urbanSTL

If there's one argument I absolutely can not stand, it's the "if the gas tax is raised, you'll wind up paying for it somehow" argument. It's moronic. It precludes any possibility of improving transportation efficiency by removing the incentive to do so. Why grow food or manufacture something locally when possible, when the public will subsidize the cost to ship it from 2000 miles away?

bprop wrote:If there's one argument I absolutely can not stand, it's the "if the gas tax is raised, you'll wind up paying for it somehow" argument. It's moronic. It precludes any possibility of improving transportation efficiency by removing the incentive to do so. Why grow food or manufacture something locally when possible, when the public will subsidize the cost to ship it from 2000 miles away?

Because you will pay every time you get gas.....
People will keep driving at the same rate weather the price of gas is 2.50 or 3.50 or 4.50 or 5.50 per gallon because it's still the most efficient way of getting around. 31% of people in NYC take transit to work that's the highest in the country, next top 4 are all between 11 and 15%. So even places where it's supposedly not efficient to drive, people in majorities drive to work in every US region. I would lose 23 extra days a year sitting in a bus if I took transit to work instead of driving. 23 days is worth $19,260 to me and I would save $1200-2000 a year by taking transit for a net lose of $17000+ a year...I rather drive and have the extra 23 days a year to spend with family, friends, at home working around the house ect and keep paying the extra $1200-2000 a year that I would save if I took transit

dbInSouthCity wrote:

bprop wrote:If there's one argument I absolutely can not stand, it's the "if the gas tax is raised, you'll wind up paying for it somehow" argument. It's moronic. It precludes any possibility of improving transportation efficiency by removing the incentive to do so. Why grow food or manufacture something locally when possible, when the public will subsidize the cost to ship it from 2000 miles away?

Because you will pay every time you get gas.....
People will keep driving at the same rate where the price of gas is 2.50 or 3.50 or 4.50 or 5.50 per gallon because it's still the most efficient way of getting around. 31% of people in NYC take transit to work that's the highest in the country, next top 4 are all between 11 and 15%. So even places where it's supposedly not efficient to drive, people in majorities drive to work in every US region. I would lose 32 extra days a year sitting in a bus if I took transit to work instead of driving. 32 days is worth $19,260 to me and I would would save $1200-2000 a year by taking transit for a net lose of $17000+ a year

Do "people" include Europeans? Because they drive considerably less, largely due to the fact that gas is expensive.

Ebsy wrote:

dbInSouthCity wrote:

bprop wrote:If there's one argument I absolutely can not stand, it's the "if the gas tax is raised, you'll wind up paying for it somehow" argument. It's moronic. It precludes any possibility of improving transportation efficiency by removing the incentive to do so. Why grow food or manufacture something locally when possible, when the public will subsidize the cost to ship it from 2000 miles away?

Because you will pay every time you get gas.....
People will keep driving at the same rate where the price of gas is 2.50 or 3.50 or 4.50 or 5.50 per gallon because it's still the most efficient way of getting around. 31% of people in NYC take transit to work that's the highest in the country, next top 4 are all between 11 and 15%. So even places where it's supposedly not efficient to drive, people in majorities drive to work in every US region. I would lose 32 extra days a year sitting in a bus if I took transit to work instead of driving. 32 days is worth $19,260 to me and I would would save $1200-2000 a year by taking transit for a net lose of $17000+ a year

Do "people" include Europeans? Because they drive considerably less, largely due to the fact that gas is expensive. I

We are talking about the st.louis metro region I believe and sometimes referencing other places in the US. Euros also like living in 400 sq apartments.

Your argument is ridiculous. You are weighting all transportation modes as equal and assuming that most consumers make a conscious choice to drive. They don't. When gas is at $3.50, there's little incentive for middle class people to ride public transit. However, when it is much more expensive, as you can see in places where people generally have a higher quality of life then the STL Metro, people ride mass transit.

