Santiago, Chile, is a city of more than 5 million people, with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. In the latest episode of EconTalk, host Russ Roberts of George Mason University talks to Mike Munger of Duke about the city’s mass transportation system. In the middle part of the last decade, Santiago featured a flourishing system of private buses, with more than 3,000 companies offering quick and inexpensive transportation all over the city and mostly managing to turn a profit. The system was not without its flaws, however. The buses emitted a great deal of pollution, and overzealous bus drivers often caused accidents or hit pedestrians in efforts to pick up passengers before their competition.

Such problems led the government to scrap the private system in favor of a public one in 2007, and Munger explains how this led to far worse outcomes on pretty much every measure. The average commute for a mass transit rider immediately skyrocketed from 40 minutes to an hour and 40 minutes. This encouraged more people to drive or use small taxi services, feeding a vicious cycle. Furthermore, because bus drivers are paid based on how often they are on time, they have no incentive to stop for passengers at bus stops if they are running late. The extremely lengthy lines for buses routinely lead to pushing and shoving to board and fights often break out. Although the public system was specifically designed to solve safety problems in the private system, the number of wrecks actually increased because the city purchased extra long bendy buses, which require two lanes to turn, so cars frequently crash into them. Finally, the system as a whole went from running a profit of $60 million to requiring a government subsidy of $600 million — more than $100 for every resident of Santiago.

Munger argues that the problems with the private buses could have been solved relatively easily without resorting to socializing the system. A very minimal licensing requirement could ensure that the buses do not emit excess levels of pollutants, and the enforcement of property rights in private bus stops has been shown to prevent buses from driving recklessly to swipe passengers out from under the competition. Although Saint Louis and Kansas City do not have the same level of demand for bus services as Santiago, the city has shown that government ownership is not necessary for a decent mass transportation system.

While representing the Show-Me Institute at the Missouri State Fair, I took some time to wander around the Missouri Department of Transportation’s Highway Gardens. En route, I unexpectedly encountered Barrel Bob, an anthropomorphic structure of orange construction barrels that is used to incite drivers to reduce their speed in construction zones.

I like Barrel Bob. I am amused to learn that Barrel Bob has been assassinated and kidnapped, and that he has a girlfriend named Barrel Betty. I would not be surprised if Barrel Bob were more effective than distribution of pamphlets or public service announcements at promoting highway safety.

However, I have questions relating to the Highway Gardens. Why does the Department of Transportation own and operate them year-round? Is this an effective method of promoting highway safety with taxpayer funds? Could the money used to maintain the Highway Gardens be put to better alternative uses, such as fixing roads in Missouri?

While looking for some academic papers on Google Scholar, I took a moment, as an afterthought, to see whether the search engine was picking up work produced by Show-Me Institute scholars (it is). To my surprise, a brief article that I cowrote with intern Abhi Sivasailam was the first delivered result in a search for “Show-Me Institute” on Google Scholar.

Normally, I would be thrilled. But, sadly, the study wildly misrepresents Abhi’s and my work.

We were cited in a study published by U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), an organization that initially began as a public interest law firm founded by perennial presidential candidate Ralph Nader. There are now many state-based PIRGs, who, according to the organization’s mission statement, stand up to powerful special interest groups in order to advocate for the American public.

In February 2010, U.S. PIRG published “The Right Track: Building a 21st Century High-Speed Rail System for America,” about the benefits of intercity high-speed rail. In 2009, President Barack Obama invited states to apply for federal funds that would be devoted either to updating railroads or to building entirely new rail systems. Authors Tony Dutzik, Siena Kaplan, and Phineas Baxandall argue in the paper that additional funding is necessary to bring America up to speed, as it were.

“The worst, most costly mistake America can make going into the 21st century is to not invest adequate resources in upgrading and expanding our passenger rail network,” write Dutzik, Kaplan, and Baxandrall (emphasis theirs).

This blog post is not to argue with PIRG’s conclusion — I believe others can, and have, argued persuasively that government-provided, high-speed rail is costly and usually doesn’t deliver what’s promised. Instead, this post is about academic integrity.

