Tour of Missouri Worth the Expense?

Budgets are tight at all levels of government.  Monday I was part of an estimated 75,000 spectators along the 7.5 mile route of stage 1 of the Tour of Missouri:

The tour came close to not happening this year.  The tour, in its 3rd year, is a project of Republican Lt Governor Peter Kinder.  Governor Jay Nixon wanted to cut the tour to help balance the state budget:

Gov. Jay Nixon has made public the specifics of $60 million in budget cuts he had previously announced in June.

The Department of Social Services took the biggest hit at $16 million.

In June, Nixon vetoed $105 million in spending as he looked to balance a state budget suffering from declining revenue in the wake of the recession. He also held back $325 million in spending on other projects, and directed his department heads to propose additional cuts totalling $60 million.

An early memo suggesting money for the Tour of Missouri be cut touched off a storm of controversy over the proposed cuts. The money for the Tour was saved. So, too, were some of the proposed cuts to the state Water Patrol that would have left parts of the Missouri River and Mississippi river without enforcement coverage.  (Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch 08.20.2009)

I’ve yet to find the cost to the state or the estimated benefits to local governments and the state.

Like the folks hanging out at Citygarden watching the race, above, I really enjoy the tour each year.  But does the tour make fiscal sense?  The prior two years the tour ended in St. Louis.  This year St. Louis was the location of the first stage of the week-long race across the state. Competitors, crew and even TV announcers were hear from all over the world.  Amateur racers in town for the Gateway Cup finished on Monday just before the pros got started.  The synergy  was great.  But that alone doesn’t justify the cost to taxpayers.

All states have a tourism budget.  Some run TV ads in neighboring states to attract nearby visitors.  All seem to have free state maps available. Seldom can you see and feel the direct benefit of a tourism expenditure.  Hopefully in the coming 6-12 months we’ll see some discussion at the state level about any return on our continued investment in the Tour of Missouri.  My suspicion is the partisan battle is mostly centered on the fact the tour is a project of a Republican and a Democrat now occupies the Governor’s Mansion.  It the situation were reversed we’d probably see Republicans opposing the same tour if championed by a Democrat.

– Steve Patterson

Stimulus Keeps America Motoring

Private cars are not going anywhere anytime soon but I like to see policies designed to take away the massive advantage the car has over say mass transit.

Stimulus funds, as we know, are going toward many road projects.  Yes, the road projects were “shovel ready” but only because that is all we seem to plan for.

The cash for clunkers program (officially the car allowance rebate system) has been well received:

According to a survey of car dealerships and 2,200 consumers by CNW Research, the average fuel economy of vehicles traded in last week was 16.3 miles a gallon, which is not much less than the 18 m.p.g. needed to qualify for a government rebate of $3,500.

The relatively small differential suggests that consumers have not been turning in the oldest, dirtiest and least fuel-efficient cars, but instead have been getting rid of their second and third cars, according to Art Spinella, who ran the survey.

The vehicles that consumers bought with their credits had average fuel efficiency ratings of 24.8 miles a gallon, he said.

Lawmakers hoped the cash for clunkers program, formally known as the Car Allowance Rebate System, would reduce America’s dependency on imported oil. But the early results of the program suggest that may not happen. The vehicles turned in were driven about 6,000 miles a year, he said. If the new vehicles are driven about 12,000 miles a year, the rough annual average, then consumers will actually use more fuel, not less.

“The energy independence argument did not ring true, at least so far,” Mr. Spinella said.  (source)

There is much debate about the program.  True, 2nd & 3rd cars are used as the trade in vehicle.   The new car will become the primary vehicle and the old primary vehicle will become the new secondary car in the household.

Some say the fuel efficiency requirements should have been higher.  I agree.  My guess is if they had been too high many of the new vehicles would have been foreign rather than domestic makes.  Domestic makers simply focused too heavily on trucks & SUVs.

