If anyone has a documented cost estimate for the Daniel Boone/Westport line I'd love to see it. I don't remember ever seeing one. I know it was selected at one point as the best alternative for County expansion, but I'm not sure if that was accompanied by an actual estimate.
Exactly. Just because a high percentage of Americans eat fast food 4+ times a week, doesn't mean we should start putting Burger Kings in public schools. Too often, I feel that both citizens AND representatives believe the governmental purpose is wish-fulfillment...either for the presumed wishes of a constituency or the financial wishes of a lobby. Good governance though is doing what is right, and having the conviction/knowledge to know it is...despite others' need/want desires.pat wrote:Just because a high percentage of our region drives to work, doesn't mean we should continue spending money on it. If we had a more extensive transit system, you would have a larger percentage using transit. This money shouldn't be spent to exacerbate our road problem.Now if we bring in the EWG numbers from the Where We Stand: Transportation Issue, 87.6% of the region drives to work and 12.4% uses other modes. Amendment 7 in our region spends 78.55% of roads and bridges and 21.45% on other modes.
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I agree. At one point we also had a very high percentage of people commuting to work by streetcar. Did that stop govts from building highways and expanding roads?
In CMT's online survey a few months ago they had the Danial Boone at $776Mwabash wrote:If anyone has a documented cost estimate for the Daniel Boone/Westport line I'd love to see it. I don't remember ever seeing one. I know it was selected at one point as the best alternative for County expansion, but I'm not sure if that was accompanied by an actual estimate.
We should ask ourselves why this is the situation for too high a portion of our population and how land use and transportation spending restrict our choices and burden us with even more infrastructure to take care of.dbInSouthCity wrote: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
^^ Seems hard to believe as that would put the line at over $100 million per mile.
Again we should ask ourselves why too high a portion of our population has to drive this many miles and how land use and transportation spending restrict our choices and burden us with even more infrastructure to take care of.dbInSouthCity 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
Imagine is the average commute were half as long in distance. Many more could choose transit or if still wanting to drive they'd spend less wealth on gas, car maintenance, etc and it'd be freed up for other things. We'd also need less road infrastructure so less tax money out of or pockets or it could be put to other things we'd like gov't to do.
St. Louis city and county could absorb several hundred thousand more people and we wouldn't be all crammed into apartment towers and our per capita infrastructure burden would be less, not just roads, but sewers, water, electric lines, gov't facilities, libraries, schools, etc, etc. Can we rerun the past so that we didn't sprawl out so much, of course not, but we should at least quit encouraging more of it. At some pint the economic activity of an area isn't enough to cover the cost of the infrastructure that serves it and I think a lot of the region is below that line.
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I would love that! And thats why I will probably vote yes. Now I know everything reading this just said What?!? Hold on, hear it out. The city project list can move us closer to what you talked about above, and the only way to fund the $235m worth of things on the city's list in the next 10 years is amendment 7quincunx wrote:Again we should ask ourselves why too high a portion of our population has to drive this many miles and how land use and transportation spending restrict our choices and burden us with even more infrastructure to take care of.dbInSouthCity 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
Imagine is the average commute were half as long in distance. Many more could choose transit or if still wanting to drive they'd spend less wealth on gas, car maintenance, etc and it'd be freed up for other things. We'd also need less road infrastructure so less tax money out of or pockets or it could be put to other things we'd like gov't to do.
St. Louis city and county could absorb several hundred thousand more people and we wouldn't be all crammed into apartment towers and our per capita infrastructure burden would be less, not just roads, but sewers, water, electric lines, gov't facilities, libraries, schools, etc, etc. Can we rerun the past so that we didn't sprawl out so much, of course not, but we should at least quit encouraging more of it. At some pint the economic activity of an area isn't enough to cover the cost of the infrastructure that serves it and I think a lot of the region is below that line.