U.S. PIRG cites Abhi and me as the source for the following:

Missouri has applied for funding to pave the way for future 90 or 110 mph service continuing from St. Louis to Kansas City. The projects would reduce delays on this corridor by 48 percent, increasing the number of trains arriving on time from 19 percent to over 80 percent.

The cited source is an article we wrote titled, “High-speed rail predicted to travel much slower than advertised.” I re-read the article, hoping to find where Dutzik, Kaplan, and Baxandrall could have interpreted our work to indicate that “Missouri has applied for funding to pave the way for future 90 or 110 mph service continuing from St. Louis to Kansas City.”

I can’t find specific text that backs up the 90 or 110 mph service to which the PIRG authors refer. I did find the following in our article:

[...] trains traveling the route between Kansas City and Saint Louis would travel much slower. According to the state’s preliminary application for federal funding, those trains would travel an average of 55 mph after improvements, a 5-mph increase from the current average speed.

And:

In order for passenger trains to reach a maximum speed of 110 mph on the route between Kansas City and Saint Louis, a large portion of the track would need to be rebuilt as a double track, Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis said.

“I don’t think anyone is seriously thinking of higher than 90 between Kansas City and Saint Louis,” said Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, who studies transportation issues.

In fact, a takeaway point of our article was that there is a difference between maximum speed and average speed. Just because some state governors say that a high-speed rail train will hit speeds of 100 miles per hour doesn’t mean that your travel will remain at that constant speed. More than likely, your average speed will be much slower, with the train hitting that maximum speed for a short duration of time.

PIRG also notes, in the sentence attributed to us, that “The projects would reduce delays on this corridor by 48 percent, increasing the number of trains arriving on time from 19 percent to over 80 percent.”

According to the state’s application, we wrote in our article, trains were rarely arriving on time in Missouri:

According to the preliminary application, only 18.6 percent of trains running between Kansas City and Saint Louis arrived on time during the federal fiscal year of 2008.

So, I suppose that’s how the authors arrived at the figure of 19 percent. And we did write that the Missouri Department of Transporation (MoDOT) had estimated that, with improvements, the percentage of trains arriving on time would increase to 80 percent (we wrote that the estimated figure was 80 percent, not over 80 percent, as written in the PIRG paper). But Abhi and I also noted that trains had been arriving on time more than 90 percent of the time in recent months. And, to my dismay, I cannot find in our own work the 48-percent delay reduction figure that PIRG attributes to us.

Furthermore, it is strange that the PIRG authors attributed these figures to a brief article written by Abhi and me, rather than to the entities and published reports that are the direct source of the estimates we used. We simply reported what the transit improvement claims were; we did not verify them.

Finally, we represent merely one citation of 238 in this particular U.S. PIRG publication. If our work was misrepresented, it is certainly possible that other authors or facts were misrepresented, as well.

I will let Abhi have the last word, via this statement that he sent to me:

That researchers affiliated with the Show-Me Institute have been critical of high-speed rail projects in the state is readily apparent. In fact, pieces of published scholarship and blog content can be read as direct critiques of fundamental arguments that lie at the core of the paper released by PIRG. It is important to stress, however, that these disagreements are not on trial in this post.

This post was motivated not by an inclination to re-engage debate on high speed rail, but rather to offer a clarification of prior work and expound on a teachable moment: misrepresentation of this nature, however slight, damages the academic enterprise. Though the transgression was minor, such acts of misrepresentation represent a deficiency in either academic integrity or academic rigor that can damage the credibility of all parties involved. Scholarship with such errors invites not just skepticism on the quality of sources, but on the quality of the contentions they support.

A trolley line serving the Kansas City Strip recently opened and is slowly building a clientele in the area by providing easy transportation to bar patrons on weekend nights. The Kansas City Star reports:

While ridership has fluctuated wildly depending on the weather, it has ticked up most weekends since June (except for the slow July 4 weekend), reaching more than 800 people on July 30 and 31.

That’s not yet close to the system’s capacity of 1,200 per night.

“You don’t change people’s patterns immediately,” [chief executive of the Kansas City Transportation Group Bill] George said. “Let’s face it, this is not a mass transit town.”

But he said ridership is where he hoped it would be at this point.

Most remarkable of all is that this trolley line receives very little government funding:

KC Strip received $100,000 in tourism tax dollars through the Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund.

