Advocates of a half-billion dollar, ”light-rail” train to run along Woodward Avenue from Hart Plaza to 8 Mile Road have been unusually candid about the anticipated demand for this government-subsidized Field of Dreams.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Ray La Hood, in Detroit this week to tout the stimulating, “Obama Bucks” contribution to the proposed project, waxed rhapsodic: “If you build it, they will come! I believe that.”
But, apparently, in insufficient numbers
How many people will actually want to be moved between any two points along this straight line from the Detroit River to the city’s northern border? How frequently?
No specific estimates were provided. However, everyone associated with the project has been perfectly forthright in their estimations that the completed system will require $10 million per year in operating subsidies.
It is, nevertheless, not only politicians, the costs of whose visions are drawn from the public purse, promoting the venture. This is an example of the latest perversion of our (ostensibly) free-market, limited-government system. The new gold standard in cooperative endeavors. The “Public-Private Partnership.” (See Dricks vs. Dibicks and Dricks vs. Dibicks — Round 2 for another example.)
In addition to the usual suspects — a gaggle of politicians headed by Mayor Bing, the Downtown Development Authority (DDA), various and sundry organizations and foundations – the Detroit Free Press reports that a group of public-spirited, business leaders has arranged more than $100 million in private funding for the effort. Among these are Roger Penske, Dan Gilbert, Peter Karmanos and Mike & Marian Ilitch.
“This will become a model for the country: public-private partnerships, foundations coming together with the state, the city, the entire delegation, around the idea,” Secretary La Hood observed in setting up the famous, Kevin Costner, dream line in which he (no surprise) fervently believes.
Given the readily-conceded expectation of a needed $10 million, annual, operating subsidy, it seems almost impolite to even ask about the prospects for recovering construction costs.
But I will hazard a guess that neither Messrs. Penske, Gilbert or Karmanos, nor Mr. & Mrs. Ilitch, will end up out-of-pocket.
