After our immensely instructive experience at the 2025 conference of the Community Streetcar Coalition, we’re back! As planned, the Resilience Authority posted a request for proposals (RFP) from transit engineering firms to perform a streetcar feasibility study. We sent a small delegation to CSC this year with that RFP in hand.
Like last year, we were impressed with what a powerful tool for urban (re)development an urban streetcar system can be. The success stories we learned about in cities like Kansas City, Tampa and Omaha were inspirational. Kansas City is presently the national “poster child” for urban streetcars; it’s an immensely popular and profitable free-fare system — that has nearly tripled in length since its first segment in 2016.
What’s more, city officials repeatedly emphasized how the KC Streetcar has profoundly re-energized development in the city. The tired old catchphrase “Good enough for KC” is gone, and projects like the waterfront development that were dismissed a dozen years ago as too ambitious are now actively underway.
One key lesson this year was this:
Streetcars aren’t transit. They’re urban development.
That’s an oversimplification, obviously! Of course streetcars are a mode of public transit. The point is that it’s misleading to think of them only in that light. They’re not high-volume like subways or inexpensive like buses. They’re not intended to move the most people in the fastest way for the lowest cost; that’s not what they’re for.
What they ARE for is to make it cheaper, easier and more fun for residents and tourists to get around an urban environment. That’s what streetcars excel at — much more so than buses, and for a fraction of the cost of a subway. That’s what sends retail foot traffic skyrocketing and attracts developers to invest in new construction. That’s why so many cities are turning to streetcar systems to convert surface parking lots, brownfields and underdeveloped or vacant properties into vibrant, revenue-generating neighborhoods. Kansas City is a textbook example: the KC Streetcar turned neighborhood after neighborhood, from City Market to Union Station to The Plaza, from struggling to flourishing.
Responses to the RFP are already coming in. Stay tuned!
The Denker Foundation 