My 2004 Toyota Carolla, built in California, has a combined EPA of 28mpg.  It is worth more than the rebate anyway.  A 1994 Carolla still wouldn’t have qualified due to a combined EPA of 25mpg.

I looked up many other cars at fueleconomy.gov to see if they qualifed based on MPG.  A 1994 Ford Crown Victoria just barely qualifies but a 1994 Ford Taurus does not.  On one hand I’d like to see 20mpg cars be replaced with 30mpg vehicles.  On the other you have to draw a line somewhere.

And clearly there has been no shortage of qualifying trade ins.  You have to wonder if buyers are going to cheap used car lots to purchase a $1,000 clunker so they’d have a vehicle to qualify for the $4,500 rebate?

The clunker program is certainly a fast way to stimulate the economy.  But it also shows how important the auto industry is to our economy.  How will we ever change that fact?

At one time the St. Louis we made streetcars used by many cities.  No reason why the shuttered Chrysler plant in Fenton couldn’t build modern low-floor streetcars for use in the Loop Trolley line and in many others.  Someone has to build the trains for the high-speed rail lines being planned in the US.

Stimulus money needs to make it easier to use our private cars less often.  Where is the rebate for trading in a clunker and buying a 90mpg scooter as a replacement? Or a 10-year transit pass?

– Steve Patterson

Annual Farm Aid Concert Coming to St. Louis Region in October 2009

Last week Farm Aid announced, at Soulard Farmers’ Market, their 2009 concert will be held at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Maryland Heights Missouri (a St. Louis suburb) on Sunday October 4, 2009.

Farm Aid’s mission:

To build a vibrant, family farm-centered system of agriculture in America. Farm Aid artists and board members Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews host an annual concert to raise funds to support Farm Aid’s work with family farmers and to inspire people to choose family-farmed food. Since 1985, Farm Aid has raised nearly $35 million to support programs that help farmers thrive, expand the reach of the Good Food Movement, take action to change the dominant system of industrial agriculture and promote food from family farms.

Some interesting facts from the press kit:

• St. Louis County has 276 farms sitting on 32,292 acres or almost 10 percent of the county’s land.
• The average St. Louis County farm has average gross sales of $86,203, while the average net income per farm is $20,587.
• With 107,825 farms, Missouri ranks second in the country for the state with the most farms. more than 96% are family-owned.
• 96% of the 691,235 farms in Missouri and neighbors (Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, & Tennessee) are family-owned and operated.

Basically we have many family-owned farms around us, more than I thought.

Online many noted that the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater is built on former farm land protected from flooding by levees.  Not exactly a natural choice but I can’t think of another outdoor venue in the region that could host this annual fund raising concert.

Once rich farm land is now parking and casino.  The proportion of parking to destination is shocking when viewed from above.

I welcome Farm Aid to the St. Louis region.  Their message of strengthening the family farm and eating good food is needed.

– Steve Patterson

A Year of Driving

A year ago today I bought my first post-stroke tank of gas. The 9 months prior to my stroke I did not have a car — my motorized transportation was a 49cc Honda Metropolitan scooter that got around 90 miles per gallon.  A year ago I felt guilty about going back to driving a car. I’m over the guilt although I want to, someday, go back to not having a car.

So the day I buy gas for the first time in nearly six months just happens to have been the day gas prices peaked in St. Louis.  I paid $3.979/gallon for basic unleaded. By December 30th I paid a low of $1.339/gallon – a 66% drop. I tracked each fuel purchase and my mpg on an application on my iPhone:

Cold winters and recent a/c use took a toll on my average MPG.  My last fill-up was on a return trip from Chicago – 70mph with a/c.  Pretty good numbers.

During the year I drove 7,200 miles which included a trip to Oklahoma and the recent one to Chicago.  Take out those two road trips and I drove about 5,500 miles around town.  Admittedly I have a big advantage of working from home.  But I also have a compact life shopping locally as well as combining trips. Even as the price of gas dropped I continued to conserve.

