Something Big Happening in St. Louis Tuesday-Thursday but not about Baseball
Yes, Tuesday-Thursday the World Series comes to town. If all goes well, the St. Louis Cardinals will defeat the Detroit Tigers all three nights for a World Series win in St. Louis on Thursday evening. But those same three days involve something far less monumental but in the long run much better: future mass transit routes. Three meetings will be held in different parts of town. The presentations will be basically the same although each one will focus a bit more heavily on alternates in that part of town:
Downtown
Tuesday, October 24, 2006 4:00 p.m.- 6:00 p.m. Presentation at 4:30 p.m. Regional Collaboration Center One Metropolitan Square, 12th Floor St. Louis, MO 63102
Southside
Wednesday, October 25, 2006 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Presentation at 5:30 p.m. Lift for Life Academy – Cafeteria 1731 S. Broadway St. Louis, MO 63104
Northside
Thursday, October 26, 2006 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Presentation at 5:30 p.m. Fifth Missionary Baptist Church Fellowship Hall 3736 Natural Bridge Avenue St. Louis, MO 63107
In the past I’ve attended all three but as I have class on Tuesday & Wednesday evenings I’ll only be able to make the Northside one on Thursday evening. If you want to be involved in shaping the future of St. Louis this is certainly a good way to do it.
The reality, however, is Metro is broke and needs more tax money simply to operate the current system. We must certainly plan for the future but until our leadership gets serious about funding priorities it is hard to take this too serious. Who among us will still be around in 15+ years when these proposed routes might have their ribbon cutting?
More information can be found at northsouthstudy.org
I heard these guys speak to a group I was with and became very excited about potential plans for a southside line, especially the version coming down Gravois. You’re right that 15+ years is a long way to wait for such needed mass transit. I’d like to see what could be done to push this along a bit fast.
The problem with these north and south route studies is that they are only piecemeal. They want input, but it is difficult when there is no overall idea how this transit system will work.
I will focus on the Southern route as an example. The Gravois route, which is now out of favor for supposedly railroad right of way problems, crosses both North/South streets and East/West Streets. The Jefferson Route crosses East/West streets only. The Chouteau Route crosses North/South Routes only.(until it turns, and then East/West only) Unless I am missing something the Gravois route would be a much better backbone for a new system, giving a much larger proportion of the population access to transit.
In fact they seem to have a fixation on getting to Broadway, and while Broadway is a major artery, it is so far out the way that it is not as useful for the traveler. Furthermore if you draw a radius around Broadway, it runs into the river, so it will serve fewer people. In addition East/West transit connections to Broadway will be limited for the same reason. Jefferson has a similar problem, although not as severe. The Chouteau route also has this problem, but it is blocked by Highway 40 rather than the river.
They complain in their literature about the use of the railroad right of way impacting businesses and residences along the Gravois route but they go into no detail what that impact is. In fact I wonder why they attempt to get to Broadway at all, it seems to me a better strategy to continue on to Kingshighway, thus picking up a majority of both North/South and East/West streets as connectors.
So a major question is how is the rest of the transit system going to work with this new route?
From a city planning perspective, Gravois was designed to be this kind of major collecting street. Why wouldn’t it be used in that way?
Whatever route is decided upon, it should relate to other routes, to land use planning and zoning. It should relate to the creation of public spaces. It should relate to housing initiatives. While all of this does not have to be worked out to the last detail, some rough idea of other planning objectives would make decisionmaking and public input more meaningful.
This scattered approach is exactly what is wrong with St. Louis. Second rate solutions are settled on because of some back room political dealings. I fear these alternate routes are being considered because of the political influence of Lafayette Square and not because they will serve the people of St. Louis better.
Unless there is a drastic change on the national level, as you point out Steve it is likely to be years before any of this is realized. So in many ways it is a one shot deal. If it is wrong the people of St. Louis will be stuck with still another porly performing urban project, critics will say “see it doesn’t work” and St. Louis will be once again miss an opportunity for progress.
It’s not just a national funding problem – local voters need to raise local taxes to get funding to a viable level. St. Louis residents pay an $0.0025 sales tax, Denver-area residents pay an $0.0100 sales tax. By paying four times as much, they’re building ±90 miles of light rail, while we talk and study hypothetical altenatives . . .
Let’s not forget that St. Louis collects an income tax, too. All options should be on the table at this point, but inefficiency in the city budget needs to be adressed before automatically raising taxes.
