urbanSTL

quincunx wrote:More money for MoDOT wasn't a popular idea at the Republican Gubernatorial debate last night.

see bolded- more money for anything isn't a popular idea at that event, in any state...ever/

SB 623 has morphed into a 5.9 cent per gallon increase to be put to voters. Not enough to rebuild I 70 though. Doesn't sound like it'll make it through the House.

Plan to hike gas tax by 5.9 cents emerges in Missouri Senate

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt ... 62941.html

House isn't touching anything this year

5.9 cents = $177m

MoDOT gets 73.2% = $130m
citys pool gets 15% = $26.55
Counties pool = 11.80% = 20.45

City of stl would get about $2.1m a year since it gets 8.1% of the city pool
Stl county about $2.04m since it gets about 10% of the statewide county pool

This is on top of the money city and county already get from the their cut of the current 17 cent. About $12m a year for city of stl and about $11.3m for stl county

My handy spreadsheet explains it all

Here's a what a real Metro system looks like for a region of 2-3 million people:

It looks like it's 1/8th the area, or an area less than StL County + St. Chuck but with twice their population.

Vienna. When you have 2 million people within ~150 sq miles you can afford ubiquitous transit.

Great city all around, been there 6 times. My moms brother and sister live there

dbInSouthCity wrote:Great city all around, been there 6 times. My moms brother and sister live there

I was in Vienna only a day and a half and really impressed. Hope to go back.

A few years ago, UMSL ended the distinction between fees and tuition. Tuition was for education costs and the fees were for individual programs approved by the students for the students. By making it all one big lump sum, the administration was able to remove a bunch of stuff those fees paid for and pay for other things. For instance, in the old system everybody got metro passes but paid for parking based on credit hours. Under the new system, everybody gets a parking pass and health services got huge cuts. All in all, it was pretty shady from my view on the sidelines, but it had to happen because the students made the dumb gamble to pay for a rec center out of a dedicated fee paid by future students.

Now there's this: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/educ ... 0051c.html

UMSL is dropping it's Metro pass program. Approved by the students and allocated a designated fee, the program is now ended but the fee remains.

STLtoday is reporting that the Missouri Senate approved a measure to put the 5.9-cent state gas tax increase to a public vote: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt ... 835a0.html

House and Senate have also approved $1.71 million increase in state transit support from $500k: http://mptaonline.typepad.com/missouri_ ... nsit-.html
It's still not a lot, but that's ~340% increase.

^A decade now since Cross County was built, which is far too long for there to be no progress. Cortex Station (which won't open for another 2 years ) is a baby-step in the right direction. Hopefully the County commits to seeing its chosen alternative from the current study (whether MetroNorth, MetroSouth, or Daniel Boone/Westport) through to completion.

I have no idea why that station is taking soooooo long. They got money in 2014!

mill204 wrote:In the rail-based public transit race, St. Louis is falling further and further behind.

Four years ago, St. Louis had the 16th most riders of rail-based transit systems in the United States. By the end of 2015, St. Louis had fallen to 19th in the rankings. As of today, St. Louis is 20th. In 3 years time, St. Louis could be be 22nd which, for all intents and purposes, is rock bottom.

yep. it's amazing how quickly Denver, in particular, has surpassed us. just a few years ago both their system and their ridership were smaller than ours. now they have more track miles and almost double our ridership. and they didn't wait for their ridership to top out before they laid more track.

Denver also surpassed us in metro population in the most recent Census estimate.

When your metro and central city are growing by over 10% in 5 years, I'm sure people are excited to build.

quincunx wrote:Denver also surpassed us in metro population in the most recent Census estimate.

When your metro and central city are growing by over 10% in 5 years, I'm sure people are excited to build.

Yeah, I think their surpassing us in rail has more to do with general westward migration trends than it does with political leadership savvy or anything like that.

^ & ^^ true, they're growing fast at the moment but the metro is no less sprawly than STL metro, and Denver city is, for the time being, still less dense than STL city. if they can generate an average daily ridership of 85K then we should be able to as well. my guess is that, in part, they planned their routes strategically, rather than building cross-county lines to nowhere. there's also the whole "public transit is for poors" mentality that pervades St. Louis and doesn't seem to exist out here in the Denver area.

^ racial politics is what prevented St. Louis from building out an extensive rail network for years. The whole idea that poor, inner city blacks will ride out to lily white suburbs to cause havoc. You simply dont have that type of culture in metro areas with smallish to non-existent African American populations, which explains why Denver, Minneapolis, Portland, Salt Lake City etc. can build new light rail networks with little problem. All you have to do is look at the debates that take place in places like Atlanta and DC when it comes to rail expansion, the commentary is just as bigoted as it is in St. Louis. Only difference is that Atlanta and DC are booming metropolis' and traffic choked and need rail to get people into the center. St. Louis suburbanites will use Metrolink to go to sporting events and Lambert, but that's about it, which largely explains why Westport will be the next route built. West County people just want easy access to downtown the 80 days of the year the Cardinals are at Busch, and they also want to be able to quickly shuffle poor single mothers to flip burgers at McDonald's and quickly send them back to the hood at night.

Goat, I think you also have to consider St. Louis City situation of being the core but politically and in terms of sales tax revenue not the big boy in the room. You got this unique dynamic between a much larger county versus city which not nearly as strong as other metro regions. I can't help but think that Westport line is being pushed in part to good ol horse trading for sport complexes, from county supporting NGA in north st Louis to any convention upgrades will be money downtown to a big chunk of the GRG/Arch grounds tax dollars going downtown. Where as Westport line puts tax dollars back into the county. Unfortunately it was the opposite once upon the time and city politicians made a play to be stand alone county. One of the brutal unintended consequences

On top of that, Illinois is broke, metro east is losing population and the only support for even considering a metro expansion was the NGA fight. I think a logical expansion would include a Edwardsville/SIUE extension but that won't be happening in the foreseeable future. Metrolink moves east and population moves west.

MoDOTs draft SFY 2017 (July 1 2016) to 2021 Plan will be out for public comment starting May 11th to June 11th
first 3 years is usually the focus since year 4/5 are hard to predict when it comes to bridge/pavement conditions, so those are rarely programmed to the full budget amount. MoDOT STL District had about $1.2-1.3billion to play with over the 5 year plan. Its mostly taking care of the existing system and asset management

CarexCurator wrote:Page 18. Eliminate subsidy for Metro Pass. It would appear UMSL is leaving the U Pass program and pulling thousands of students off the rails.
http://umsl.edu/budget/files/pdfs/UMSL% ... oposal.pdf

Looks like UMSL is keeping the program, at least for now: Post-Dispatch

Earlier this month, the University of Missouri-St. Louis said it was looking at eliminating its subsidies for Metro passes for students, faculty and staff as part of an effort to trim its budget. But that plan is off the table, the university now says.

UMSL issues more than 16,000 semester passes over three semesters each year, which costs the university about $500,000, the university said.

Employees pay $75 per semester. Students do not pay directly for their passes, which are built into the overall cost of attending UMSL along with tuition, parking and other fees.

Bob Samples, an UMSL spokesman, said the university will maintain the Metro pass program through those revenue sources, and the university will revisit the issue if its cost estimates are not correct.

The latest Missouri Chamber of Commerce magazine has an interesting article about improving the St. Louis and Kansas City River Ports. The article points out that cargo from Asia will be a lot more interested in using our mid-America ports after the wider Panama Canal opens in June of this year.

Asian companies have already started buying rail to barge and truck to barge grain loadout facilities in Illinois. There's a few on the east side of the river (across from Bellerive Park) that have already been sold to Chinese and Japanese firms.