The Portland “transportation mafia” tentacles reach into The Oregonian editorial board. In a Sept. 30 op-ed the newspaper justified massive federal funding for a trolley extension because “the streetcar, while frequent, is slow. People rapidly discover they are better off walking than waiting for it to come.”

S-l-o-w, expensive streetcars foster walking. You need not be a brain scientist to see the logic. How about: Don’t build the streetcar system, reduce spending by hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars – and people will walk anyway.

This editorial pronouncement came in a month during which two reports were published that conclude: claims of urban rail benefits don’t quite pan out, from economic revitalization to the environment. See “On the Social Desirability of Urban Rail Systems” in the Journal of Urban Economics (“The Train Drain,” by Robert W. Poole, Jr. provides a good summary.) See also, “Light Rail on I-90 Will Do Little to Reduce CO2,” published by the Washington Policy Center.

The Oregonian is taking aim at the Federal Transit Administration. The origins of the spite can be read in the Sept. 25 front page article, “Streetcar bumps into federal bias for buses.” The subtitle: “Grant-givers say people-hauling efficiency is their primary goal, not urban revitalization.”