The above chart shows the price per gallon that I paid over the last year.  Yes, I’m a nerd by charting this but I’m a visual person.  As we seen the price per gallon has steadily increased in 2009.  It is still a long way from where it was a year ago – the climb up is much slower than the drop off.  But the prices from last summer will return at some point.  There will be a point in a year or two where $4/gallon seems low.

By the end of 2010 I hope to have another scooter — perhaps a hybrid or all-electric scooter.  Like before, I’ll go a couple of years having a car and a scooter before going to scooter-only.  This time I will be able to join Enterprise’s WeCar car-sharing program for those times when I need/want a car.

– Steve Patterson

Headquarters Symbolic of Old GM

General Motors is expected to file for bankruptcy protection today.

The GM that helped move the world from horses to Chevys and Cadillacs is expected to file for bankruptcy protection Monday. The new GM that emerges sometime in the future will be leaner — unsaddled from much of its debt and labor cost disadvantages that contributed to tens of billions of dollars of losses. It will also be almost three-quarters owned by U.S. taxpayers.  Source: AP/USA Today

But GM’s headquarters can’t be made leaner as easily.

I saw GM’s Renaissance Center, now branded as Ren Cen, in 2006 while returning to the U.S. from a vacation in Canada  The iconic headquarters gleamed in the sunlight but failed  to impress me.  It symbolizes the old GM — bigger than life, too big in fact.  Disconnected.  It is like tail fins on a Cadillac in an era of Honda Accords.

The history is interesting, starting life with Ford, not GM:

On November 24, 1971, Henry Ford II, then chairman of the board of directors of Ford Motor Company, announced the Renaissance Center project to the Detroit Common Council.  One year later, site clearance for the Center began.  On July 1, 1976 the first office tower (Tower 100) was opened.  A formal dedication was held on April 15, 1977 for the four, 39-floor office towers and the 73-story hotel.Renaissance Center Phase II, Towers 500 and 600, was opened in 1981, as a separate venture developed by subsidiaries of Ford Motor Land Development Corporation and Rockefeller Center, Inc. and purchased by ANR Ren-Cen, Inc. in 1984.

On May 16, 1996, General Motors announced the purchase of the Renaissance Center for use as its global headquarters and later announced a $500 million renovation of the Center.  The GM Renaissance Center is now home to more than 6,000 GM workers and 4,000 Center tenant employees.

• The total square footage of the GM Renaissance Center is 5.5 million.  The office towers include 2.2 million square feet of space; 230,000 square feet is dedicated to retail space. The Marriott Detroit at the Renaissance Center is one of the tallest hotels in the world with 1,298 guest rooms.
• Construction on the Ren Cen began May 22, 1973 (Phase I).
• Project architects were by John Portman & Associates.
• The Ren Cen has its own zip code – 48243.
• The GM Renaissance Center sits on 14 acres.
• There are four 39-story towers (508’ high each).
• The 73 story 1,298 room hotel (Marriott) is 726’ high and 188’ in diameter.
• There is a 5-story glass enclosed atrium (GM Wintergarden).
• There is a 12 ft. wide glass circulation walkway with access to all four towers (for exercise purposes, you need to walk around 8 times for one mile).  Source: gmrencen.com
  

Like so many projects of the era, the large site was cleaned and started over.  Shedding the past, like bankruptcy.  But in the urban renewal version the result is bloated  and detached.

The headquarters isn’t fully to blame for the disconnected from Detroit.  I-375, also known as the Chrysler Expressway, does a good job of separating Detroit from it’s waterfront.

The U. S. auto industry is getting a long overdue overhaul.  New emissions standards will alter the automobiles we see in the future.  Cities too are slowly undoing past urban renewal mistakes.  The scale of GM’s Renaissance Center means it will likely be with us long after the new GM emerges from bankruptcy.  How unfortunate.