The City Council also approved $295,000 in convention/tourism taxes. Of that, $95,000 was a grant and the rest a secured loan, to be paid back over four years.

These are tiny subsidies compared to the $25 million in federal funding that the Loop Trolley in Saint Louis is set to receive. The KC Strip trolley service should prove to be a fairly good market test for trolleys in Missouri’s cities. If it prospers, it will show that such mass transit options do not require lavish public subsidies to survive. However, if it fails to make money, it’s a good indication that people are not terribly interested in riding a trolley system, so we should save our public dollars for more pressing needs.

A few months back, I merely joked that after we had banned texting, phone calls, shaving, and more while driving, the next logical step — to protect the children — would be to ban listening to the radio while driving. Somebody didn’t get the memo that it was a joke, because a study just came out claiming that listening to your favorite sports team can be distracting and dangerous while driving. This is not a joke. The Kansas City Star has an article on the deadly radio epidemic here.

As absurd as this may be, I think we all know that some nanny-state politician somewhere will read this study, want to make the world a safer place, and attempt to implement some type of radio ban. And, sure enough, it will be met with ridicule at first, and go nowhere. But a few years after that, somebody will cause a major accident because they overreacted to a Tigers touchdown, or, worse yet, because they tried to change the radio station, and suddenly it will become a serious issue — one that must be dealt with because “public safety” demands it. And then, the next thing you know, radio controls will be mandated for the steering wheel, and internal car radio volumes will be legally controlled (we already have noise ordinances for the external volume), and sometime around 2025 I predict an outright ban on car radios. This study is just the start of an entire process.

Just yesterday, I wrote about the loathsome move by the itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny city of Charlack to install speed cameras on I-170 in St. Louis County. We’ve had a discussion in the comment section of that entry about the closely related issue of what happens when the owner of a road (in this case, the state of Missouri) and the city it goes through (in this case, Charlack) disagree on a policy, such as a speed limit or cameras.

As if on cue, today’s Post-Dispatch has a story about a disagreement between St. Charles County and MoDOT regarding bicycle restrictions on state roads within St. Charles. One councilman, Joe Brazil (I have had the pleasure of meeting him, and we have praised him here in the past for his stances against annexation and TIF abuse), wants to ban bicyclists from certain state roads in the county. MoDOT is opposed. My purpose here is not to discuss this specific issue, but rather the process. Nonetheless, I don’t support banning bicyclists from any roads other than interstate highways, and I have to point out one comment in favor of the proposal to ban bikes by someone who, understandably, has a personal interest in the matter:

Among supporters was Stephen East of Cottleville, whose 16-year-old daughter was seriously injured in a 2003 accident on DD when the vehicle she was driving topped a hill and encountered a bicyclist in her lane. East said she swerved, ran off the road, hit a tree and was thrown from the car.

“Public safety trumps personal rights,” East said.

No, sir, it doesn’t. And it is exactly this far-too-common belief that our safety is more important than our rights that is causing us to lose our rights to safety zealots via death by a thousand cuts. I give you helmet laws, seat belt laws, closed swimming pools, and the fact that organizations can no longer just have a bake sale or parish pot luck because health regulations forbid food cooked at a home from being sold or given away elsewhere. Because, you know, that’s “dangerous.”

But I digress. MoDOT says St. Charles can’t enforce the ordinance because the Highway Commission won’t approve it. MoDOT says it simply won’t post the signs telling people about the law — making it invalid under state law, which specifies that traffic rules must be properly posted for people to see. So, if St. Charles passes the ban and MoDOT won’t allow the county to enforce it, there will be some sort of court challenge. That might be the only way to answer the question of who has final say about roads — the governmental jurisdiction that owns it or the governmental jurisdiction it passes through.

In my opinion, the final say on traffic laws should belong to the jurisdiction that builds, maintains, and “owns” the road, if for no other reason than consistency. Hopefully, this will be further clarified soon, and hopefully in a way that does not allow cities like Charlack to do whatever they please on state or county roads.

I’d be delighted to see a statewide ban on things such as red light cameras and speed cameras on all roads. As the laws are currently written, though, I don’t think there is any doubt that cities can do whatever they want on city roads. (Thanks to Combest for the link.)