As far as those other projects in stl county, st.charles ect..they will be done without A7 passing, all those projects are in a long range plan and if A7 fails the gas tax is next up and that's how it will get funded
I think A7 is a small piece of the funding pie in the next 10 years and it's not worth to fight it. If A7 passes and we get a 6 year federal transportation bill thanks to the A7 money MoDOT will have enough to match all of it's federal allocation and that will be some major $$$ and that's where I would go all in for this fight, fight to change the state law where it would make 15-20% of that made available for transit. My guesstimate says that will be around $200-300m a year that could be used for transit statewide and metro being the biggest dog in the game, they would probably get 60-65% of that
I've spent some time looking at the financial section of the MoDOT statewide STIP and here is what's going on...
Right now MoDOT fed allocation is about $1billion year...about 150m goes to local governments like cities and counties and the other 850 is left for MoDOT but it doesn't get it, it has to have a state match of 20%
Now MoDOTs state rev is about $1.1billion but before you can use state funds to match fed funds you have to pay your bills and MoDOTs bills are; 240m goes to highway patrol dept., $300m for debt payments, $450 for system management (salaries, snow plowing ect), $50 for administration and about 80m for IT, buildings and fleet. So you subtract all that from the $1.1b in rev and you have negative state revenue to match fed funds. Only reason MoDOT is able to match fed funds now is because they built up something called advanced construction. In years when they bonded they had built up a balance of state funds which the Feds allow to be used in the future to match fed funds. But with gas revenue going down the gap between state rev and cost of doing business keeps getting bigger and the Credit balance is drying up. So in the near future MoDOT would have to pass up on our share
Of the federal funds because it cannot provide the 20% state match
All this was suppose to be happening few years ago but MoDOT cut it's staff by 20% in 2011-2012 to save state funds and was able to delay this Til about 2017, that's why they are projecting only $325m statewide available for construction that year.
Why do they have some much in debt payments?. Answer is simple they had a chance to get a lot of work done at prices in 2005-2008 dollars, cost of steel, concrete ect has gone up like 125% since like 1993, so their thinking was we aren't getting any new rev any time soon and with prices going up for materials up we should get done as much as possible now.
I've spent some time looking at the financial section of the MoDOT statewide STIP and here is what's going on...
Right now MoDOT fed allocation is about $1billion year...about 150m goes to local governments like cities and counties and the other 850 is left for MoDOT but it doesn't get it, it has to have a state match of 20%
Now MoDOTs state rev is about $1.1billion but before you can use state funds to match fed funds you have to pay your bills and MoDOTs bills are; 240m goes to highway patrol dept., $300m for debt payments, $450 for system management (salaries, snow plowing ect), $50 for administration and about 80m for IT, buildings and fleet. So you subtract all that from the $1.1b in rev and you have negative state revenue to match fed funds. Only reason MoDOT is able to match fed funds now is because they built up something called advanced construction. In years when they bonded they had built up a balance of state funds which the Feds allow to be used in the future to match fed funds. But with gas revenue going down the gap between state rev and cost of doing business keeps getting bigger and the Credit balance is drying up. So in the near future MoDOT would have to pass up on our share
Of the federal funds because it cannot provide the 20% state match
All this was suppose to be happening few years ago but MoDOT cut it's staff by 20% in 2011-2012 to save state funds and was able to delay this Til about 2017, that's why they are projecting only $325m statewide available for construction that year.
Why do they have some much in debt payments?. Answer is simple they had a chance to get a lot of work done at prices in 2005-2008 dollars, cost of steel, concrete ect has gone up like 125% since like 1993, so their thinking was we aren't getting any new rev any time soon and with prices going up for materials up we should get done as much as possible now.
^ Any idea why MoDOT construction budget projections would change so dramatically in one years time?
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mill204 wrote:^ Any idea why MoDOT construction budget projections would change so dramatically in one years time?
I think they are expecting 20% less in fed funds and possible talk of the state match going upped from 20 to 35 or 40%...that has been discussed as a possibility in the new T Bill that will replace map-21. the stip which by law has to be fically constraint. So they have to prove that they will have the money over the next 5 years to cover all the projects.
