An editorial of August 17 describes the many laudable things that a 2.6 mile, ten minute interval, street car loop will achieve for downtown Lancaster. They anticipate a quarter million riders annually.
WATCHDOG: We proposed such a loop many months ago, so we can hardly disagree. But we differ in two significant ways:
1) More of our current trolley buses could do the job without the huge initial costs and without clogging our streets, since trolley buses can pull over to pick up and discharge passengers.
2) We proposed that the trolley buses be free so that they would be heavily used. Right now they only average about eight passengers per hour (not enough to even pay the driver!), and there is no reason to believe that fare charging trolleys will do any better.
Vintage trolley cars is simply another dumb and avaricious proposal by the benighted vested interests that want to gobble up state and federal funds and then, when they run short, tap local governments. The public both pays for it at the outset and then forever and a day afterwards in the form of subsidies.
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Watchdog, the media criticism and analysis column at Newslanc.com.
