As community leaders, members of the local press and a large assembly of Madison citizens gathered Monday to listen to Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and an urban planner from Portland, Ore., extol the virtues of a proposed streetcar system in Madison, a mixed vibe settled over the room.

While starry-eyed progressives listened intently to the hypnotic cantor poured forth by the featured speakers, others sat in total befuddlement as to how this seemingly absurd proposal could garner so much consideration from a rational audience. Actually, before drawing up battle lines, it may prove more productive to try to understand why such a drastic measure seems attractive to a metropolitan area with relatively insignificant transportation woes.

Above all else, the hideous blunders of 20th Century urban planners come to mind. With the meteoric rise of the automobile in American culture, urban communities all over the nation raced to accommodate the massive flows of traffic expected. Within a matter of just a few decades, recklessly designed freeway systems shot up like weeds all over the American landscape. In places like Portland, Milwaukee and Atlanta, the situation reached near crisis proportions.

Realizing this egregious error of foresight, urban communities began tearing down freeways at an astonishing rate to help restore the long-lost curbside atmosphere of their respective downtowns.

And rightfully so. Yet, as an unfortunate byproduct, the light rail movement — not in itself an entirely dangerous entity — has spun furiously out of control, taking transit initiatives either completely too far or implementing lines in cities with absolutely no need for such a massive public undertaking.

And now, much like the Zebra Mussel or those pugnacious Asian Lady Beetles, European light rail developers have hopped the pond and attached themselves to the underbelly of urban America, mesmerizing policymakers with seductive promises of revolutionary urban renewal. Such is the case in Madison.

“The Skoda people (the Czech railcar company that supplied units to Portland) visited Madison about three or four years ago, and I took them on a tour of State Street,” Cieslewicz said Monday. “They thought that this would just be an ideal community for their vehicle.”

Representatives of a railcar manufacturer believe Madison is ideal for their product? How utterly compelling.

To supplement their lofty claims, rail programs have begun the dubious practice of taking credit for urban renewal successes they in many cases don’t deserve. The shining example seems to be Portland’s beautiful cultural haven known as the Pearl. A formerly dilapidated warehouse district, the Pearl underwent a sharp reversal of fortune beginning about 15 years ago.

Naturally, streetcar proponents pointed to the introduction of the new lines, not opened until 2001, as a principle reason for the $1.4 billion turn. Yet this story certainly isn’t entirely unique. The Pearl, Cleveland’s Flats, Milwaukee’s Third Ward and Atlanta’s Castleberry Hill all share something in common, and it has nothing to do with what rolls down the street.

In each case, the neighborhoods offered pioneering inhabitants with vast amounts of floor space close to downtown at relatively (often extremely) low rates. Combine those factors with the rich industrial history of the respective areas and the neighborhoods quickly became bastions for each city’s artistic community. In time, the municipal governments began to take notice, pumping funding into catalyst projects in the areas until each became a testament to the city’s urban renewal program.

For the Pearl, one of those catalyst projects became the development of streetcar lines throughout the district. Yet as the other examples clearly show, monumental success can be just as easily achieved through lest costly initiatives.

In fact, the term itself reveals the true nature of the streetcar’s questionable contribution. Derived from chemical origins, a catalyst is a substance used in small quantities to expedite an already undergoing reaction.

Therefore, if the fruits of the effort become a reactant, rather than a method to help get developers interested in making a community investment (say, in the form of a electric streetcar system at a cost of $24 million per mile of track), then the city crosses a line between fostering growth and subsidizing it — a state of affairs beneficial to nobody, spare the government officials looking for a quick résumé builder.

Conveniently, these light rail and streetcar lines tend to traverse areas already tagged for exponential growth. Following the same method of logic, a hotdog vendor could have set up shop across the street from Fenway Park earlier in the fall and claimed himself a force behind the Red Sox pennant run. Every so often, Milwaukee mulls over plans to construct electric streetcar lines near downtown — take a guess which neighborhood is always on the map.

It’s unfair, however, to say Madison can’t benefit at all from this proposal. Yet, without first fixing the gross inefficiencies in the current transit system and exploring less costly alternatives, Cieslewicz’s plans seem foolhardy at best. Another option also lies before the city: a 12-mile light rail system built upon existing freight tracks.

These diesel powered hybrid trains would not only carry a per-mile price tag a mere fraction of their streetcar counterparts, but would also more effectively elevate traffic deadlock at peak commuting hours by connecting the city to outlying communities. Additionally, it allows for further transit expansion using this base step as a benchmark rather than constructing a sprawling system that very well may not reach ridership expectations.

Of course, despite the city’s miniscule population relative to other communities planning streetcar systems, the hasty route appears a more popular option right now. After all, as long as this trend of euro-erotic urban planning continues to gain foothold in major metropolitan areas nationwide, isthmus dwellers will continue to wonder: Why not us?

Oh Madison, how you cherish your precious delusions of grandeur.

Patrick Klemz ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism.