Terry-

I understand your line of reasoning, but I think that you are wrong on the facts. The tram and streetcar played a huge -and essential- role in stimulating the investment in housing, retail, and office/research space in the South Waterfront.

That is why OHSU ate the vast majority of the cost overruns and overall cost of the tram, and why NMI and the other private interests involved were so adamant that it be completed; the investment community knew that these public transit investments were essential to the vitality of the nascent district.

And it is important to note that the $2 billion in private investment was secured a long time ago when the tram cost estimates were still very low and the amount that the city was on the hook for was just $3.5 million.

The point here is that relatively small amount of the city's future property tax dollars (TIF funds) were able to leverage over $2 billion in private investment. While the city has had to put more money into the pot recently to complete the public works (which as a package include greenway, parks, roadways, transit, and affordable housing), the investors were there from the get-go when the price tag of those things were still small.

The investment speaks for itself; while I understand the upset that people have about the foregone property tax revenue that is entailed by the city picking up more of the cost of the tram, those were dollars that we wouldn't have had were it not for the development. The process has indeed been flawed, but to say that an $8.5 million dollar city contribution for parks, affordable housing, transit, roads and a greenway is somehow a huge public subsidy to $2 billion in private investment on a formerly contaminated and vacant industrial site (which is something like 4% of the total project cost), I think is a stretch.

And denying the role transit plays in this and other urban development projects is hard to do, as well.

- Roland