The Post-Dispatch reports today that the city of Charlack is installing speed cameras along I-170 in near-north St. Louis County. The city is installing the camera on a state-owned bridge to give tickets for speeding on a federal/state highway. The mayor of the town of 1,431 people must think the rest of us are morons if he actually expects anyone to believe this:

Despite criticism that cameras are aimed at generating revenue, [the city's mayor] said Charlack passed a budget that did not count on camera fines. He said the ultimate goal is to phase out the photo program once motorists regularly drive more slowly through town.

The idea that the city will phase out the cameras once people drive more slowly is perhaps the most unbelieveable statement I’ve heard a politician say in a long time. And who cares if they passed a budget that did not count on camera fines? All that means is that they can spend the money however they want once it starts flowing in.

I have argued that the many small cities in St. Louis County should continue to exist as long as the citizens want them to. Here is the conclusion to my Government in Missouri study:

Missourians have chosen to have a large quantity of smaller government units. They have also chosen to have a large number of elected officials, representing smaller areas than the national average, so that the citizens may be in closer contact with those officials and monitor them more effectively. Economies of scale can be exploited in larger governments, as shown in the graph of per-capita spending for class three counties, but the efficiencies and benefits of larger government are less common and less significant than often supposed. The assumption that larger, less fragmented government is a more capable and efficient provider of services does not stand up to initial analysis and is not supported by the research.

But behavior like installing speed cameras, which is nothing more than a technologically advanced version of St. George–style speed traps, makes me question that once again. I would certainly favor legislation at the state or county level to forbid these types of cameras on the road — at the very least, on state or county roads.

I believe that speed cameras, just like red light cameras, are nothing more than a giant scam. I also believe they violate our rights — most importantly, the right not to be tracked by cameras every moment of your life. I am confident that would have been the Eleventh Amendment included in the Bill of Rights, if cameras had been invented yet.

The Kansas City Star recently reported on Kansas City’s adoption of a long-range transportation plan to “emphasiz[e] energy conservation, environmental protection, public health and creat[e] places that are compact, walkable and bike-friendly.”

Conservation and improved public health are great, but expanding transportation options isn’t necessarily so. Plans to overhaul roads and transportation access require a careful consideration not just of costs, but especially of consumer demand. Millions of dollars spent on public transportation projects — whether for buses, light rail, or cars — need to be seriously evaluated not just in terms of cost, but also in terms of projected use based on actual demand, not wishful thinking.

Many of the problems (beyond cost alone) with the Kansas City transportation project were already highlighted in a 2008 Show-Me Institute policy study. Chief among present problems, however, is that long-term public financing can be uncertain and unsustainable not only because of state-level budget concerns, but also because many transportation projects are heavily subsidized at the federal level.

From the article:

The federal government is taking other steps to encourage alternatives to the car.

The Department of Transportation is loosening the criteria for picking rail projects, which could benefit Kansas City as it pursues a commuter rail network and a downtown streetcar line.

And [Transportation Secretary Ray] LaHood recently drew fire when he announced on his blog that the government would “discourage” transportation spending that negatively affects bicyclists and pedestrians.

“This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized,” LaHood wrote.

Relying exclusively on large public financing distributions may in fact distort the transportation options commuters actually want and would use. Most importantly, if citizens do demand alternative mass transit options, public financing needn’t be their only recourse.

In the first half of the 20th century, Saint Louis boasted an extensive system of streetcars, which were slowly wiped out by the private automobile in the later 1940s and 1950s. One of the last profitable streetcar lines in the area served the Delmar Loop (so named because it was where the streetcar looped around), and it may be making a return:

[A] federal grant [...] could finally make a long-sought streetcar route a reality.

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced today a $293 million investment in transportation projects around the country, including $24 million for a two-mile trolley line that would run between Forest Park and the University City Loop. [...]

Supporters of the Loop trolley have said it could cost between $45 million and $55 million, with private donations covering the portion not covered by public funds.

I think it’s laudable that a great deal of the trolley’s expenses will be paid for with private funds, but I’m still suspicious of anything that requires federal funds. If it’s such a great idea for everyone involved, why can’t all the money be raised from Loop merchants and other donations — or, if a government entity has to be involved, University City? Costs aside, I have a number of other reservations about the project.