The ¼% vs 1% sales tax is just the local tax earmarked for transit – it’s what each respective transit operation builds their budgets on. Both get money from fares and advertising, as well as some capital and fleet-replacement grants from ther federal government, but it’s the dedicated, sales tax stream that makes or breaks expanded operations and new rail lines. You can look at other taxes, like the local income tax, but the reality is that transit will see little, if any, of the these dollars – there are simply too many other needs, like schools, public works, police, fire and parks that are strapped already and won’t be giving up any of “their” funding to help transit!
The big challenge for any city wanting to build new rail lines these days is a much higher expectation for the “local-match” component. When Metro was first built, a 10% local match was pretty much the price of admission to get federal funding. Given increasing demand for limited funds, the typical local match these days is in the 40% range, so we’re going to have to identify a pile of local money before the feds will even seriously consider putting us in line for matching funds. And while a local sales tax is the typical way its done around the country, there’s no reason why other taxes and revenue streams can’t be explored – the “beauty” of the sales tax is that both locals and visitors get to pay it, unlike a property or an income tax.
And while Denver does not have a local income tax, it does have a head tax, paid by employers, as well as a higher local sales tax and lower property taxes. Bottom line, there really isn’t any extra money lying around in anybody’s budgets these days, so the only way to expand transit here is to increase the taxes dedicated to fund it . . .
While I agree more local tax money would certainly help transit, they are not building the project in Denver with local dollars. The federal budget is somewhere around $39 billion for highways, against $9 billion for all other surface transport, including marine. Leadership at the national level, with appropriate budget changes could and would remake mass transit all over this nation. In spite of the need for America to become energy independent, Congress does nothing.
I would also like to point out it is important to have a well designed system. It is going to be more financially successful than a poorly designed one. Right now it looks like East West Gateway is leaning towards a poorly designed system.
They either don’t care, or else they are incompetent, or public hearings are merely a sham while political favors are handed out in the back room.
All I know is that they participated in the Hwy 40 expansion project planning. That will be a disaster of the greatest magnitude. There is too many people like the convicted Mayor Brown of St. Peters in government.
Goverment service for the interest of the people is a foreign concept. Government leadership serves corporate interests first and foremost. That is why it is unlikely these transit routes get funded anytime soon, no matter what the taxes are. The big land developers and road builders have the priority, and they are not finished milking the mindless suburban expansion that surrounds St.Louis yet.
Nor do they want the City of St. Louis to rebound too quickly to interfer with their cash cow. (And you thought tearing up the central highway to the City was just a coincidence)
Trust me, these transit lines could be built in the next few years if there was some leadership. They absolutely should be built in the next few years with our young men and women at war over oil, with our oil money funding much of the nonsense going on. Not to mention global warming is a real danger to hummanity. But hey,the leadership nationally and locally is in no hurry to rethink or debate basic city building philosophy. They don’t want to debate basic energy strategies for this country in public. Their buddies are geting rich off of formula development, they like it the way it is. The public interest be damned.
Is there ever any talk of putting in streetcar lines in St. Louis? While I am all in favor of expanding metrolink, I also realize that it will never be suitable for travel everywhere within the denser part of the metro area, as the current lines are only focused on connecting areas on the far edges to the center. Something along the lines of the Paris metro or the NYC subway is apparently not the vision of the StL metrolink.
I believe a tight grid of streetcar lines covering the city and extending to the inner suburbs would easily accomplish this goal for a much lesser cost. This worked very well in St Louis 80 years ago and works in Vienna, Austria today. A complete route plan similar to what we had before the lines were torn up could be replaced for just a bit more that it will cost to fix hwy 40 or build another bridge to Illinois.
With a strong network of streetcar lines within the city the pressure would be off metrolink to travel everywhere and the attention could more easily be focused on longer distance travel between the outer edges of the metro area to the city transit network while creating strategic major transit hubs throughout the area.
There is no reason why metrolink has to follow the street grid (that is for streetcars to do) it just needs to link major areas.
I agree, without an overall vision or plan, deciding on one new route seems arbitrary.
Denver is being built with a mix of local and federal dollars. A couple of new lines are entirely locally funded. Other lines are receiving more than half their funding from federal sources. Still, without a major local commitment, the feds would not be particiapting.
Should a higher percentage of our tax dollars be directed to mass transit? Maybe. Probably. WILL a higher percentage be allocated? Not likely, especially with the current administration and the political makeup. After spending a billion dollars a week in Iraq imposing democracy, there’s little left for domestic priorities!
Bottom line, if expanding mass is a local priority, we need to figure out how to fund a large part of it using local resources. Counting on the federal government for 80% or 90% simply ain’t gonna be happening, especailly if we want to see anything completed within the next twenty years!
