After the January 26 meeting of Lancaster City Council, NewsLanc asked Mayor Rick Gray to explain why the City is engaging a $40,000 streetcar engineering study while similar systems in other cities are known to depend on considerable taxpayer subsidies. “There’s no public transportation that isn’t subsidized,” Gray responded, “There’s no private transportation that isn’t subsidized—we subsidize your car,” he said, referring to public roads.
“How much of the roads are subsidized? About 100%,” Gray argued, “For public roads, it’s an ‘investment’; for public transportation, it’s a ‘subsidy.’”
Gray was responding primarily to the findings of a recent NewsLanc report, which observed that only 6% of the Portland streetcar system’s operating budget is supported through fare revenues while the rest comes from public funding. The Portland system was designed and implemented by the same firm that is being recruited to conduct Lancaster’s streetcar engineering study.
For the time being, Gray said, the question of economic sustainability is not yet on the table. “We’re not even at that point,” Gray noted, “We’re just going to see if our infrastructure could handle it. I mean, there would have to be some level of sustainability….If it required huge amounts of money and wasn’t going to be used— But that’s about two steps down the road.”
Let’s save at least two steps and stop the process right now. Those are dollars that could be better spent at the Library.
Rick Gray and Gib Armstrong separated at birth?
I remember Gib telling Route 30 hoteliers that their objections to the “sweetheart subsidy” going to PSP that Route 30 road improvements amounted to the same thing for them?
And I was foolish enough to think that it was the government’s job to provide the infrastructure for private business as opposed to directly lining their pockets with taxpayer monies.
“WE” subsidize your car????? “We” being him and his cronies or him and City Council. Give me a break!! We taxpayers and Rick as well pay for roads from TAXES.
I’ll do a feasibility study for 4 cents and come up with the same conclusion as would anyone with reasonable intelligence. It ain’t gonna fly!! Furthermore, we have a beautiful new bus facility and the buses are not utilized to their fullest.
Hey! I have an idea! Paint the word TROLLEY or STREETCAR on the side of the bus and viola! it can run the same route as the proposed trolley car.
In addition, do we not have taxi drivers who need work? How much revenue will the “free” trolley take from them..
Editor’s note: We already have busses disguised as trolleys running about the same route. Few ride them.
Mayor Rick’s bow tie is afraid on this one. Notions of being mayor in Thomas the Tank perhaps.
He does not do so well when asked hard questions by real reporters, does he now?