the convention center project! We are basically dealing with the same rascals: predators, dimwits, and the large body of influential people who don’t want to step out of line lest it harm their earnings or cost them friendships.

If the Commissioners are going to contribute to a study, they should insist on participation in the selection and having a veto right over what firm is going to be engaged. And the first thing they should investigate is whether the project is credible enough to justify spending more than $25,000 to be told the obvious—the scheme is idiotic!

At the August 18 County Commissioners Work Session, Commissioners Stuckey, Martin, and Lehman all stressed that the feasibility study for downtown streetcars be as comprehensive and definitive as possible. Discussing a number of concerns regarding the proposed project, the Commissioners also asserted the study should result in an unequivocal conclusion as to whether or not the project will proceed.

The Commissioners’ discussion with County planning officials related to the pending approval of 2009 Lancaster County Urban Enhancement Funds, which includes a $20,000 grant to the City of Lancaster for a study on the “Economic Impact, Engineering Design, & Financial Sustainability of a Streetcar System in Downtown Lancaster City.”

The City will match these funds with $20,000 of its own. The remaining cost for the study—which is valued at nearly $150,000—will be covered by the Red Rose Transit Authority, County planning officials said.

Commissioner Lehman emphasized the importance of clearly determining the physical and technical feasibility of such a system: “I think that the main question to address in any feasibility study is how would it work on congested city streets, and what will the impact be to those congested city streets.”

All three Commissioners asserted the necessity that this study identify the source of operational funding and revenue for a downtown streetcar system. Stuckey noted that “a lot of things can be funded from a bricks and mortar standpoint,” while the crucial question relates to how the project would sustain itself financially.

Stuckey directly asked James Cowhey, Executive Director of the Planning Commission, whether the Streetcar Company has at all considered the use of government subsidies. Cowhey replied that the Company has said “at meetings I’ve attended that they believe they can engender operational funds from naming rights and marketing of the cars and things like that.” Cowhey did, however, grant that “there’s some room there for an expectation of public dollars.”

Concerning the possibility of marketing revenue, Lehman asserted that other elements of feasibility, such as likely ridership, will intertwine with such prospects:

“Simply to be able to say that you’ll get advertising dollars to subsidize the operation isn’t necessarily going to be a given, because advertising dollars are going to follow access, and access in this case is directly related to ridership….If there’s only one person riding, there isn’t going to be a lot of advertising going on inside of a streetcar.”

Finally, the Commissioners stressed that this study be, in Lehman’s words, “objective”—clearly addressing the difficulties of such a system and, if necessary, recommending that the plan be discontinued. “If this [study] were to move forward,” Lehman said, “I expect that there would be a definitive answer at the conclusion of this project.” Cowhey noted that the City’s purpose in the study is to bring such an objective analysis. According to Jane Pugliese of the Planning Commission, the City proposed this study as a “make or break” assessment.

Concluding the discussion, Commissioner Stuckey mentioned that the Commissioners may impose specific conditions upon the $20,000 grant before voting for its approval at the Wednesday meeting.

The PA Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau (PDCVB) is largely funded by tax payers dollars, a good portion of its budget coming from its share of the Hotel Room Sales Tax imposed in order to subsidize the development and operation of the Convention Center.

A poll was published in the Lancaster Newspapers and attributed as in part coming from this semi-public organization. The press release from the PDCVB claimed that the respondents overwhelmingly favored a street car system.

NewsLanc’s investigation has shown that the information provided to the respondents prior to or with the questions was outrageously distorted, the questions asked were few and slanted, and the interpretation of the poll was a bald face effort to mislead the public. This raised the question: Why would a semi-public institution undertake such deception?

NewsLanc therefore inquired of the PDCVB: “Who requested, who paid for the poll, and who prepared the questions?”

The response from Joel Cliff, Media Relations Manager for PDCVB, was “I need to direct you to Jack Howell [director of the Lancaster Streetcar Company] for these details.”

Shame on the Lancaster Streetcar Company for exploiting the PDCVB, shame on the PDCVB for being so duped, and shame on the Lancaster Newspapers for carelessly (if not knowingly) printing misleading information.

