As streetcar ridership and funding dwindle, alderman warns of long-term fiscal burden

The Hop: Federal monies create a ‘financial anvil’
As streetcar ridership and funding dwindle, alderman warns of long-term fiscal burden
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By MARK LISHERON | November 23, 2020

Milwaukee is trapped on a streetcar going nowhere.

Ridership on The Hop, as the two-year-old, $128 million trolley system is called, has plummeted. Government funding and private sponsorships are drying up. The city soon will be drawing from existing revenue sources to cover the millions of dollars in operating losses.

A vocal alderman is trying to warn about the long-term financial burdens, while the response from most city officials is to press on and maybe, when the political climate is more receptive, expand the streetcar system. Because, as Commissioner of Public Works Jeff Polenske pointed out in a recent memo to the Common Council, The Hop is simply too expensive to stop.

Aldermen Mark Borkowski and Scott Spiker, vice chair of the council’s Finance and Personnel Committee, tried to stop it, or at least suspend service until COVID-19 abates, ridership increases and new sponsorship can be secured. At an Oct. 29 meeting, four committee members voted to keep the largely empty cars running.

Borkowski, one of the most outspoken opponents of The Hop from its inception, is warning Milwaukeeans that the streetcar is going to be a “financial anvil around the city of Milwaukee’s neck” for the 23-year length of the deal that the city made when it grabbed all that “free” federal money.

“There’s nothing free about that money,” Borkowski told the Badger Institute in an interview Monday. “What we’re saying is ‘Milwaukee, you’re on the hook for this for the next 23 years,’ and the city is saying there are no alternatives. It makes me want to pull out my hair.”
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