So your solution is to force people to take transit by raising the price of gas? As I've said people will keep driving even when gas is $5.50, if you start pricing gas at 8-10$ a gallon then maybe people will consider transit in this area. And even then 65-70% would still drive, as pointed out NYC has the highest transit usage in the country at a whopping rate of 31%

Force? No. Encourage them by taxing gasoline to pay for roads as opposed to taxing diapers? Yes. Somehow, all these nations have higher qualities of life despite having higher gas prices.

Netherlands Amsterdam $6.48
Norway Oslo $6.27
Italy Milan $5.96
Denmark Copenhagen $5.93
Belgium Brussels $5.91
Sweden Stockholm $5.80
United Kingdom London $5.79
Germany Frankfurt $5.57
France Paris $5.54

From http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/ ... gasprices/

I would check the bottom of the list and ask some people whether the residents of those countries enjoy not having the cost of gasoline passed on to their goods and services.

Ebsy wrote:

And even then 65-70% would still drive, as pointed out NYC has the highest transit usage in the country at a whopping rate of 31%

Also, this is factually inaccurate, because beyond that, people ride their bikes and walk to work in New York, and I would imagine private car ridership is much less than 69%.

US average is 83% driving and 17% other modes which includes carpooling.
So in NYC, of that 44%, (see chart one) I would say a lot is carpooling in that number. in stl of the 12.3 % that take other modes, 70% is carpooling. See bottom chart
so as I said in most of the places 65 to even 85% drive

The New York data does not make sense, as 31% of New Yorkers ride public transit, and a further 11% ride their bikes or walk to work. The New York data must not include carpooling, because the numbers do not add up.



p. 8 http://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/acs-25.pdf

Ebsy wrote:The New York data does not make sense, as 31% of New Yorkers ride public transit, and a further 11% ride their bikes or walk to work. The New York data must not include carpooling, because the numbers do not add up.



p. 8 http://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/acs-25.pdf

they come from the same place. And let's not just stick to NYC....after NYC the next highest is SF at 31 and average country wide is 17.7, only 12 places are above the average and all those are between 18 and 28% other modes including carpooling.

dbInSouthCity wrote: Because you will pay every time you get gas.....

Even if you believe the impact of a gas tax would be distributed amongst the population exactly the same as a sales tax, that would mean it's no worse. If you don't, why do you think the distribution of a gas tax is worse than sales tax? Ditto for putting the cost on truckers. Different taxes mean different incentives, and the sales tax is a worse incentive.

I do understand why people would support the tax, though. If you value some of the projects, as many of us do, and you think this is politically our best chance at doing them, it's a fair choice. I would prefer to hold out for a better funding mechanism and a less wasteful spending plan, but it's not factually incorrect.

Nothing you've said makes me think raising the gas tax isn't a smarter and more logical way to raise this money. Not to mention tolls, though I recognize that isn't likely to get through because people suck.

And once again may I suggest that we take the logical step of taxing online purchases.

If we would just raise the gas tax 10 cents and enforce the online sales tax, we could put all of the gas tax to roads (as it currently is), and then split the online sales tax 50% to roads, and 50% to transit, biking, ped, etc.

We'd have enough money to not only maintain our current robust system, but also stupidly expand it, AND build out and maintain a fantastic transit system.

If a person making $100,000 a year drives 12,000 a year and a person making $24,000 a year a drives 12,000 miles year, both will pay an extra $80 a year if the gas tax is raised by 20 cents. If you hike the sales tax by .75% the 100k person will spend probably 15,000 a year on things taxable by this sales tax and pay extra $112 a year in sales tax and a person making 24k will spend about $3500 a year on items taxable by the .75% and spend an extra $26 a year

Somewhat applicable article that I wish got into more detail. http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/should- ... rom-zurich

If a person making $100,000 a year drives 12,000 a year and a person making $24,000 a year a drives 12,000 miles year, both will pay an extra $80 a year if the gas tax is raised by 20 cents. If you hike the sales tax by .75% the 100k person will spend probably 15,000 a year on things taxable by this sales tax and pay extra $112 a year in sales tax and a person making 24k will spend about $3500 a year on items taxable by the .75% and spend an extra $26 a year

Do a 20 cent gas tax increase and a .75% sales tax increase raise the same amount of total funds?

dbInSouthCity wrote:

MarkHaversham wrote:

dbInSouthCity wrote: Because you will pay every time you get gas.....