I think once there is a new 6 year t-bill those numbers will be revisited and hopefully the state match stays at 20%, but even if it does, as I explained above the amount of state funds available to match funds going forward is drying up because of costs of doing business. I mean just look at the city of stl, 75% of their budget is tied up in salaries/benefits/pensions
That's something I would find very interesting and perhaps even a positive development if it happened, though highly unlikely as I think many state DOTs would scream. The funding disparity between highways and transit, in my opinion, only serves to incentivize and perpetuate the continued sprawl of cities across the nation. Spend a dollar on highways, get $4 match from the feds; spend a dollar on transit, get $1 match from the feds (if you're lucky).dbInSouthCity wrote:I think they are expecting 20% less in fed funds and possible talk of the state match going upped from 20 to 35 or 40%...that has been discussed as a possibility in the new T Bill that will replace map-21.mill204 wrote:^ Any idea why MoDOT construction budget projections would change so dramatically in one years time?
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Actually 15 % of the federal gas tax goes to the transit trust fund. Reason states get $4 fed for $1, is all $5 is gas tax paid by people driving cars.
As far as upping the state match, I don't see it happening. AASHTO is a pretty powerful lobby http://www.transportation.org/Pages/Default.aspx
What I would like to see is getting rid of the Feds when it comes to $, have the Feds still have oversight but give the 18 cent fed gas tax to the states without sending it to DC first and keep allowing 15-20% of it to go to transit. I think there could be some support from the states and congress to get the Feds out of it
As far as upping the state match, I don't see it happening. AASHTO is a pretty powerful lobby http://www.transportation.org/Pages/Default.aspx
What I would like to see is getting rid of the Feds when it comes to $, have the Feds still have oversight but give the 18 cent fed gas tax to the states without sending it to DC first and keep allowing 15-20% of it to go to transit. I think there could be some support from the states and congress to get the Feds out of it
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I am not sure if I support this or not dose any one have a good reason why we should vote yes or no?
Again, the transit funding in A7 is relative peanuts, it's not worth the compromise.
As for the notion that the other projects that many of us against are going to get done anyways, they'll just find another way. So be it. While I don't support many of them, finding another way is exactly what they should do.
The idea that they'll just go raise the gas tax to do it is actually another reason for me to easily vote "no."
And again, I'm extremely confident we can find other less horrendous ways to scrounge up transit funding. Especially the minuscule amount that A7 offers.
As for the notion that the other projects that many of us against are going to get done anyways, they'll just find another way. So be it. While I don't support many of them, finding another way is exactly what they should do.
The idea that they'll just go raise the gas tax to do it is actually another reason for me to easily vote "no."
And again, I'm extremely confident we can find other less horrendous ways to scrounge up transit funding. Especially the minuscule amount that A7 offers.
If only Federal policies helped us build great cities like the one imagined here instead of undermining them.
The White House @WhiteHouse
If the GOP in Congress fails to fund fixing our infrastructure, nearly 700,000 jobs would be at risk. #RebuildAmerica
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The White House @WhiteHouse
If the GOP in Congress fails to fund fixing our infrastructure, nearly 700,000 jobs would be at risk. #RebuildAmerica
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Infrastructure has long been the one thing that has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support. Even though there's always waste, fraud and crony capitalism along the way, I'm generally all for it. Unfortunately, unlike Clinton and Reagan, we don't have someone in charge who has demonstrated any skill or tact when it comes to reaching across the aisle and getting things done.quincunx wrote:If only Federal policies helped us build great cities like the one imagined here instead of undermining them.
The White House @WhiteHouse
If the GOP in Congress fails to fund fixing our infrastructure, nearly 700,000 jobs would be at risk. #RebuildAmerica
As time goes by, Clinton is looking more and more like a total master.
I'm voting no on this sales tax.
I want a North-South metrolink not more money for politically well-connected labor unions to pave more roads.
This potential huge pot of money is making for strange political bedfellows.
http://www.kansascity.com/news/governme ... llows.html
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^ Politics unfortunately has gone south since Reagan and Clinton's day.... parties are more polarized - the Republican Party in particular has become much more radical - and the earmark, the golden tool of greasing the wheels of compromise, is pretty much out. Reagan and Clinton wouldn't know how to function in this environment. Perhaps we will get to see what Hillary can do.
