Lancaster — Streetcar Plan Cut Back

Rail Transit Online, April 2007

City officials have reversed themselves and decided not to build a northwest spur to Long’s Park as part of a planned downtown circulator streetcar system.  The line was originally designed to operate only along North Prince Street to West Vine Street and north on Queen Street to the Amtrak station at Liberty Street.  But the estimated cost was $7 million a mile, far above the Federal Transit Administration’s $3-million-a-mile limit for projects trying to qualify for 80-percent financing under the new Small Starts program.  Adding the Long’s Park segment would bring the entire seven-mile (11.3 km) system within FTA limits.  But Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray said the city was taking the wrong approach.  “We looked at it and it was my opinion that we were letting the funding source drive the plan, rather than having a plan and then finding the funding to fit it,” Gray told the Lancaster New Era.  “It became more about funding than transportation.”  However, said Gray, once the initial section is up and running, the city will begin looking at extensions. “I think once we do it, there will be demand from other areas of the city,” he told the New Era.  A grant request will still be made to the FTA, asking that Lancaster be given an exemption from the cost rule.  Failing that, alternate federal funding sources would be sought.  Additional money for the approximately two-mile (3.2 km) line would come from the state of Pennsylvania and the private sector.  Officials plan to use antique streetcars that would be rebuilt and modernized.