Love It Or Hate It The El Paso Streetcar Is Back

If you listen to Mike and Tricia Mornings you know I love the streetcar. I think it could really be something and given that it hasn't lived up to its hype when the project was first announced, I get that you are probably rolling your eyes right now. I think that it could be something because a streetcar is something that most of us love to see when we go out of town. Granted, a lot of towns that have this kind of feature have a streetcar line that can be used for actual commuting and not just a joy ride on a 5 mile track. I get that, but....

...San Antonio built a glorified ditch and turned it into The Riverwalk. If you've ever been there you know that it's not anything special, they just turned it into something special because the city got behind it. People don't use it to commute, you can't fish in it, it's not clean, but it's cool because it's something different. That's the same thing with the streetcar.

Or it could be. We could showcase it during UTEP sports seasons with downtown restaurants and bars giving a free appetizer or beer with a UTEP ticket and a streetcar ticket. The El Paso City Council could give tax incentives to businesses to open up on the streetcar route. They could continue to offer special events like the reading on the streetcar events they've held to great success.

I get that the streetcar hasn't paid for itself but instead of dissing it, why don't we get behind it and figure out a way to make it work for our city instead of saying "we're not Austin/Dallas/New York? I'm glad the streetcar is back. I wish everyone else was too.