Driving on Delmar between Skinker and Kingsland is already a nightmare, and I’m pretty sure a slow-moving trolley would make matters even worse. If the trolley only ran in the Loop itself, that wouldn’t be such a huge issue because people wishing to bypass the area already know how, but it will also be running up Delmar to DeBaliviere and from there to the art museum. Those are both pretty major thoroughfares, so the trolley could cause traffic to pile up, which will cut into any environmental benefit it might have.

Furthermore, this area is already overserved by rail. Anyone wishing to travel from Forest Park to the Loop can do so quite easily by hopping on the MetroLink, as the Loop Trolley Project’s own website shows.  Granted, MetroLink can’t drop you off every block, but the entire Loop is only about seven blocks long, which is hardly a long walk from one end to another.

Finally, if trolley riders aren’t brought to the area by other forms of mass transit, they will have to park and ride. The Loop has a large parking lot, which is often near capacity as it is, but I am not sure where people wishing to ride from Forest Park are supposed to park their cars. Without more parking capacity, I don’t see how the line can attract enough riders to make it worthwhile, but I don’t know where they will put more parking.

I don’t think any of these points show definitively that the Loop Trolley is a bad idea, but they are questions that should be addressed before we start lavishing tax dollars on the plan.

Today’s Joplin Globe (one of our favorite papers here at the Show-Me Institute) featured a story about the new MoDOT five-year plan, which involves much less money for new projects than in prior years. I have no issues with MoDOT’s plan. I am a transportation enthusiast, not a civil engineer, but from everything I can tell, MoDOT does an excellent job with our money. However, before I get to the meat of the matter, I do have a quibble with the way the agency expressed this funding decline in its press release:

Only one-third the size of the 2009 program, it barely has enough funds to take care of the existing system.

Is it possible that an extraordinary set of circumstances in 2009 — perhaps a massive stimulus proposal intended to get the economy moving — might be why the 2009 program was so large, and why future programs look small by comparison? Why, we had the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that year, of course. I realize that this is a minor quibble, but comparing government funding in other years to 2009 will always be unfair. It’s like talking about Major League Baseball piching stats from 1968, or hitting stats from 1930 — you have to give some allowance for context.

But onto the bigger question: How will these upcoming annual appropriations affect Missourians? I, for one, am underwhelmed by the risks. For starters, it is only logical that at some point in a state not experiencing much population growth, expansion of the transportation system will level off. Eventually, an adequate system has been built, and if the population is no longer growing, it does not need much expansion. However, I do agree with the central point of this statement by the MoDOT chairman:

“It’s not just jobs that are related to the construction of the highways. Economic development follows transportation.”

The key for me is that I’d like to see as many of those transportation improvements as possible be private, rather than public. (Note: This observation in itself does not entail a critique of MoDOT, which is also pursuing expanded opportunities for public-private partnerships and tolling, in some instances.)

I could (emphasis on the could, not would) support a gas tax increase if it were used to fund necessary transportation improvements and system upkeep that the upcoming levels might fail to meet. I see no way in which I’d support a general sales tax increase for something like our transportation system that can be paid for in a much more targeted and efficient manner — be that tolling, gax taxes, or property taxes for local roads.

Thanks to Combest for the link.

Yesterday, Combest linked to a story in the Post-Dispatch about a talk that former MoDOT director Pete Rahn gave in St. Louis. His point was that we need to reinvest in our transportation infrastructure, yet Missouri does not tax enough to pay for our needs. According to Rahn:

Add up gas taxes, registration fees and license plate fees and the average Missourian pays $129 in state transportation taxes a year, Rahn said.

