Kansas City Made a Barbie-Themed Streetcar. It Cost Taxpayers $25,000.

Officials say that the "Dream Streetcar" is intended to boost ridership, even though the streetcar is free.

Kansas City, Missouri, unveiled a Barbie-themed streetcar, dubbed the "Dream Streetcar" earlier this month. The streetcar is decked out in familiar bubblegum-pink wrapping and even rewrites the city's name as "Kensas City." A lucky passenger can even choose a seat decked out to resemble characters from the recent Barbie film, like "Stereotypical Barbie, President Barbie, Cowboy Ken, and even Allan."

Oh, and the whole thing cost taxpayers $25,000. 

According to records obtained by KCUR, Kansas City's NPR affiliate, the hefty public spending is due to the fact that the Dream Streetcar is not actually a sponsored ad for the blockbuster Barbie movie that premiered in July. Instead, it's a project by the Kansas City Streetcar Authority (KCSA) to increase ridership, even though the streetcar is free to ride. 

The streetcar is funded by a special tax levied on property owners in a "Transportation Development District" near the streetcar's path, as well as a 1 percent sales tax on purchases made in the area. 

The KCSA denies that the Dream Streetcar is explicitly Barbie-themed. "The Dream Streetcar does not utilize any Barbie or Mattel branding or images. It does not even display the Barbie name," Donna Mandelbaum, the KCSA's communications and marketing director tells Reason. "This streetcar wrap was not intended to promote a movie or a brand but it is intended to bring a positive experience for our riders, our community, and to downtown KC."

However, it's difficult to view the Dream Streetcar as anything but Barbie-themed, especially considering multiple references to the film in the press release announcing the decorated car.

https://twitter.com/Beertheist/status/1698867685214347625

"KC Streetcar marketing efforts have goals to increase streetcar ridership, promote the Ride KC Streetcar brand…and showcase that public transit can be both essential and fun," Mandelbaum tells Reason. "We have a marketing budget to do such things."

According to KCUR, ridership did tick up in the days following the Barbie streetcar's debut, although those days coincided with Labor Day weekend and a popular summer festival in Kansas City. After Labor Day weekend, streetcar ridership returned to average levels.

Besides that the Dream Streetcar hasn't so far achieved its stated goals, the streetcar system itself is also incredibly expensive and inefficient.

For starters, the streetcar just isn't a very useful piece of public transportation. "The streetcar project has all the appearances in Kansas City of a theme park–style development," Patrick Ishmael, the director of government accountability at the Show-Me Institute in St. Louis, tells Reason. "The capacity, the speed, the purpose of the project is hardly different than what you'd see at Disney World. And…it's actually oftentimes faster to walk than to use the streetcar."

The project has also been incredibly expensive for taxpayers—according to the streetcar's own website, the two-mile-long line cost over $100 million to design and build. 

Further, the free streetcar isn't even directly responsible for economic growth along the streetcar line. "It is not the streetcar that is driving economic development," Patrick Tuohey, the co-founder and policy director of the Better Cities Project, which researches economic development and transportation policy, tells Reason. "It is all the economic development subsidies along the streetcar line that encourage people to develop along that spot."

So not only is the streetcar not very good at actually getting people where they need to go, it unsurprisingly isn't directly helping local businesses either. Plus, those local businesses now face higher taxes to pay for the streetcar's construction and operating costs.

"Most of the time in successful urban environments, hotels and entertainment districts… and transit—like streetcars—are a sign of a thriving economy,"  Touhey adds. "Rather than understanding that development is a sign of a healthy economy, they think if they subsidize development, it will result in a healthy economy, so they get it exactly backward. And so the streetcar…[is] a very thin veneer wrapped around the city that creates the illusion of economic success."

Comments

[Michael Ejercito]

It is like some people (other than the owners of private mass transit companies like American Airlines) are obsessed with wanting people to use mass transit.

[Homer Thompson]

how else is government going to save the planet from climate change

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

And curate our travel for us.

[Don't look at me!]

Spend more money on something that you give away for free that will do nothing but increase your costs due to higher usage. (Assumes painting streetcars pink will attract more riders for some fucking reason).

[Minadin]

They should have done a vinyl wrap - it would have only been $20,000 . . .

BTW, I lived in KC for about 7 years and have visited twice this year for several days to a week at a time, right downtown. I was unaware that they even HAD a streetcar.

