Our city council has voted to turn control of the street car project over to the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority (CRRMA).
The CRRMA is under the control of a board appointed by city council. The governor of Texas appoints the chairman of the board. board. The board is free to make decisions without fear of facing an election.
We will have to sit back and watch to see what they do with this project.
Questions that come to mind are whether they will change the routes and if they will still be using the PCC cars that we took out of service decades ago. Sun Metro end up operating the new system. Sun Metro anticipates fare revenues of about one million dollars and expenses of $2.5 million. How will they pay for that?
City council has been told that it will have final authority over the design. Of course when you have a blue ribbon panel of advisers it is easier to vote against what has been promised.
Of particular interest will be who they chose to award the construction contract to.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Personally, I am against this project as presented, and really pissed that whoever has designed this – especially in terms of the proposed route – has overlooked the whole point of having the trolleys back in action! (Hint: trolleys used to be set up to move people to and from work and shopping). It just seems to me that tax dollars should be spent in ways to provide the most services to the most people, but this short route completely ignores a huge number of people who used to ride the trolleys! We do indeed deserve better.
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Yes, you are right.
AND. . .. If a BUS encounters a road problem, wreck, fire, construction, street repairs, . . . . . . . . IT can just GO AROUND and the people still GET TO WORK.
If a Trolley encounters . . . . ANYTHING. . . . it is dead in the water. Completely useless. And a BUS will have to be called to do something with the passengers.
With the extreme heat these days, these years, on this earth, I suppose you know that trolley and train tracks EXPAND, buckle and pop out of their position.
Bicycle tires and small motorcycle wheels and wheel chairs used to get stuck in the grove beside the rails. Read old newspaper stories and you’ll see.
When they tear up the street to place tracks, THOSE businesses will be soooooooooooooo out of work, so blocked from the construction, for months. Can businesses survive a loss of income of 10-40% during that time?
There is a difference in: What is wanted and. . . What is NEEDED in the city. I dont think they are seeing the difference.
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Ray Caballero’s trolley concept back 10 years ago was for it to begin at the hub in Segundo with two branches – one going to UTEP for the Juarez students and one to Cielo Vista for the Juarez shoppers. This seemed reasonable except that it really isn’t set up to help anyone in El Paso who has money to spend.
I don’t see where its current incarnation does any more, do you?
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“It is easy enough to see what people think they’re doing. Nor is what they really are up to hard for common sense to make out.”
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Understanding the power and influence behind CRRMA, I guess the trolley routes will include the Fountains shopping mall.
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Which would include Cielo Vista and, if we have to have the thing, at least it will carry Mexican shoppers somewhere they can generate sales tax revenue (unless the city has given Foster a complete waiver at the Fountains).
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Don’t Mexican shoppers get sales tax rebates?
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According to our most excellent city leaders sun metro has the funds to pay for it. Its self supporting.
I asked if the trolly would be in the middle of the road and they said no and I then asked how do they plan to replace the parking meter revenue that will be lost as a result of the loss of parking spaces displaced by the trolley. They looked like a deer in the headlights. Speechless they were. Dumbfounded to be polite.
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That is a good question. I think the answer was 92-100 parking spots lost. Either no one on Council thought about this or they just didn’t mention it, even those against the street car. This will be a loss that the city will have to make up, probably through more meter rate increases each year to pay for the Plaza Theater. Oh well, fiddle dee dee. 😉 This is a gift from the state so we must accept it without reservation.
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i understand the plans to be for downtown to UTEP round trip only. If the money allocated for the project was based on that plan, then why talk of any routes to see the bullfights in Juarez or to take shoppers to Cielo Vista or the Fountains.
As for whether they will use the 40 year old skeletal remains of the old trolleys or build new ones, it was also decided and planned (based on cost “savings”) to fix up the skeletons still at a couple of million apiece, I believe, but I would expect that to be super optimistic. Expect these fuzzy math estimates to prove ultra fuzzy when they start work. Remember the ballpark estimates? What happens when you have to retrofit wheelchair accessibility to these trolleys? As for parking meter revenues, who cares. They will eventually end up affordable only for the rich, while those who are not so rich will get hit with higher property taxes.
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