And the ONLY reason we’re now “studying” two lines inside the city is because we received a grant to do so . . . the grant is limited to the city, so we can’t look at suburban connections, and with absolutely no construction funds available, it will remain a study on a shelf for the forseeable future! Planning for the future is certainly a good thing, but the current effort is just a politcal make-work project. Too bad the money can’t be spent educating the voters on the benefits of increased transit funding . . .
Why would you build something that is designed to lose money and increase the burden on taxpayers while only benefiting a minority of citizens?
the key is to developing this infrastructure intelligently. people who complain that light rail is a money-loser seem to ignore the fact that the new construction of collector roads across corn fields that will most likely not have the same long-term economic benefit as fixed rail.
this should not be the only consideration, however, as if we live in a universe based on neo-classical economics like some people are so sure of…
The roads that are built with taxpayer money are undoubtedly used by the majority of taxpaying citizens. This includes the 18 wheelers on which most of our goods are delivered to us. That can’t be said for light rail.
By the way, don’t we already have a public mass-transit system? It is called the bus. Why invest money in a different system?
I won’t get into the convention center. I don’t know if that benefits the community enough to be worth building (I doubt it is, though).
Rather than raising taxes for the Metro light rail, why don’t we increase the fares again. The burden of paying for light rail should be on the people who use it. Just like the gasoline taxes are used to pay for roads (that tax should be increased in Missouri, by the way).
Maybe you will say that a fare increase would disproportionately affect the poor. If that is your position then you will admit that mass transit is just another subsidy to the poor who pay very very little into our state and federal coffers. We don’t need more subsidies for the poor. Let’s spend the money on better schools.
I realize more money for mass transit is necessary. And if these transit studies get stuck in a drawer for 15 years before anything is built, then they are useless. The real changes needed are political, locally and nationally.
That could either be a change in attitude by existing politicians, by replacement politicians, or perhaps an uprising by the people of America sick and tired of useless politicians with their policies that serve a small class of people.
The money will come once the political changes are made. There will be real leadership. I have used this example before, but the lack of congressional action in creating policies for energy conservation illustrates more than any words just how bankrupt the people are in Washington.
Energy conservation should be on the top of every politicians list. Energy conservation can include new standards for cars, rebuilding urban environments, emphasizing mass transit, integrating recycling with the society and a whole host of other initiatives that can make America a sustainable environment.
Politicians instead emphasize alternate fuels such as Ethanol. This gives the appearance politicians are addressing the problem. But in fact they are only fulfilling the desire by big oil and other big corporate influence peddlers to keep things the same. And alternate fuels will keep the corporate machine in the money. Yet, energy conservation is still the only permanent solution which transcends all potential energy sources, today and the future.
While it would be great for St. Louis to be able to come up with the tax money to build these transit systems, it is unlikely the way things stand. I understand there are a lack of commitment and a lack of leadership on the local level, but as I point out it only mirrors the federal level.
The taxing system is another debate. Why send the money to Washington in the first place, only to have it sent back by Congress? In fact you can read in the Federalist Papers (I canÂ’t remember which one right now) that our founding fathers suggested that each level of government has their own tax sources, otherwise there would be double sets of officers and it would be noxious to the citizens. So what we have today for instance is income tax at the city, state and federal level. Three sets of officers, collecting the same tax.
So yes we in St. Louis should tax and build our own mass transit. Major changes have to happen locally for this to happen. The federal level of government is a disaster. Congress are expert at creating distractions, whether it is matching funds or flag burning there is always some excuse for not dealing with the problems at hand. Congress fiddles as Rome burns.
Who are these guys anyway? They will not act so the American people have to act.
Craig
Mass transit is not a subsidy for the poor. Mass transit can be used by everyone, rich or poor. In fact in most countries and some places in the United States transit is used by the all classes of people. Only 59% of the population of Helsinki, Finland own cars for example. The mass transit system is so well done, you don’t need one.
It should be clear that the road system is not paid for by gas taxes only. The feds have 39 billion in highway money they dispense.
Nor is there an accounting of the indirect expenses of gas and automobile use. These include sewers water lines, electrical and natural gas lines due to urban sprawl. Residents of Chesterfield do not pay more for these services than I do, living here in St. Louis City. These far flung suburbs are costly.
If you want to do a cost analysis of the autombile vs mass transit then you better get out your calculator.
You have pollution, additional health costs due to pollution, billions in tax breaks for billionaire oil companies, a military that is geared to protect oil supplies, there are costs out the wazoo associated with oil. Trust me gas is subsidized so heavily it would make your head spin, if you take the time to look at it.
As far as the bus system, yes it is mass transit, but other systems can be more efficient while moving larger numbers of people. A properly functional mult-dimensional mass transit system is unknown in St. Louis. You have to go to another city to experience it, maybe New York or Toronto in North America. That system must also work in concert with public space to become most effective. This means you must have good city planning in addition to good transit, unknown concepts in St. Louis.
Many trucks should be replaced by trains. General Motors went around the country and bought up trolley lines of major cities such as Miami and St. Louis. They then shut them down so they could sell more buses. They also work with government policymakers to utilize trucks rather than rail through road building and myraid policies they and their lobbyists conjure up to insure maximum financial benefit for their business.
Check it out, the oil companies run our lives.
Craig:
Metro fares have increased each of the past three years. While there may possibly be more farebox revenue possible if we could implement some distance based fare concept, the current $2.25 fare including a transfer if quite high. (You would have to spend a lot of capital to implement such a system and short trips would reduce in cost.)
In large part the three consecutive fare increases were implemented to let the tax payer see that the transit user is paying an increasing share of the cost of transit. Also be aware that transit passengers also pay taxes. These taxpayers include lower income persons who certainly pay sales taxes which provides a primary source of revenue for Metro’s transit system.
The impending financial meltdown at Metro is due to cuts in previous transit subsidies including federal operating assistance, State of Missouri transit subsidies, plus insufficient growth in local sales taxes. It is also caused by Federal laws requiring massive increases in services for disabled citizens and adding more “Metrolink” without recognizing the need to pay for the operating costs of these investments. (This is like building a new road, but failing to provide the funds to police, plow and repair that road.)
If you dream of a world where we don’t use taxes to support public transit, Metro’s transit system would be pretty small. Farebox revenue today is around $50 million on a $200 million budget. You could not even run Metrolink today for $50 million annually. If you cut the system, you wouldn’t have $50 million in annual revenue.
I had an opportunity to attend this evening’s presentation . . . if I had any expectation that this would actually move forward, I’d probably be more disappointed. As it was, I would classify the effort as underwhelming . . .
For some reason, the consultants wanted to break the small crowd into three study groups to look at each of three southside alignments – I don’t know if this was an attempt at “divide and conquer” or an effort to keep people focused on minutiae. Plus, they only allowed 45 minutes for “full consideration” of each corridor’s stations’ siting, community impacts and (very!) local preferences. I was more interested in looking at all three together, but went with the flow and left feeling not well-heard.
My other impression is that these lines are very much being designed by traffic engineers and not by urban planners. While I have no problem with shifting to low-floor, light-rail vehicles for these aligments, I do have serious problems with their insistence on having most stations (outside of downtown) located in the middle of the street, in medians! Since it appears that on-street parking will be lost to maintain two traffic lanes in both directions, I would much rather see the tracks hug the curb (at least at the stations) so that the platforms can share the sidewalk. This would reduce the need to narrow existing sidewalks in many locations and would just make it nicer to wait for a train – I’d much rather be looking in a shop window than having traffic whiz by my back 5′ away, with or without a decorative guardrail!
Finally, it seems like only lip service is being given to TOD at most station sites. There are some decent proposals for places along Chouteau, but the presenter seemed clueless about the potential around a Kingshighway station.
All in all, I didn’t see a lot of motivation from anyone involved, not the consultants and not the psrticipants. Sure, there was supposed to be game going on, and yes, it was rainy night after a long workday, and yes, getting there was a challenge with game traffic nearby, but I’m thinking everbody realizes that, bottom line, this is just an academic exercise, one that will be rehashed and redsigned if and when fuding to actually build is ever found . . .
Jim
Thanks for the update. I can’t make any of these hearings because of my daughters commitments as well as an unexpected meeting. So it is good to hear what is happening.
“Divide and conquer” is in my experience a favorite technique used in numerous hearings. That along with focusing on minutiae keeps people from asking hard questions about the central themes of the proposals. So it is not surprising that they did not allow a look of all three together.
Public hearings normally are a big show, not designed for true public input, but so they can say they got public input. They do have a place on their web site you can ask questions, and I have asked one they haven’t answered yet.
With the internet they could really monitor much more free wheeling and ongoing discussions, getting more people involved with a real impact in preparation for public hearings. Rethinking their interaction with the public and how it occurs may be more important than the determining routes themselves at this time.
In any case, while I understand these plans will get stuck in a drawer somewhere. Sometime in the future they will stick a transit system in any old way and proclaim they already had public input. That is the real danger. To me the whole system of hearings and decision-making needs to be challenged. As I have stated before, they are not serving the people.
GMihaud, there is so much of your comment that I would like to respond to. I’ll take the portion below for now:
“Nor is there an accounting of the indirect expenses of gas and automobile use. These include sewers water lines, electrical and natural gas lines due to urban sprawl. Residents of Chesterfield do not pay more for these services than I do, living here in St. Louis City. These far flung suburbs are costly.”
–GMichaud
Do you know where your water comes from? What plant your electricity comes from? Where your sewer line runs to? The answer is not downtown St. Louis.
The chances are that your home in the city is just as far away from these places as a home in Chesterfield. Possibly even further.
Finally, I didn’t claim that government doesn’t subsidize roads. It most certainly does. My point is that almost everyone benefits by having roads. Not so with mass transit in a medium to small town.
Craig-
You need to do some urban reading…
The city’s water supply is the Mississippi River, purified within the city limits. We enjoy some of the highest rated domestic water service in the country.
MSD provides our sewer service, and the city is the heart of and the oldest part of their system.
Likewise, we are at the center of Ameren’s local electrical grid.
Your point is??
Urban Reader:
The Chain of Rocks water purification plant is just as close to parts of St. Charles as it is to South St. Louis city.
The sewers in the city are certainly the oldest, but I don’t know how you can call them the heart of an entire system. MSD has five plants spread throughout the metro area and you know which are cheapest to maintain? The newer ones.
My point is that suburbs are no more “costly” to society than urban areas. That was the premise of GMichaud, paranoid genius.
Urban Reader, maybe you should learn to make inferences in order to get the point.
Craig
I don’t want to resort to name calling, if that is what you want to do go phone Rush Limbaugh. Irregardless of where the electric plant is, or the sewer plant, how many additional miles of line does it take to reach each household in Chesterfield etc? Or to put it another way, what is going to be cheaper?, run and maintain lines in dense St. Louis City, or run and maintain many additional miles of line to numerous spread out outlying areas including Chesterfield.
The automobile has many hidden costs, whether you care to admit it or not.
Go ahead respond to the rest.
Another way to look at costs of utilities and infrastructure in general is to look at a single city block. I live in a block approximately 400 feet long. There are 12 households in the block. Actually more, but I am considering two family flats as townhomes, single family homes. The same block in Chesterfield might have 4 homes. In some areas it may be more. Even 60 foot lots would be roughly 6 homes. It is unlikely you would go below 60 foot lots in new developments.
So the cost of installation and maintenance is two to three times the cost of city infrastructure.
Nor is it right to factor in the age of the system. If the systems where maintained on schedule as they should be (which is not always the case)it would not be an issue. Everything else being equal, a fifty year capital program for sewers would cost 2 to 3 times as much in Chesterfield compared to the city. (Chesterfield will get old too)
The suburbs are fine; people live where they want to live. But policies have protected the automobile at the expense of the rest of society. A study of corporate history related to government will show oil, the automobile and related industries with undue influence upon policy.
Compare this to Stockholm for instance, they developed a policy in the 50’s for planned suburban development along new rail corridors, like fingers radiating from the center. In between is park land, green space. Infrastructure costs where held in check and resources conserved.
It is an example of a rational policy, perhaps not possible in America, where directing money into a few hands seems to be the only real force in play. In fact look at the lack of discussion and major initiatives for energy conservation (it would seem conservatives are not really conservative). The discussion focuses only on developing alternative fuels. That approach allows the oil companies to maintain their position.
Yet energy conservation trumps all sources of energy. Conservation will work when the corn crops fail, or if the middle east refuses to sell oil. It should be a main focus of national debate, but all you hear is ethanol, ethanol. Any thinking person should be asking why?
GMichaud, I don’t know what sort of utopian government you want where people with money don’t influence elected officials. This will always happen.
You make it seem as if laying electrical lines and sewer pipes is expensive. It isn’t.
Calm down, paranoid genius.
Hey everybody! Craig has just singlehandedly dismantled decades of evidence that low-density suburban living is less efficient than high-density urban living. Never mind that greater New York’s 18 million people use less energy than the 493,000 residents of Wyoming; Craig’s got it figured out! We might as well close down every urban planning department in every university in the country and just turn the whole thing over to Craig. Who needs evidence and facts when you’ve got a big mouth to shoot off?
Jason, I believe that Wyoming uses more electricity than New York PER CAPITA.
This makes sense given Wyoming’s small population and significant industrial presence vs. NY’s large population and relative dearth of old fashioned energy burning industry.
Maybe you should learn how to apply facts accurately and responsibly in order to provide meaningful analysis rather than smugly spouting off like a cocksure hippy.
craig,
You make it seem as if laying electrical lines and sewer pipes is expensive. It isn’t.
can you back that up with some numbers and comparisons?
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