Never heard of him and thats a good thing...MoDOT needed a outside leader...

The commission is pleased to announce the appointment of Patrick K. McKenna as the new permanent director of MoDOT. Following an extensive nationwide search, the commission selected McKenna to lead the agency based on his many years of solid success and transportation expertise.

He previously served as the deputy commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Transportation, a role that is the chief financial, operating and legislative officer for the organization. He has also worked in leadership positions in the public, private and non-profit sectors. Director McKenna also worked for several years as the sole proprietor of a real estate holdings company. He has been involved in youth sports organizations both as a coach and by serving on several boards of non-profit sports foundations.

The commission is confident that Director McKenna has the vision and drive needed to lead MoDOT to the next level of success.

ajwillikers wrote:

dbInSouthCity wrote:The commission is confident that Director McKenna has the vision and drive needed to lead MoDOT to the next level of success.

I'm hoping his first point of business is to purge ownership of the lettered state highways thus solving this "crisis of maintenance obligations."

Here here. Also, rationalization of roads such as the Page Extension that aren't really necessary and just strain the budget would also be great.

^ thats politics.
MoDOT is de-centralized agency...7 districts have their own budgets. STL being the biggest that gets about 33% of all MoDOT $2.4B budget (includes 250m to highway patrol, 300M for debt payments) STL District is STL CITY, STL COUNTY, Franklin, Jefferson and St.Charles.... East West Gateway (elected officials from those areas) decide where the money is spent...and they have a soft unwritten allocation...STL county 50%, City 20%, St.Charles 15% and Frank/Jeff split the crubs.

^ I wonder if some of this is a way to put pressure on legislators and taxpayers in more rural areas to do something to increase funding, since the 80% is almost exclusively rural. (though a lot of the 20% is rural too)

Is there also a priority to fix any roads that there is a safety concern due to design issues and/or high accident rates? And of those are there any sections locally that could use improvements based on safety?

Finally, isn't one thing that will help in future funding is that most of the Mississippi and Missouri river bridges has or will be replaced soon? Since a lot of those across the state have been done or will be soon. One major project that might need to be done soon is the I-70 Missouri River bridge west of Columbia. If I recall that is not to current standards and is getting old. Another bridge that might need work is route 21 over the Meremec River

325 system plan has been scraped. Since state revenue in sfy15 came in $50m higher. That matched another $200mil in fed funds. So 325 for construction became $575 in 2017. 2018 is looking like 650-700.

30,000ft view of how state dot funding work
State revenue;
State gas tax $600
Sales tax on cars $350
License fees $300

Expenses- $150m to cities and counties (city of stl gets $12m a year from gas tax + car sales tax. No idea what it uses it for). County gets $23m
$200m to highway patrol
$250m debt service
$300salaries/benefits 5100 workers
200m for general maintenance program

$150-200 left over to match fed funds. Missouri usually gets about $1b allocated to match.

Than of the $1.2b stl gets 33%

State revenue in general is up. But MoDOT is self funded and separate from the states general revenue. MO Legislature doesn't have much control over MoDOT $. It technically approves the budget but it can't amend or change it. And Fed transportation $ is just a pass through in that budget. State can't just say well let's take $200m of that top from fed funds and fund schools than give MoDOT the rest

MoDOT is funded from sources; gas tax, car sales tax and license fees. For state fiscal year 2015. (July 2014 to June2015) it was up $47m more than projected. For SFY 2016 July August and Sept so far it's up $18m more than projected. I would guesstimate by end of the fiscal year in June it will be up around $60-70m more than expected.

The federal funds are always the same regardless of fed gas tax revenue since Feds supplement it with general revenue. Fed gas tax brings in about $35b a year (15% is allocated to the transit account) and it spends about $45b (10b coming from general rev). Missouri allocation is generally around $1-1.1billion. If other states can't match some of its allocation it goes back into the pool at end of federal fiscal year and it's divided to states that can match it. MoDOT has always been able to match extra until last few years. Should be able to do that again going forward. Cutting 20% of its work force, closing 3 districts and selling 700 pieces of heavy equipment has helped a lot


It's all very public, just need to know where to look
http://modot.org/plansandprojects/const ... ancial.pdf

(They make some very bad assumption imo in regards to federal funds in a chart for future years, it's just not realistic that Feds would cut its spending for transportation in half in 4 years). And now with a new 6 year fully funded bill passed this financial section will look very different in Jan 2016 when it's updated for the 2017-2021 plan

There are plenty of people who think the Feds should get out of the business, convert the current 18 cent fed gas tax into the state gas tax...but i think if they did that it would be hard to have/enforce national standards without control of the purse.




every MoDOT project done in the 4 County+STL City region in the last 10 years has been signed off on by Mayor Slay + President of the BOA Reed. East-West Gateway approves MoDOT projects in the St.Louis region.

Here are your decision makers
http://www.ewgateway.org/AboutUs/BOD/bod.htm