That sounds about right, but it is important to point out that you pay more when you include federal and local transportation taxes. My calculation is that the average Missourian who lives in one of our larger cities (where they have transportation sales taxes) probably pays around $450 per year in total transportation taxes. Assuming you drive 15,000 miler per year at 20 mpg, own a $100,000 home and a $10,000 car, and spend $10,000 a year on taxable goods, that would roughly lead to:

• $138 in Federal gas taxes
• $129 in state gax taxes
• $100 in local transportation sales taxes (using Columbia’s rate of $0.01 per $1; the St. Louis rate is slightly higher after the recent Metro vote)
•  $23 in local property taxes (using the St. Louis County road and bridge rate of $0.105 per $100; this rate varies widely by county)
• $50 per year in plates and registration (varies by horsepower of vehicle, length of registration, etc.)
• $10 per year in local car fees (city stickers, etc.; again, varies greatly between areas)

My guess is that most people would have guessed more than $450 if you asked them to estimate their total transportation-related annual taxes. Other points Rahn made include:

Don’t count on the gas tax, said Rahn. It pays most of the bills now, but raising it is “extremely unpopular,” Rahn notes, and it has a limited shelf life, with alternative fuel vehicles expected to take bigger and bigger market share.

I disagree with that. I think Missourians might approve a reasonable gas tax increase, if asked. The article continued:

One alternative, a “vehicle miles traveled” tax, which charges heavy drivers more than light ones. Another? The opposite approach, a general sales tax, which would hit everyone about equally, recognizing that we all benefit from highways even if we don’t use them.

It did not seem from the article that Rahn was advocating for a sales tax increase, thankfully. Increasing sales taxes to pay for highway investment is a terrible idea. That moves in the direction of externalizing the internal costs of a car, which is completely the wrong direction. Truckers and bicyclists should not face the same tax burden to pay for roads. A gas tax increase far better approximates a user fee.

Finally, Rahn gets to the key point:

And, he said, get used to one thing we don’t have much of here:

“Tolls are going to have to be a part of it,” Rahn said.

Tolling is something I support completely. Our transportation funding should be a mixture where gas taxes serve as the baseload, dedicated property and sales taxes support local transportation, and tolls increasingly augment the highway and bridge system.

The Metro Board of Commissioners approved the St. Louis regional public transit agency’s Fiscal 2011 operating budget of $232.4 million in late May with the declaration that the spending plan “includes funds to restore transit services that were cut in 2009.” This comes, of course, following the passage of Proposition A by St. Louis County voters in April, which imposed “a countywide sales tax of one-half of one percent for the purpose of providing a source of funds for public transportation purposes.”

A closer look at Metro’s announcement of its Fiscal 2011 budget, however, yields the following admission (emphasis added):

In addition to restoring services eliminated for financial reasons in 2009, [Metro President and CEO Robert J.] Baer said the new sales tax revenue is committed to replacing a $5 million decline in sales tax revenue and replacing the one-time appropriation of $12 million from the state of Missouri in FY 2010. The revenue also will replace millions of dollars in federal capital funds spent on operations in FY 2010, freeing those federal funds to be used partly to acquire more buses for service restoration. The new budget also reflects $6 million in higher costs for fuel, medical costs and utilities, and $4.8 million more to provide additional services under contract with the St. Clair County Transit District in Illinois.

[...] He said that even with plans to hire 120 new drivers, mechanics and supervisors needed to restore service, the agency would operate with approximately 90 fewer employees in 2011 than it did in 2009.

So, what gives? St. Louis County voters approved a sales tax increase — which triggered a coincident sales tax increase in St. Louis City of one quarter of 1 percent — yet the Metro transit agency will provide a diminished level of service in fiscal year 2011, as compared to 2009.

Yes, the Cross County MetroLink Extension undeniably increased operating costs for the agency, but alongside this increase in fixed operating costs, net sales tax disbursements to Metro in constant dollars exhibit the following negative trends:

Net Transportation Sales Tax Disbursements to Metro in Constant (2009) Dollars

[I calculated the above and below charts using data from Metro's 2009 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report and the Consumer Price Index Inflation Calculator from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website; you can review my dataset here.]

Net Proposition M Sales Tax Disbursements to Metro in Constant (2009) Dollars

Now that Proposition A is a reality, Metro will have an additional source of sales tax revenue over and above the two illustrated here. Despite the seemingly strong evidence illustrated above that sales taxes in St. Louis city and St. Louis County are not sustainable funding sources for public transportation, there are other reasons to believe that Metro will continue to face budgetary problems in the future.

The East-West Gateway Council of Governments said in its preliminary presentation on development incentives research dated Jan. 28, 2009, that:

Higher sales tax rates will suppress local sales and drive higher internet sales.

