Judge Wolf, Mayor Castro & the whole city gov? Waste our money? NO?!?!?!? Aw crap, who am I kidding? It's what 'they' do for a living. It's a good thing we have those high dollar LED Riverwalk Christmas lights to shine the light of truth on their folly, huh?

No s hit sherlock! You needed a study to tell you that? Street cars are for Disneyland and San Francisco.

Count the people currently riding buses along the proposed street-rail routes. Use that as a reasonable though probably inflated estimate of potential street-rail utilization. Inflated because the street-rail lines won't serve areas anywhere close to current bus routes. Now, calculate the projected installation cost and operating expenses of each system. How do they compare? A cost analysis such as this is the only logical way to evaluate the value of re-installation of an antiquated “mass transit” system such as this, which was abandoned in San Antonio in the early 1900s. In terms of its extent and the selected routes, this proposed street-rail system is analogous to Alaska's bridge to nowhere. It is not long enough to be of any value to public transportation riders along these routes. Since the benefits ascribed to this street-rail system to nowhere will accrue to businesses that pander to and fleece the tourist trade and property owners/developers along the proposed routes, it is only logical that they, as beneficiaries of its expected magical “rejuvenation/renaissance” should be willing and anxious to lay their money down to finance it.

The city will be going backwards in time when it replaced the old electric streetcar system with buses. The plan to build a route from Hemisfair Plaza to the Old Pearl brewery through abandoned car lots etc up broadway is to pump up for the developer in the area. Notice instead of rail, VIA put in the Primo line from downtown to the Medical Center area. There is no doubt this is a tremendous waste of taxpayer money. Yes we do need mass transportation, and VIA is not really doing a very good job as it is, by running buses up and down freeways where there are no bus spots, thus access to the transportation is very difficult.

...amongst other things that are a waste of taxpayer's money!

I think they need to do a study to determine just how much taxpayer money is wasted by the San Antonio City Council, Mayor and the rest of the city baffoons that have been feeding at the trough all these years. Anyone paying any substantial amount of taxes should be planning their exit from San Antonio & Bexar County.

Is there a reason we are supposed to believe a study from the Cato Institute? After all, they are funded by the Koch brothers, who have a vested interested in keeping us chained to the gas pump. Any surprises here? And I wonder why that fact isn't made known in the article...are we supposed to talk some fellow's report on faith as if he is the gospel on public transportation?

solar powered monorail system?!?

This idea has allways been a bad one.. the bus system works fine ..leave it alone ! If the powers that be want to spend money on some thing why don't they spend it on existing infrastructural developments that need repair....Like the roads or MAYBE the sewer system that SAWS want to jack up our water bills another 10% over.

Typical San Antonio/Bexar County politics. It is no big secret Nelson Wolff wants street cars. At the presentation tonight, the participants were able to show where they wanted stops, but were not allowed to ask real questions. Just a show that the public must be informed, but the Politicians could care less about "true" input!