Atlanta, Austin, Boise, Chicago, Cincinnati, Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Oakland, Sacramaneto, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Spokane and Washington DC are just a few of the over 50 cities in America that are in some stage of planning, or studying the possibility of, a streetcar line http://www.heritagetrolley.org/PlannedSystems.htm. Currently if any or all of these lines are built the actual streetcars will have to come from foreign countries. You might call the appropriation pork if the money was to only fund new cars for Portland but as you can see the future cars that are produced here will help feed a growing national demand rather than furthering our reliance on foreign workers. Since the United States hasn't produced streetcars for decades, and no company in America has even considered adding streetcars to it's production lines, it took a subsidy to bring the production and high-paying jobs home. Not only home to America, but home to our local economy too!