Ironically, raising sales taxes for Metro so that its commuters can “[get] to work” will necessarily reduce retail employment, further compunding the transit system’s revenue problems as fewer persons buy monthly passes.

Proposition A may very well be the clearest illustration of a “job-killing tax increase,” not only for us but for Metro as well.

This blog has had favorable things to say about the governor’s hard choices and tough decisions when it comes to the Missouri budget, so a bit of mild criticism on another issue is probably fair — just to even things out, for the fun of it. Today’s Kansas City Star has video of the governor visiting the famous Claycomo Ford Plant. (The city really is named Claycomo, as in Clay County, Mo.) The governor calls for the legislature to pass a tax credit for companies that invest in plant equipment directly leading to Missouri jobs. He explains in the clip that this credit would be different than the other types of tax credits he has said need to be cut, as the Show-Me Institute has also argued. 

Be that as it may, I still think I have a better idea. If you want to help the Ford plant in Clay County, make it easier for officials there to lower the enormous commercial property tax surcharge that county businesses pay. Clay County levies the third-highest surcharge in Missouri, at $1.59 per $100. Compare this to the GM plant in St. Charles County, which pays only $0.53 per hundred. Making it easier for the Clay County legislature to lower that rate, and changing the surcharge so that it rolls back as assessments increase, would benefit all the businesses in Clay County — the Ford Plant in particular.

For more background on the commercial surcharge in Missouri, check out this article, this testimony, and this House Resolution, which has been introduced in an attempt to make these important changes.

Writing in the St. Louis Beacon, Washington University professor of Earth and planetary sciences Bob Criss argues that raising the Missouri gas tax could solve a number of environmental and social ills. Although I’m opposed to pretty much all taxes, I’m somewhat amenable to Criss’ argument. If we have to tax something, it is far better to tax something no one wants, like pollution, than to tax something everyone wants, like income (or general consumption, for that matter).

However, the Missouri Constitution makes implementing Criss’ proposal somewhat problematic. The state Constitution requires that funds generated by the gas tax be dedicated to building and repairing roads, bridges, and highways. The goal of a higher gas tax for Criss is that people would use less gasoline by driving less or using more fuel-efficient vehicles, but more and better roads will at least marginally increase people’s incentive to drive by allowing them to reach more destinations more quickly and comfortably. Increased roadwork would also generate a fair amount of air pollution. Those effects probably would not completely eliminate the environmental gains of a higher gas tax, but they are worth considering.

Furthermore, if people drive less but there are more gas tax revenues to spend, we will end up wasting that money on underused roads and highways. In short, while Criss’ proposal is not without merit, implementing it properly would involve a much greater challenge than simply raising the gas tax.

Yesterday, I complained that the city should not be waiving parking fees downtown on one of its busiest days of the year, but should instead raise the fees. The city is constrained, however, by the archaic technology of most of the parking meters. Well, it didn’t take long for some of my ideas to get implemented, even if it happened in a different part of the city. From the Riverfront Times:

The parking meters in Grand Center that used to shut down at 7 p.m. each night (allowing free parking to theater-goers and gallery patrons) have been dialed back to 10 p.m.
[...]
Since April 1, drivers who don’t feed the meter after 7 p.m. have been issued a warning and served with a flier alerting them to the change. The grace period ends May 1. After that, parking scofflaws will get a $10 ticket. Parking rates for the meters are 25 cents per 20 minutes.

As KSDK reporte[d] earlier this spring, Grand Center Inc. is partnering with the city in the new parking policy and will get a portion of the revenues from the meters. Grand Center Inc. wants to use that money to build a new parking garage in the district, according to the television station.
[...]
“We’re happy that some of the parking meters will allow you to park for four hours instead of 90 minutes,” says Pinmann. “That would give people enough time to see a show and stay longer.”

In January Grand Center began a $10 valet service that offers people a $5 discount if they get their ticket validated after dining at a restaurant.

Kudos to Grand Center Inc. for implementing a policy that both efficiently rations parking spaces in midtown and will allow them to improve the area. A shortage of parking spaces is not a problem that most areas in the Saint Louis region face on a regular basis, but let’s hope it becomes one — and that, when it does, area leaders will have the wisdom to charge for the spots.