[Rise of the Impedance]

Well, now you know, Minadin. That alone has got be be worth $25k.

[MatthewSlyfield]

How to say "They should lower our budget because we've run out of productive things to spend it on" without saying "They should lower our budget because we've run out of productive things to spend it on".

[mtrueman]

"“They should lower our budget because we’ve run out of productive things to spend it on”.

If it's going to be productive, be useful to KCers, it needs to expand. I think it is expanding a few miles to link to the university, but you need more than one single line to make it a bona fide transit system.

[MatthewSlyfield]

And what exactly does the money spent on the Barbie themed street car add to any of that?

[mtrueman]

I managed to get your attention.

[mtrueman]

"Instead, it's a project by the Kansas City Streetcar Authority (KCSA) to increase ridership, even though the streetcar is free to ride. "

A better project would be to pay people who commute to and from work or shopping using the streetcar. Time is money. The problem though it's more of a half assed attempt at civic exoticism than a serious transit system.

[Homer Thompson]

you mean pay homeless people to sleep and piss in it

[mtrueman]

Homeless commuters. sure.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

You’ve never been on light rail before have you?

[mtrueman]

No need. I have a home complete with bed and toilet.

[Minadin]

Take a piss on the 3rd rail.

[Super Scary]

Where's the Oppenheimer bus? This is so unfair.

[Dillinger]

exploded. fail.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

Long pink cylinders frequently explode.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

$25,000? I'm almost ready to say that Kansas Cityians got off cheap. How is this not 'too local'?

[MasterThief]

A custom wrap for an unusually large vehicle with custom art included inside probably is valued at about half that price. Only doubling the actual costs is surprisingly frugal for government.

[markm23]

I assume that is not for the car itself, but only for the custom decorations. A basic undecorated streetcar must cost at least as much as an expensive mass-produced automobile, and probably a lot more due to vandal-proofing and lower production volume.

[Dillinger]

>>Kansas City, Missouri

peeps on that side of the river are strange.

[JFree]

it’s a project by the Kansas City Streetcar Authority (KCSA) to increase ridership, even though the streetcar is free to ride.

The free to ride part is a perfectly reasonable way for a muni-streetcar line to clear the bigger traffic backlogs in the system.

But if they are attempting to ‘increase ridership’ , then it sounds like they are simply trying to operate municipal bureaucrat choo-choo trains rather than develop a restored/legitimate street car/transit system like KC once had – 25 routes on this 1912 map – down to 5 by 1950; maxed at 135 million passengers for streetcars/buses (currently 1.5 million), 800 streetcars/buses/trolleys now 6.

Pink paint ain’t gonna increase ridership from 1.5 million to 135 million. And no bureaucrat is ever going to be competent at the schedules, fares, operations, etc of transport. What they can do (much cheaper than private sector) is the LAND. Just like airports. Earn the cost of maintaining the depots, stations, access points, network by leasing out slots to private operators who then deal with fares, schedules, routes, equipment, operations, etc.

I doubt that what’s left of the old streetcar network is even available to become streetcars now. That horse is glue now and is probably streets/highways clogged in traffic jams. But some of those routes – or similar connections – could probably become a separate transport network. CLOSED to private cars which don’t play well with ANYTHING else and the result is always that public transit schedules become unreliable – which is what kills ridership – and peds/bikes/kids/etc).

This is so easy to do except in any muni where the bureaucrats want to operate choochoos, the private cars want to claim everything for fee, and where no one else even knows that there were once alternatives (and still are).

[Don't look at me!]

Let’s go back to the way they did things in the 1800’s !

[JFree]

No. Much better to force the 10-15% of KCers who don't have cars to buy cars so they can sit in traffic jams with road rage like all the car-loving suburbanites. Because road rage is the best indicator of people who just love driving. And if they don't support that, then they can get run over if they do any other form of transport. Because only 73% of the people IN that tax district agreed to both increased property and sales taxes for that streetcar route.

But you know better. You're a suburbanite aren't you. Fuck you and your attempts to control urban transport systems.

[Don't look at me!]

Rolling back the clock is the way of the future!

[JFree]

Yep. The good old days of the American driving dream.

[Minadin]

Traffic jams? Have you ever BEEN to KC? It's not exactly LA.

I have a better idea - why don't we take all of the central planners and urban planners and everyone else who thinks that they know best, and cast them completely out of society. Banished, dead, don't care. Now we can allow the urban areas to develop organically again based on market forces like need and supply and demand.

