The first line of The Associated Press article said it all: “The trolley is making a comeback.”

Sure, the article conceded, trolleys had been falling out of favor with the public for years, but “[n]ow gas prices, air pollutants and spiffy promotional campaigns are making people more aware of the trolley as mass transit.” One trolley company even said that at least 10 cities were “studying or planning or requesting funding for new light rail vehicles.” On that list: Kansas City.

Sounds like trolleys are the fresh, happening thing these days when it comes to municipal development, except for one important thing: The article quoted here is from 1975. As long-time residents can tell you, Kansas City does not have a streetcar today, and it’s hard to argue that streetcars made a substantive “comeback” in the 1970s, or since.

But will Kansas City soon bring streetcars back to its Main Street?

Maybe, if the city has its way. Last month, the Parking and Transportation Commission and the Kansas City Council approved a plan to install $100 million worth of trolley lines following a 2- mile route running from the River Market to Crown Center.

That’s $50 million per mile; a ludicrous expense, and that’s in the context of a city that has seen its share of ridiculous rail proposals over the years.

Indeed, the idea of bringing rail lines in one form or another has been kicked around exhaustively for the last two decades, and there are, in fact, two competing passenger rail proposals in Kansas City: the Main Street trolley and, no joke, yet another $1 billion-plus rail project that perpetual rail proponent Clay Chastain has proposed.

But even Chastain, the name and face behind KC rail for years, won’t rally behind a trolley project.

“You’re not going to take a streetcar to the airport,” Chastain told The Kansas City Star. “This is not the major response we need to build a world-class transit system.”

When Clay Chastain says your project is impractical, it just might be impractical.

Missing in all of the streetcar talk is any substantive discussion of why these projects are necessary, or even desirable, especially in today’s economic circumstances. Kansas City and other cities removed their trolley lines decades ago in no small part because trolleys were impractical for their times, and the impracticality problems of trolleys remain to this day. The Parking and Transportation Commission’s own report puts the expense of trolleys at five times what a comparable bus costs, and that’s assuming there are no cost overruns in the trolley line’s construction.

But let’s break this municipal issue down to its most salient and important question: Is a trolley project really the best use of already-depleted taxpayer dollars? The money Kansas City would spend on these projects couldn’t be spent on other pressing municipal matters. What would the city forgo if it rebuilds rail lines that were torn out long ago?

In this economy, Kansas City needs… trolleys?

Really?

Patrick Ishmael is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri Public Policy.