Taxpayer Money Floating Away on Georgetown Aerial Gondola Project

Washington D.C. wastes a great deal of taxpayer money every day, and with the national debt approaching $20 trillion, the need to eliminate waste from government couldn’t be any clearer. Unfortunately, the ways in which public officials think of ways to waste public money never ends. The latest ridiculous idea is the plan to build an aerial gondola system to be used as public transit between D.C. and Virginia over the Potomac River.  This public gondola system is being debated at a time when the Washington Metro system routinely catches on fire.

The idea for a gondola started last year with the DC/Virginia business community. After it was determined that a feasibility study for the gondola project would cost about $200,000, those advocating for the project privately raised $130,000 and needed $35,000 each from the District of Columbia and Virginia in order to move forward.  In 2015 Washington D.C. used their budget plan to test drive the study with taxpayer money. Earlier this year, Arlington County moved forward with the feasibility study by putting up their share of taxpayer funds.

This is isn’t the first time the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) has dealt with a questionable public transit project. The DC Streetcar is a perfect example of money wasted on a project that serves very few transit needs. To date, the 2.2-mile project has cost $200 million, or $83 million per mile (read TPA’s report on the DC Streetcar here).  Not quite as expensive, the aerial gondola plan has pre-study costs estimates anywhere from $40 million to $80 million. That is of course, if there are no last minute changes or delays.  In fact, the CATO Institute issued a report last year that noted that delays and overruns are a strong, if not likely, possibility.

Surprisingly, this would not be the first proposal for an aerial gondola in the United States.  Chicago’s aerial gondola system has been proposed with private financing at a projected cost of $250 million, while other cities including Tampa Bay and parts of New York City are considering proposals for aerial gondola systems.

There is a legitimate question to be asked about projects like the aerial gondola and DC Streetcar before they get underway and begin to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. The Georgetown Gondola has cost taxpayers $70,000 with the study underway, but moving forward would likely require much more funding to make the concept a reality.

Taxpayers in D.C. and Virginia should be very wary of yet another vanity project aimed at easing the traffic problems for a busy city. Those behind the project are still unsure if anything will actually happen beyond the feasibility study. Less than a month ago one of the officials with the company selected to run the study discussed the potential for making the aerial gondola system over the Potomac a reality:

It’s been a month since ZGF Architects was chosen by the Georgetown-Rosslyn Gondola Executive Committee to look into a gondola spanning the Potomac River, and a ZGF principal said in a recent interview it’s too early to say whether it will happen at all.

There is good news and bad news for taxpayers with that uncertainty from ZFG. The bad news is that $70,000 of their money was handed out to study a project that may not even get off the ground. The good news is that taxpayers may be saved tens of millions of dollars if the project goes nowhere after the feasibility study.

Taxpayers shouldn’t be taken for another ride on another silly public transit project that won’t alleviate traffic.  The Washington Metro system is a mess and ridiculous projects like this need to be stopped immediately.