Federal Transportation Dollars Spent on Streetcars No One Rides
11th January 2017
Local governments routinely spend resources on infrastructure they don’t really need or want simply because available funds are sitting in a federal account and are therefore viewed as “free,” according to Sen. Jeff Flake’s new edition of the Wastebook.
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Among the transportation and infrastructure examples highlighted by Flake in the latest Wastebook are the “two federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants totaling more than $65 million” supporting a streetcar that no one seems to want.
“I’ve never been on a car with more than 25 other people; it’s usually about a dozen, in a car that can seat 60 and carry up to 195,” a journalist observed, and many passengers are homeless people just looking for shelter, who often “got a little bit rough with the operators” and left it smelling foul, according to the Wastebook.