Cincinnati's New Mayor Calls Halt to Streetcar Project

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Cincinnati's New Mayor Calls Halt to Streetcar Project

A Cincinnati streetcar project, embroiled in controversy in recent years over cost overruns and management, faces an uncertain future after Tuesday's election ushered in a new mayor who vowed to halt the project that has tied up $148 million of city funds.

Mayor-elect John Cranley, a Democrat who ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility that included stopping the project, won about 58% of the votes tallied, according to unofficial results from the Hamilton County Board of Elections. He beat out current Vice-Mayor Roxanne Qualls, also a Democrat, who supported the project.

"We are going to cancel the streetcar," said Mr. Cranley, a lawyer and former member of the City Council, during a press conference on Wednesday. "They should immediately stop spending...let's put everything on ice."

It may not be so easy to stop the streetcar cold. The city began work on the project in 2007 and has already spent about $23 million. Construction workers began laying track and pouring concrete in August and utility relocation started last year. An additional $94 million is tied up in contracts, and it's unclear how much of that would still be paid out by the city.

"This is completely unprecedented," said John Deatrick, the project executive for the Cincinnati streetcar, referring to the possibility of the city pulling out of the project. "It doesn't mean that it can't be done, but we just don't know at what cost yet."

According to Mr. Deatrick, the city would contact vendors to notify them of the halt, then determine final payment, and then try to negotiate it down.

The project has been beset by a host of problems. The engineers' cost estimates were below contractor bids, and the city has had to pay an additional $17.4 million. The project has been through the bid process three times so far, as well. And the federal government has kicked in $5 million more than originally planned.

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[fieldafm]

Cincy is bound to several contractors for a very large sum of money.  The new Mayor's plans involve renegotiating that contract to instead begin unfunded road work and a bridge replacement.  Unless he can renegotiate all of those contracts in such a way that the city does not lose any money, it's cheaper to keep building the streetcar (of which a portion of track will be completed before the new mayor gets sworn in).

When Ray LaHood was still Sec of Transportation, he very clearly said that the Feds would pull all the money from the project (the new mayor hopes to redirect those monies elsewhere) if the streetcar gets killed.

Meanwhile, several developers have essentially said that they don't want anything to do with the city given the completely unprecendented volatility of the situation.

The whole thing has become a mess.  Voters approved the streetcar twice, and the mayor's race became essentially yet another referendum on the streetcar.

[thelakelander]

Interesting.  Seems like the middle ground would be to see why there are cost overruns and figure out a "no-frills" solution to the problem of adding too many costly bells & whistles upfront. Kind of sucks for Cincy that local politics has gotten in the way of progress, which is something we're very familiar with here.

[fieldafm]

BTW, 2/3 of the Council is also in favor of killing the project.

Lake is right, the public voted in favor of it... twice.  Now local politics have literally derailed the entire thing.

[jcjohnpaint]

I remember when I lived in Pittsburgh how much fighting was happening over the light rail line into the northside.