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Clinton suffered through a government shutdown and a manufactured scandal. Without taking away from Bill's political skills, I think what we're seeing now has less to do with who is in the White House, and more to do with the Reagan generation of conservatives maturing. They grew up hearing the rhetoric of Reagan and Gingrich (and Limbaugh and Ailes), but unlike those guys the younger generation doesn't understand the difference between rhetoric and reality. Now you're seeing a class of conservative congressmen that pride themselves on intransigence.leeharveyawesome wrote: As time goes by, Clinton is looking more and more like a total master.
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Signs are popping up promoting Amendment 7.
http://www.fixmoroads.com/
On a side note. I am struggling to figure out why Citizens for Modern Transit is so PRO Amendment 7. Here is the editorial their pushing today.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/ma ... 4ecd1.html
http://www.fixmoroads.com/
On a side note. I am struggling to figure out why Citizens for Modern Transit is so PRO Amendment 7. Here is the editorial their pushing today.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/ma ... 4ecd1.html
School bus crushed by mythical bridge fragment! The sky is falling! Vote for the tax before you all die! It's for the children!
Shameless. How about we not build luxurious over-built infrastructure like this and keep existing bridges well maintained instead?
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KSDK - Push to pass multi-billion dollar roads/bridges measure
http://www.ksdk.com/videos/news/local/2 ... /12655481/
Shameless. How about we not build luxurious over-built infrastructure like this and keep existing bridges well maintained instead?
KSDK - Push to pass multi-billion dollar roads/bridges measure
http://www.ksdk.com/videos/news/local/2 ... /12655481/
I think the reason CMT is so pro-7 is two-fold, though this is purely speculation on my part.
1. This is the more "pure" reason. Basically, I think they seem to support any and all transit. Any transit is good transit in their view. There is seemingly no encompassing plan for what transit should be in St. Louis, and rather than help identify one and support it, they simply support any random transit project that comes up, whether it's a good one or a bad one. I think it's a terribly misguided (or perhaps UN-guided) way to advocate for transit, but it's how they seem to operate.
2. Besides the faces of CMT—Kimberly Cella and Lenora Fisher, I don't know anything about the people who run CMT other than the names listed on their website. (Yes, I could investigate this further.) But it seems abundantly clear to me that through some sort of connection, CMT is heavily influenced by politics. I don't know if it's board members that are tied to MoDOT or the concrete lobby, or if it's funding from wealthy county citizens or what. But it's very clear their true goal is not a great transit system for St. Louis. They're in bed with someone, and it makes for a pretty mediocre transit advocacy group.
1. This is the more "pure" reason. Basically, I think they seem to support any and all transit. Any transit is good transit in their view. There is seemingly no encompassing plan for what transit should be in St. Louis, and rather than help identify one and support it, they simply support any random transit project that comes up, whether it's a good one or a bad one. I think it's a terribly misguided (or perhaps UN-guided) way to advocate for transit, but it's how they seem to operate.
2. Besides the faces of CMT—Kimberly Cella and Lenora Fisher, I don't know anything about the people who run CMT other than the names listed on their website. (Yes, I could investigate this further.) But it seems abundantly clear to me that through some sort of connection, CMT is heavily influenced by politics. I don't know if it's board members that are tied to MoDOT or the concrete lobby, or if it's funding from wealthy county citizens or what. But it's very clear their true goal is not a great transit system for St. Louis. They're in bed with someone, and it makes for a pretty mediocre transit advocacy group.
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moorlander, It would be nice to know what Tom thinks about CMT's support.
Some of it may stem from the fact that it has a lot of corporate backing relative to general public support... meaning they would like to see more transit & TOD than we presently have, but aren't going to fight too hard on the issues of sprawl and over-building our highway system.... so any increase in transit-associated funding is something to support. I could be wrong, but just my perception.
Some of it may stem from the fact that it has a lot of corporate backing relative to general public support... meaning they would like to see more transit & TOD than we presently have, but aren't going to fight too hard on the issues of sprawl and over-building our highway system.... so any increase in transit-associated funding is something to support. I could be wrong, but just my perception.