Community Streetcar Coalition News Clips
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May 10 – May 18, 2018 COMMUNITY STREETCAR COALITION NEWS CLIPS COMPILED BY BROADCAST CLIPS The service that Brink uses to obtain broadcast clips has been malfunctioning this week, and is currently not letting us access any clips. Broadcast clips from May 10-17 will be added to next week’s clip report. 2 PRINT COVERAGE Rand Paul should race the DC streetcar Washington Examiner By Philip Wegmann May 17, 2018 John Henry came in second to the steam drill. Garry Kasparov lost to Deep Blue. Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t stop Skynet. Thanks to the relentless advance of technology, man continues to lose to machine. Until now. From the Senate floor Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., challenged the D.C. Streetcar to a race. Well, almost. “I’ve walked, and I can out-walk it,” Paul bragged during a speech decrying federal spending on the transportation boondoggle. “We’ve actually thought about filming me in a race with the streetcar to see who wins: me walking or it driving.” The streetcar runs from behind Union Station for a mile down the city’s northeast H-Street corridor. No one really rides it, and almost everyone hates it because it is as slow as it is expensive. Without counting maintenance costs, the streetcar that travels at walking speed cost $200 million to build and loses $8 million annually to run just 2.2 miles. Most of that money came from the city and at least $1.6 million of it from the federal government. None of the funding has come from passengers. It currently operates fare-free for anyone with the patience or the ignorance needed to stumble aboard. Inefficiency and that expense has inspired city residents to race the streetcar. Michael Laris of the Washington Post beat it from start to finishon foot. A local running club does wind sprints against the machine. And literally anyone on a bicycle, an Uber, or a bus has probably overtaken the lumbering people mover. That should give Paul confidence. At 55 years old, the senator seems quite fit. And as he points out, the streetcar isn’t cutting-edge technology. “Going back to some technology from hundreds of years ago that still requires wires to be running down the street,” Paul said, “is really not a useful expense of government money, and D.C. gets a lot of federal money.” He is right, and that’s why he should race it. LINK: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/rand-paul-should-race-the-d-c-streetcar 3 Kansas City streetcar officials change two stops on proposed extension to Plaza, UMKC The Kansas City Star By Sarah Gish May 17, 2018 Last month, Kansas City streetcar officials rolled out their plan to extend the route south to the Country Club Plaza and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The plan outlined eight stops along the route. On Thursday, the officials announced a new plan that moved two of those stops. A previously proposed streetcar stop at Linwood Boulevard has been moved two blocks north to 31st Street. Another stop at Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard has been nudged south, closer to Ward Parkway. According to streetcar officials, the new stop locations were determined by community input and analysis of a variety of factors, including pedestrian demand, bus routes, economic development and regional connectivity. The proposed 3.7-mile extension will connect the River Market and UMKC. The targeted completion year is 2023. The six other previously proposed stops on the route, which mostly follows Main Street, are at 27th Street, Armour Boulevard, 39th Street, 43rd Street, 45th Street and 51st Street. Some Westport merchants have complained that the stops are too far away to justify the cost of the project, which could exceed $220 million. But streetcar proponents argue that the route will increase foot traffic and boost business. An ongoing mail-in election is asking voters in the Transportation Development District, a special taxing district surrounding the proposed streetcar extension, to approve a 1 percent sales tax, along with assessments on most commercial and residential properties, to help pay for the project. Notarized ballots are due June 12. The next public meeting about the streetcar extension is from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. June 5 at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 11 E. 40th St. For more info, go to kcstreetcar.org. LINK: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article211355959.html 4 KC streetcar planners finalize eight stops along Main Street extension Kansas City Business Journal By Elise Reuter May 17, 2018 The final stop locations along the Kansas City streetcar's proposed expansion from Union Station to the University of Missouri-Kansas City's Volker Campus were revealed Thursday. There were few tweaks from the eight proposed stops revealed by the KC streetcar project team