When certain establishment forces behind the Lancaster Alliance decided to bring back streetcars to again clog city streets, they created the Lancaster Street Car Company. It in turn had the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau conduct a recent “poll” alleging that meeting planners support the notion.

First the recipients were told about six cities “where new streetcar systems have emerged during the last decades … and have proven economic development successes.” As has been related in a series of earlier NewsLanc reports, in some of these cities the street cars ran in their own right-of-ways rather than in streets, and, in fact, proved to be economic failures,  heavily subsidized by taxpayers.

Then this so-called “poll” asked the following:

“If some of your hotel attendees stayed at hotels other than the Lancaster Marriott at Penn Square that adjoins the convention Center, how likely do you believe they would be to use the streetcar to reach the Convention Center (a 10 – 15 minute walk?)”

The 220 room Brunswick is two short blocks away, at most five minutes. And there is no other major hotel along the proposed loop that runs from the Southern Market to the Amtrak Station!

“How important is it that your meeting /convention is held in a walkable downtown with plenty to see and do?”

What does “a walkable downtown” have to do with a trolley route?

Concerning the need for transportation between the train station and the Convention Center, we already have trolley buses that run the route. And for the rare major event, buses can always be added.

Again and again, sponsors start off by promising privately funded projects which end up being built with taxpayer money and operated with taxpayer subsidies. And the Lancaster press uncritically, perhaps even conspiratorially, prints the sponsors’ propaganda. Rarely do they provide legitimate feasibility studies or impartial polls.

Is the bird brained streetcar project destined to be yet another such misguided boondoggle at tax payer expense?

The photo was taken from a seventh floor hotel balcony in Szeged, Hungary.

As shown, street cars should have their own right-of-ways and loading platforms in the middle of broad avenues. These conditions don’t exist in downtown Lancaster.

I have been following your street car discussions and have just read with interest your article on the survey and its bias. Why don’t you do your own survey. This could be either online, door to door, or mail-in.

I think the results would be very interesting if the people of the county actually got a say in what is going on around town.

Publisher’s response: Please excuse my allowing pent up anger and bitter disappointment to spill over in my reply below.

I arranged for a reputable national public opinion firm in cooperation with Fox 43 to do a random survey concerning whether the County should guarantee the convention center debt. 78% of those with an opinion opposed the county guarantee.

I also funded two-thirds of the cost of the PKF Feasibility Study on the convention center ordered by the County. It predicted huge losses.

On both occasions, the Lancaster Newspapers either ignored, spun, and published the least possible of what the public needed to know. The Convention Center Authority, dominated by Penn Square Partners and Ted Darcus, scorned the only real feasibility study ever prepared for the project!

I think things have improved with the newspapers now, but, with a single exception yet to be told, I am growing wary of wasting money on Lancaster that can be used elsewhere to better serve humanity

Just last week the Board of the Lancaster Public Library, despite having spent over half of a million dollars, turned down a million dollars in State and matching grants rather than undertake a fund raising campaign for a modest amount ($1,200,000.) Ridden with envy, ignorance about fund raising, timid, petty, and especially lacking a sense of mission, certain board members killed the opportunity to totally renovate the existing aging facility and the probability of soon thereafter expanding it.

I invited prominent representatives of the very communities that the library most serves to attend and speak up for the project. They did not. Why they betrayed themselves is beyond me, but it seems symptomatic of this internecine community.

This almost inconceivable set back weighs heavily on me and on my wife, who as a result stepped aside as the Public Library president. We are in mourning.

I pioneered the desegregation of Lancaster Township in the early 1970s. I co-founded and long funded Project Forward Leap which has made a huge positive difference in the lives of at over two thousand inner city youngsters (www.ProjectForwardLeap.org), many from Lancaster. I have made possible an important public health program that has saved the lives of scores of Lancasterians and saved hundreds if not a thousand from grief. I have lobbied on the state and federal levels for public health and criminal justice reforms with some success. Decades ago I contributed half the cost of the first local women’s shelter. But at this point I am leery of investing more time and effort in this community beyond NewsLanc.

Nevertheless, I will continue to work behind the scenes to encourage and guide those who desire to and can make a difference. And so long as I remain, NewsLanc will stand up to the powerful, the greedy and the fools.

The Lone Ranger rides again!

