Once upon a time there was a band of varmints, call 'em The Four Amigos, who rode into towns where people were planning for streetcars, with numbers that demonstrated to the satisfaction of big business that the streetcar plan would drain the town of its gold with little return on the investment. Their numbers appeared to show that streetcars do not promote economic development, do not increase real estate occupancy, do not reduce air stench, do not convert cowboys to streetcar riders and can't run nearly as fast as a horse.

Meanwhile in The Little City That Could, the people had been working hard on a streetcar plan. Only ten years after their old streetcars had stopped running, the people began to feel the impact that horse stalls were having on the fabric of their tightly woven urban center, razing buildings and pushing the people further and further apart from each other. Businesses and residents had begun to leave the Little City to locate near the big new roads.

The people produced a plan they called FOCUS, enlisting 3,000 citizens to forge a vision of what they believed the Little City could become. One of their key recommendations was to build a new streetcar system as an economic development tool to stimulate reinvestment in their old neighborhoods and to encourage more neighborly neighborhoods on the outskirts of town.

They began to look at what other towns were doing in response to this erosion:

• In Denver the Sixteenth Street Transit Mall and a new streetcar system were making that downtown much friendlier, bringing new stores, offices and even residences back, and making a 24-hour city out of what had been a very scary place.
• In Dallas their newspaper reported that after only three years their streetcar system had caused real estate values along the route to rise 25% faster than the rest of the town. An abandoned hotel along the route was renovated by developers who figured streetcars could take visitors back and forth to the meetin' hall. People who had opposed the initial project were now shouting to be included.
• In St. Louis they had twice as many riders as their original ridership projections, and the horse stall lots on the outskirts were swamped. They built their new stadium with far fewer horse stalls than needed, and people came by streetcar.
• The people went to San Diego, Portland, Sacramento, San Jose and other places that had new streetcars, to see how much they had spent, how they had raised the gold and what the returns were on their investments.

They took their Community Proposal to the City Council, the Transportation Authority, the Regional Council, the Federal Transit folks, and they received endorsements to proceed. The Federals earmarked funds to begin the next phase of design, showing confidence in their Community Proposal.

An election date was set, August 7th, the Four Amigos rode into town to shoot down the plan, and the Showdown in The Little City That Could began.

Kite Singleton
21 July 2001