Even if you believe the impact of a gas tax would be distributed amongst the population exactly the same as a sales tax, that would mean it's no worse. If you don't, why do you think the distribution of a gas tax is worse than sales tax? Ditto for putting the cost on truckers. Different taxes mean different incentives, and the sales tax is a worse incentive.

I do understand why people would support the tax, though. If you value some of the projects, as many of us do, and you think this is politically our best chance at doing them, it's a fair choice. I would prefer to hold out for a better funding mechanism and a less wasteful spending plan, but it's not factually incorrect.

But how long do we hold out? 2 years? 5? 10? I don't think the political winds in this state will blow towards the other modes side any time in the next 10-20 years. A7 is a small opening to grab $320m and run with it, leverage fed funds and turn it into 600-700million

Given the state of our transportation system and much needed maintenance I would guess they'd have a new funding option in front of us almost immediately. I'm sure a plan b is already drafted.

pat wrote:

If a person making $100,000 a year drives 12,000 a year and a person making $24,000 a year a drives 12,000 miles year, both will pay an extra $80 a year if the gas tax is raised by 20 cents. If you hike the sales tax by .75% the 100k person will spend probably 15,000 a year on things taxable by this sales tax and pay extra $112 a year in sales tax and a person making 24k will spend about $3500 a year on items taxable by the .75% and spend an extra $26 a year

Do a 20 cent gas tax increase and a .75% sales tax increase raise the same amount of total funds?

I believe there was 3 billion gallons sold last year so at .20 cents that's $600m a year. The .75% sales tax is projected to raise $540m a year without any growth but history shows it will grow 1-3% a year so at the mid point (year5) it will even out

I think the best simple funding alternative might be online sales taxes, which someone said before would raise roughly the same amount while helping local businesses.

STLEnginerd wrote:Suburban branch lines that feed a trunk line through the city center. the combination of which create frequent express type service through the city center. Not saying i advocate this but that sure sounds kike an arguement forWestport line over NS...

I agree that Westport seems like a better line for boosting frequency in the city where the lines would overlap. But I don't think there's any other reason to do it, and it's way more expensive than N-S, especially when you take into account the likely lack of federal fund matching. A trillion dollars with no help from the Feds for a Park 'n Ride shuttle is just too hard to justify.

^I don't think they wouldn't build it without federal matching funds. Following the Cross-County fiasco I think there was collective acknowledgement that we'll never go it entirely alone again. At least that was part of the pro-Prop A platform.

Also, I'm not sure that it would cost more than N-S. Especially considering much of the right-of-way is already available.

It would be more of a park-n-ride/commuter rail, but I think STLEnginers makes a good point about shared alignment frequencies and a Westport line. Everything east of Clayton would have 6-10 minute headways, everything east of Forest Park-Debaliviere would be 4-7 minutes. It doesn't get a lot of attention, because it's not as exciting as new stations or lines, but headways and anticipated wait times for passengers makes a huge difference in ridership and perception. Jarrett Walker argues this point in his book Human Transit, and points out that fast but infrequent service ends up being significantly less attractive to riders than slower but frequent transit.

A Westport line may not be the most transit friendly corridor to pursue, but it would still mean more trains running through the central corridor more often. For a station like CWE, the line would increase its utility not only by connecting it to Westport, but also by connecting it to downtown and Clayton more often.

How much would it cost to just run more trains on the existing lines, without expansion?

I remember the cost for Westport being something like $800m, and North and South being around $500m each? So Westport would be cheaper than a full N/S expansion, but with way less utility and higher cost per-mile. Or I'm misremembering the costs.

Edit: VVV Thanks. If I have the relationships relatively right, that's all I care about for now.

Numbers like that have been around since 2007 I believe. So I would add 15% to anything you see out there