Ft. Worth, Texas is the latest city to be smitten with a desire named streetcar.

The Star-Telegram turned nearly two full pages of its opinion section into a slick campaign brochure, complete with photos in living newsprint color, touting the joys of electrified conveyance. While the article did offer some contrary views, it looked suspiciously like a Steve Fossett around-the-world sized trial balloon for boondoggling citycrats.

Streetcars are the latest transportation fad, second only to kids' Street Flyers with retractable roller-skate wheels. But while the wheelie shoes offer 100 percent occupancy rates, light rail never comes close. In 1990, the US DOT reported average light rail ridership shortfalls of 65 percent below original estimates.

The biggest problem with streetcars and similar light rail schemes is that they cost billions in taxpayer dollars and rarely, if ever, meet their promoter's grandiose promises. Consider these nuggets culled from a report titled "Trolley Folly" by Thomas A. Rubin and Wendell Cox of the Texas Public Policy Foundation:

· In 1994, St. Louis voted to build six additional rail lines. By 1996 it finally dawned that taxes were insufficient to pay for more than one line.

· In 1996, Seattle decided to build a light rail line. Now they're flirting with a billion dollars over budget before construction has even begun and there's insufficient funding to complete the promised program.

· In 1998, a Charlotte plan projected to cost $1.1 billion through 2025 to build five transit lines and expand bus service has ballooned to $2.8 billion and cannot be completed as promised.

· The DART rail system in Dallas has been downsized to less than 100 miles, even though the tax rate remained at the level that was supposed to finance the original 160 miles. Costs were grossly underestimated in the plans presented to taxpayers, with costs per mile for the first 20 miles approaching $45 million, more than a 60 percent increase.

Nor are streetcars the non-polluting angels they're made out to be. They just shift the effluence to somebody else's backyard. Electrical power has to be generated somewhere. Maybe by a coal-fired plant in another county which pumps contaminants into their skies. Or by the friendly neighborhood nuke works, which means radioactive waste gets buried under somebody else's mountain.

Furthermore, streetcars do their own share of polluting. Those contacts (catenaries) on the poles that ride the overhead electrical lines where they get their power cause arcing and sparking, which creates ozone along the entire route. An official of the Jefferson County (Missouri) Air Pollution Control District observed, "Ozone is the primary ingredient in smog which affects the respiratory health of the more than 100,000 people in our metro area alone who suffer from chronic health conditions like asthma."

So why do people keep voting for streetcars? James V. DeLong of the libertarian Reason Public Policy Institute claims it's a driver's wet dream. SUV owners, to paraphrase DeLong, imagine, "If all those other road ragers park their cars and travel the trolley it'll leave more pavement for me." In short, everybody expects everybody else to ride the rails.

Turns out, however, the Star-Telegram is not quite the streetcar drum-thumper it first appeared to be. The paper actually solicited readers' views on public transportation with phrases like "Look beyond the obvious" and "We're asking for your vision."

So here's the libertarian vision: people don't expect city planners to create a chain of McWendyKings with taxpayer money, so why should taxpayers finance public transportation? In a free society, entrepreneurs will jump in and compete furiously for people's commuting business. Large bus lines, small bus lines, individually owned busses will thrive wherever the free market decides. Some riders will prefer door-to-door van service, or shuttles with flexible routes, or even a neighbor with a hatchback looking to make a few extra bucks. Jitneys will go where and when people want to go.

Taxicabs should never be a legalized monopoly as they are in nearly every city in the world. Large fleets, small fleets, individually owned -- and legal -- gypsy cabs should all be allowed to compete. People know what best serves their needs. Public transportation administrators, who never seem to ride busses or streetcars to work because they have taxpayer funded reserved parking spaces, don't.

The libertarian vision, in short, is a free market in public transportation where individual customers vote with their own dollars on what, when and where they want to ride.

Streetcars? Fine. Let Desire Incorporated build and operate them.