In his February 24th, 2006 State of the City Address, Mayor Michael B. Coleman introduced a proposal to pursue building a modern streetcar system for the City of Columbus, Ohio:

"...I’ve heard ideas, I’ve seen proposals, and I’ve listened to many points of view, but I’ve seen no results, so tonight I am asking City leaders, business leaders and community leaders to look to Columbus’ future by embracing a part of our past. That is to imagine a future with rail Street Cars once again gracing our streets, moving our people and energizing our core...

...We know that connectivity drives economic development, It makes it easier for people to live and work downtown, and it’s been proven effective in other cities. In Charlotte, they report more than $400 million of development in just the past 4 years along their rail line..."

In his address, Mayor Coleman also set out three fundamental principles which would guide the streetcar initiative from being just a concept to either its design and construction or its desertion depending on its ability to meet the following principles:

• It must have an economic impact, it must promote economic development and jobs
• It must reconnect neighborhoods and the destinations in downtown
• It must be affordable to build and operate without a citywide tax increase

To begin to understand why the city would even consider building a streetcar system, a very large portion of its purpose lies in the first principle: Economic development.

While the term "economic development" is just that, a term, once we begin to investigate its meaning and the factors that will potentially lead up to the city being able to achieve it going into the future, we quickly come to realize that we are attempting to address a much larger picture for Columbus of which a streetcar system has the potential of playing an important role. We'll cover more of that under the Vision section of this site.

The third principle that mayor outlined focused on the fact that a streetcar system must be financially feasible wihtout a citywide tax. To that end, and to begin to explore the details and intricacies of developing a system for Columbus, the Mayor pulled together a team of 38+ local leaders, stakeholders, community members and experts to further investigate the concept. That team was called the Streetcar Working Group.