In a letter to the New Era posted Oct. 25, Alan W. Bixby disclosed that “some years ago” he operated trolleys for what has become SEPTA (South Eastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) and explains why trolleys are dangerous and how they obstruct traffic.

Bixby says “Problems that arise from light-rail service are accidents from people boarding and unboarding and traffic tie-ups.”

He goes on to say “Braking time on rail is much longer than on cars, and that factor is increased tenfold when oil, antifreeze or what ever else gets on the rails.”

So if you see a trolley in your rear view mirror and need to come to a sudden stop, you likely will have the trolley in your trunk!

Below are two photos of the street car on display at the intersection of Prince and Chestnut Streets and described by Mayor Rick Gray as “Public Art.” Gray is an exponent of bringing trolley cars back to Lancaster Streets.

In “A City Transformed”, author David Schuyler looks back to the first half of the 20th Century and describes Lancaster street cars as “competing with cars and horse-drawn vehicles for space on the narrow streets.” Today there aren’t many horse-drawn buggies, but we have narrow streets and plenty of cars!

A few pages further on, Schuyler implies that the demise of the street car system was because “Increased use of buses was the most effective means of reducing the number of cars entering downtown and alleviating the shortage of available parking spaces.”

We can’t wait to get stuck behind one of these ancient behemoths. We can patiently sit there and admire the “public art.”

On Sept. 19, NewsLanc interviewed Berwood A. Yost, Director of the Center For Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College, about the “Streetcar Ridership Survey” reported in the July 1, 2007, Lancaster Sunday News.

Backers of a streetcar system for downtown Lancaster have cited this survey as indicating community support for such a project. Further, by judging from the survey’s cherry picked Executive Summary, one might certainly be left with this impression.

The Sunday News article stated: “The [survey], completed in April [2007]…concluded that 83 percent believe that a streetcar system could improve transportation between downtown destinations…”

When Marv Adams, Editor of the Sunday News, was asked whether the reporter had simply lifted the misleading statement from the “Executive Summary” or actually examined the related question, his response was “No comment.”

Salient revelations from the Yost interview were:

1) The Executive Summary states “Most respondents (83%) feel that a streetcar system would improve transportation between downtown destinations.” As set forth, this assertion is disingenuous because the question failed to mention that trolley buses already run on much the same route. Yost acknowledged that information about the trolley buses was not provided.

2) The Executive Summary fails to point out only 2% cited lack of public transportation when asked “What if anything keeps you from visiting Lancaster city more often?” Yost pointed out that the question was only asked of the people who do not come downtown frequently.

3) In response to the survey question “How likely would you be to ride a streetcar system if it were available in downtown Lancaster”, only 1% indicated streetcars were “more convenient than buses.” NewsLanc asked “Isn’t this overwhelming indication of a lack of interest in substituting streetcars for bus transportation?” Yost replied “You can interpret it that way. All of this is open for interpretation. You’re asking me to do something that I wasn’t asked to do.”

4) NewsLanc observed that the survey didn’t ask whether they “favored using $14 million or whatever the figure is, in tax money, to install a street car system, and undertaking a $300,000 annual subsidy to operate the system.” Answer: “It wasn’t something that we were asked to do.” Yost further claimed that figures related to the cost of installing or operating trolley cars were not available to him at the time of the survey.

5) NewsLanc observed that the survey didn’t ask “Would you be more likely to come downtown and use public transportation if we replaced the buses with these historic-type trolley cars?” Yost responded “Because that’s not what we were attempting to do.”6) NewsLanc followed up with “But the purpose was not to determine whether streetcars would be more desirable, would bring more people?” Answer: “No. I don’t think that was ultimately it.”

7) Yost said the survey was commissioned by the Lancaster Alliance and the questions were prepared by him and reviewed and approved by Jack Howell, its president.

8 ) Yost stated that, G. Terry Madonna, Director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs, was “not involved” with the survey.

About the purpose of the survey, Yost said, “We were interested in people who were coming downtown – what they’re doing when they get here and whether they would be looking for alternative means of getting around.”

“You can quibble with the results,” he continued, “but we weren’t asked to come down with these recommendations – this is what we saw, anyone can review it and people can draw their own conclusions from it.”

Yet, by what Yost chose to include in and omit from the Executive Summary, the bias shows.