[JFree]

That's a good idea. It is the central planners who created the mess but not in the way you think. It is the CAR that required central planners and KC is no different than everywhere else. Here's an interesting set of 10 articles about what KC did. Two factoids:

to build the 'Loop' freeway that surrounds downtown, they demolished 100 city blocks. That's valuable land and it gets turned into no-value land - and the freeway then cuts off downtown from the surrounding city and connects downtown only to the suburbs which become exclusively bedroom communities.

for the other highway/road changes in the city post-WW2, they demolished 25,000 housing units housing just over 100,000 people. 1/4 of the population of 'old' KC just gone. Of course, these were mostly poorer, often black, redlined neighborhoods and a big reason redlining happened was because it makes future eminent domain cheaper. The lower peep density also then killed off commercial so no more mixed-use neighborhoods. That creates the basis for huge single-purpose zones - which in turn then requires cars for transport. The only reason KC population didn't drop like most other cities in the 50's and 60's that destroyed housing is because KC annexed near suburbs (the home of big single-family residential zones). Which in turn obliterated KC muni finances because they now have the same population as before but the utility infrastructure now covers 4x the land.

You can't just turn around and say - ok that's enough central planning. Let's just leave cities a smoking car-dependent ruin and start doing stuff 'organically' again.

I would much prefer a conservative approach. Undo/restore the street/zoning infrastructure to what existed pre-WW2 and what really worked well when it did exist. It's why European cities work so well.

But 'conservatives' in the US are all suburban Stalinists who want to leave all the central planning destruction in place in the cities where they don't even live so that only cars own land used for transport. Suburbs themselves are almost all PLANNED developments. Far more rigidly planned than cities and they have to be because of the car-dependence. As I said, I would much prefer a conservative approach - but not this fucking Stalinist approach. I'll pick the silly progressive approach to urban planning if the only alternative is this Stalinist shit. Because I live in the city - not the suburbs - and want to keep living there. And city dwellers should be able to govern cities while suburb dwellers should be able to govern suburbs.

[Oafish]

Unfortunately the cost of such transitions are huge. The reality is we’ve grown over many decades in a car-centric way. Who knows how things will work out. I suspect ride share will evolve to kill these municipal systems.

[JFree]

The costs of maintaining that road infrastructure are going to force the issue.

The US has about 6 million lane-miles of paved road in 'rural' and lower-density suburb/exurb areas (121,000 interstate, 540,000 arterial, 1.35 million collector, 4 million local).

There are 3 million lane-miles of road in 'urban' and higher-density suburban areas (108,000 interstate, 600,000 arterial, 330,000 collector, 1.8 million local)

Roughly $24,000 per year to maintain a lane-mile for local roads.

'Rural' areas can't begin to cover the annual maintenance expenses on their local roads and many of those will ultimately become unpaved. It'll take longer for the rural local roads to break because local roads last longer. But they will break when those roads break because no one has a debt money tree anymore.

Those interstates and arterials in urban areas destroy the transport grid there and prevent local alternative options. Eisenhower himself was annoyed when he belatedly realized that interstates were cutting through cities rather than stopping at ring roads (like the autobahn). But that's what we did (because of corruption). They can't be expanded. They can't increase volume on existing lane-miles. Those alternatives are the only thing that can increase volume. So those lane-miles are going to ultimately be reduced. Urban changes will depend on when people realize what congestion costs.

The fed gas tax doesn't even cover the interstate system and there is an $600 billion maintenance backlog for that.

[JFree]

That urban/rural delineation is here in Census info

80% of the population lives in 'urban' designated - 20% in 'rural' designated.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Fucking retards. In my small town the city bus system was "free" last summer. And they spent more tax money to promote the program, and then to report self-congratulations for having the program.

[Henry Porter]

Just when you think you’ve seen it all! I can’t stop laughing.

[DRM]

The hilarious thing is going to be when Mattel's lawyers actually take notice of this, see that letting it go is a threat to Mattel's control of its common law trade dress rights (even if the streetcar itself avoided using registered word marks like our KCSA communications and marketing director claims), and sues KCSA, inflicting legal costs well above what it cost to decorate the streetcar.

[Oafish]

That would be fun. That font looks awfully Barbie-ish. If the movie serves, the misogynist Mattel board will surely defend their intellectual property!

[AT]

Nope, still like my car. You're not going to get me out of it, guys. Relax, Mother Nature will be fine.