last month. Changes to the 3.5-mile route along Main Street include shifting one of the proposed stops at Linwood Boulevard to 31st Street. While both stops were highly recommended due to the amount of new residential and retail activity in the area, a stop at 31st would link the streetcar to an existing bus route. The project team also better defined where the streetcar will stop at the County Club Plaza. It will be located on Brookside Boulevard between Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevardand Ward Parkway. The final list of stops is as follows: 27th Street 31st Street Armour Boulevard 39th Street 43rd Street 45th Street Cleaver Boulevard/Ward Parkway 51st Street The Kansas City Streetcar Authority, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, the City of Kansas City and Omaha-based consultant HDR Engineering Inc. will continue to study other details of the extension, such as best lane alignments and how many new vehicles are needed to service the expanded route. This design phase will continue through 2020. If approved by voters in June, construction is expected to run from 2020 to 2022. The streetcar would then begin operating along the new route in 2023. LINK: https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2018/05/17/kc-streetcar-main-street- extension-stops.html 5 What it will take for Charlotte’s streetcar line to deliver on its promise [SUBSCRIPTION LOCKED] Charlotte Business Journal By Ashley Fahey May 17, 2018 If a rezoning petition gets the green light at an upcoming Charlotte City Council meeting, one of the first dense, mixed-use projects will break ground near the city’s streetcar line. NAI Southern Real Estate has proposed a 20-story, 549,628-square-foot office building and a 240-room hotel on a 3.4-acre parcel bounded by Baldwin Avenue and Third and Fourth streets in midtown Charlotte. The site is less than 500 feet from the CityLynx Gold Line, the original 1.5- mile streetcar line that the city opened in 2015 at a cost of $37 million. But since its opening three years ago, there hasn’t been much real estate development along the often-controversial Gold Line. The Charlotte Area Transit System says $229.1 million in investment is completed, under construction or planned along the first phase and $166.5 million along the second phase, a 2.5- mile extension that will terminate at the edge of Plaza Midwood and Johnson C. Smith University. It’s also uncertain what type of development is sought along the streetcar, which has different characteristics than light rail. “Generally, streetcars are perceived as pedestrian accelerators,” said Taiwo Jaiyeoba, the city’s planning director. “The level of intensity around those stops are not necessarily the same intensity as light-rail stations, where people will stay and do a lot of things. Streetcars are meant to move people quickly.” But, he continued, as the planning department continues to rework transit-oriented development districts, zoning for areas along the Gold Line will be considered, and those parcels could ultimately be classified as transit-oriented development, or TOD, districts, which are used for the Blue Line. Today, the parcels along the streetcar are primarily pedestrian overlay districts. NAI’s rezoning request, which seeks to develop an office tower 299 feet in height, has some area residents in neighborhoods like Cherry and Elizabeth concerned about the impact it will have on the local character. Jaiyeoba said those concerns are being considered in the context of the land-use area plan, which does not prohibit the type of project NAI has proposed. “If we invest so much money in these rail systems, there’s got to be some return on investment with the development,” Jaiyeoba said, adding that any proposed development should also be considered in context with the surrounding neighborhood. Collin Brown, a land-use attorney with K&L Gates, is working with NAI on the petition, which had its public hearing at City Council’s zoning meeting in April. Brown said a deferral for a vote has been requested to June’s zoning meeting as the developer continues to make tweaks, including more than $2 million in transportation improvements, to the plan. 6 Brown said the type of project NAI has put on the table — a tall, thin office tower versus a short, wide building — is necessary to attract a high-caliber tenant. It’s also a more attractive building design-wise, he continued, which several in the nearby communities say they support. “An entire block of seven stories or a tall, slender building that takes up less of the block ... it’s a mass versus height question,” Brown said. But it seems unlikely, even if the petition passes council and is built, that NAI’s project would serve as a catalyst and spur a significant amount of high-density, mixed-use development in midtown or along the streetcar, in part because there are limited land opportunities and because the midtown submarket is so small to begin with, Brown said.