Haha. Of course, ALL that value of a trolley system that isn’t track, wires and trolleys.addxb2 wrote:If the region can make the case that everything (less the track, wire, and vehicles) were required to operate a successful autonomous circulator, City and County could be asked to repay only a % of what is deemed irrelevant (rail, cars, wire).
You're kinda taking some of the statements made and amplifying / exaggerating them. I don't think anyone is screaming from the rooftop like you're insinuating. I stand behind my sunk cost fallacy comment. If there is a realistic financial way forward then by all means that should be used as a supporting argument. I'm not against the Trolley operating if it is a true value add for the area and can justify future expenses. But at the same time, it is bad practice to use sunk costs in future decision making processes.wabash wrote: ↑Oct 14, 2019Seems like there’s a lot of schadenfreude on this thread. “They need $700,000?!? Shut it down!!!” “Don’t give into the sunk-cost fallacy!!” “Scrap the infrastructure and replace it with different vehicles!!”
This is a good take. It also appears it might happen. The City has not ruled out providing some funds from that MetroLink tax according to recent reporting in the PD. The City and County combined are sitting on about $100 million in unused transit funds as of right now. Also worth mentioning that while the County Council isn't too keen on helping out the trolley, Sam Page has said he doesn't mind pitching in if the City does the same.SouthCityJR wrote: ↑Oct 15, 2019^Thanks for the numbers. $20m is quite a bit of money that is currently not being used for much of anything. If leaders are genuinely worried that the failure of Loop Trolley would imperil future STL transit projects' ability to obtain federal money, this is a no-brainer since N-S will only work if we get substantial federal money. Again, I'd propose a loan rather than outright contribution.
I think this was the Loop Data Rail guy. Whenever he talks about what he wants to do, I'm always left with "now what is it that he wants to do?" Like there's a lot of words, but what is IT exactly?framer wrote: ↑Oct 15, 2019Someone on Nextdoor mentioned the idea of getting iNeighborhoods involved. Does anyone know anything about this group; what they do, how they could possibly help the trolley? Is this worth looking into? Apparently they're already involved with The Loop in general.
https://ineighborhoods.us/delmar-loop-i ... ghborhood/
https://ineighborhoods.us/
City should just scrap the N-S Metrolink idea. Focus on BRT and maybe a N-S modern streetcar line. I actually think a couple critical regional BRT lines, a city only N-S modern streetcar, and maybe the Westport line out to Danforth is a more reasonable approach to transit expansion. At our current rate it will be 2080 before we complete the Metrolink vision that everybody wants. Then EW-Gateway and Metro should focus on pushing Transit Oriented Development around transit stations and Form Based Code in the urban core.dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑Oct 15, 2019City has around $20M in the N-S Fund
So...N/S as it's planned now is basically a modern street running light rail. Isn't that pretty much the same thing? Why toss out all the work that's recently been done to start all over planning essentially the same thing? The studies are done for N/S, it's time to move onto the environmental phase...that's further along than any other proposed extension to the system currently. I also fail to see how building out the Westport line in an abandoned right of way would produce better TOD than a street running light rail in the dense urban core. There are tons of complaints on this site alone about poor station placement due to the way MetroLink was built back in 1993. Westport (which the county hasn't even studied nor even funded a study of) would be built the same way. Those County lines are way, way behind the current proposed N/S alignment (which is only from Fairgrounds Park to Cherokee Street, btw. Not city limit to city limit as was originally proposed). That line is going to be a lot easier to get done then starting over the entire process to plan a modern streetcar, build a bunch of BRT lines, AND somehow build out Westport.goat314 wrote: ↑Oct 15, 2019City should just scrap the N-S Metrolink idea. Focus on BRT and maybe a N-S modern streetcar line. I actually think a couple critical regional BRT lines, a city only N-S modern streetcar, and maybe the Westport line out to Danforth is a more reasonable approach to transit expansion. At our current rate it will be 2080 before we complete the Metrolink vision that everybody wants. Then EW-Gateway and Metro should focus on pushing Transit Oriented Development around transit stations and Form Based Code in the urban core.dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑Oct 15, 2019City has around $20M in the N-S Fund
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... op-story-1“It’s likely some of the funds would have to be repaid, we just have to determine how much that would be,” Wild said. “The Federal Transit Administration is trying to be very deliberate and careful in what their determination is going to be, because, to the best of their knowledge, this is not something that has occurred in their region and we’re not sure if there is a precedent for this.
