Maybe we shouldn’t have been quite so quick to yank streetcar service in Waco many moons ago. Downtown developers and transportation officials are now contemplating a return to fixed-line trolley service downtown, connecting the city with Baylor University, parts of East Waco and perhaps even the emerging Baylor Research and Innovation Collaborative recently announced.

The idea is a thrillingly intriguing one and the subject of a $300,000 study soon to be approved to examine the feasibility of an electric-run streetcar line and, assuming it’s even viable, where routes should best be laid.

Chris McGowan, urban development director for the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce, is among those aggressively touting the idea of such a system, if only because of how it might spur the success of downtown revitalization. We’re more cautious about the idea, especially when one considers the wide variance in cost estimates, ranging anywhere between $24 million to nearly $50 million. We wonder if such an investment is the wisest for downtown, especially as various funding sources are expected to tighten in coming years.

And yet, we acknowledge the vivid promise that such a fixed-line trolley service might yield, including statistics that indicate every dollar of investment in such a line can return several dollars in private investment, bolstering local business endeavors along the tracks and increasing the walkability of our downtown — a crucial step if more people are to live and work downtown in the coming decades, as city leaders fervently hope.

Yes, we admit mixed feelings about the cost tag for this study — to be funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, so-called “stimulus funds” — and yet the success fixed-line streetcars have had in cities ranging from Portland, Ore., to Little Rock, Ark., to Tampa, Fla., beckon to us. Would it hold similar promise in Waco?

“Portland, they put $103 million into their first 4 miles (of streetcar track), and in the last 10 years they’ve seen $3.5 billion in private investment,” McGowen tells Trib staff writer Michael Shapiro. He also notes that Little Rock in the past five years has seen over $200 million worth of investment on its $19 million streetcar system within two to three blocks of the streetcar line.

One thing’s sure: Both our business and civic leaders need to be aboard this thing to properly sell it to a somewhat doubtful public (judging from an admittedly unscientific poll taken by the Trib earlier this year). And if the project is to be done, it would probably best be done in conjunction with plans that the Texas Department of Transportation has for expanding frontage roads along busy Interstate 35.