“Throw us a lifeline,” Ald. Scott Spiker wrote Tuesday in a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy seeking help to shut down Milwaukee’s streetcar system.

Spiker wants the federal government to let the city shut down The Hop without having to repay a prorated portion of the federal grants that funded it. A Department of Public Works official recently estimated the city would need to repay $48 million immediately.

The alderman believes the system has no prospects for expansion, and the $4.2 million the city must spend to operate it in 2026 is a waste for a system that only serves “the unhoused and the well-heeled.”

If Duffy would let Milwaukee out of its repayment obligation, Spiker believes he could convince his colleagues to kill the system.

“That is $4.2 million that

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