Today is the Saint Louis Cardinals’ home opener, and — like all good Saint Louisans — I am excited about the beginning of what looks to be a great season. Because Saint Louis is such a great baseball town, today will be a huge celebration downtown, which is as it should be. In an attempt to make the atmosphere even more festive, the mayor’s office declared that the parking meters near Busch Stadium will be turned off for two hours before and after the game.

Naturally, this helps those few people who are lucky enough to snag a temporarily unmetered space, but shutting off the meters is actually detrimental to everyone else involved. Parking spots are a scarce resource, and they are rarely scarcer in downtown Saint Louis than on opening day. By eliminating the fees for parking on the street, the city encourages more people to drive downtown instead of carpooling or taking mass transportation. This imposes extra costs on everyone, because travel will take longer with the extra traffic. With demand for parking skyrocketing today, the city should raise parking fees to encourage people to conserve scarce parking spaces.

Unfortunately, this solution would be extremely difficult to implement in Saint Louis for an event like opening day, because the city parking meters only allow people to pay for two hours maximum. No one is going to pay for two hours before the baseball game and then return to their car to pay for another two in the middle of the sixth inning. Until the city upgrades its parking meters, it will have to forgo the efficient allocation of parking spaces (and the concomitant revenue) during big events.

Thanks to former intern (and current staff member) extraordinaire Audrey Spalding for finding this piece on aviation in Columbia. It seems that Delta Airlines is having enough success serving the Columbia market that it is foregoing a tax subsidy for which it is eligible. I am fascinated by the airline industry and its status as the quintessential oligopoly. (Please don’t take my link to the Consumer Federation report as an indicator that I am in total agreement; it is just an interesting viewpoint.) I also love the line from Up In The Air where George Clooney discusses the historic significance of Lambert Airport. But I digress. … 

It is exciting that the private commercial airport in Branson is expanding its operations; it is also exciting that at least some airline service in mid-Missouri can be operated at a profit without government support. Here is to hoping for much more of both!

This is an extremely interesting (and relatively short) video, made by PBS’s Frontline and NPR’s Planet Money, about the private buses in Haiti called “tap-taps.” The buses shuttle residents of Port au Prince around the city for just a few pennies per trip, which is necessary because most Haitians make less than $2 a day. The buses are extremely competitive and completely unregulated, so the owners of the buses have devised a method of signaling which buses are well-maintained and staffed by good drivers, and which aren’t: elaborate murals painted on the sides of the buses. If an owner is not willing to stringently maintain the outside of the bus, chances are the internal workings and driver leave something to be desired as well.

If post-earthquake Port au Prince can operate a cheap and efficient system of mass transportation, it stands to reason that much richer American cities like Saint Louis can, as well. There are, of course, many differences between the markets for mass transportation in Saint Louis and Port au Prince. Only 3 percent of Haitians own cars, and Port au Prince has more than 73,000 people per square mile compared to fewer than 6,000 per square mile in Saint Louis city, so there is much higher demand for mass transportation in Port au Prince than in Saint Louis. Still, there are clearly numerous people in the area that use some form of mass transportation, so private buses are at least a possibility … or they would be if they weren’t essentially outlawed in order to give Metro a mass transportation monopoly.

We need not eliminate Metro to find out whether a competitive system can replace the current monopoly. If Bi-State simply allowed private bus lines to compete, and the cities and counties in the area loosened the regulations on jitneys and taxis, we could very well see many cheaper and more efficient transportation alternatives emerge. Metro would still have an unfair advantage because of its public subsidy, but we could decrease that subsidy and use the savings to instead institute mass transportation vouchers for people below a certain income level. These people could then use the vouchers to ride the transportation system of their choosing.

It’s possible that the public transportation system would still outperform the private sector, and the devil is always in the details, but economic theory and massive amounts of historical experience show that monopolies are inefficient and charge high prices while competition improves products and lowers prices. We should not expect mass transportation to be any different; the burden of proof should be on those who defend the monopoly system. If private mass transportation can operate in Port au Prince, where per-capita income is less than 1/35 of the level in the United States, it’s at least worth trying here.

As you may or may not know, America’s only privately owned and operated commercial airport is located in Branson. It opened right around a year ago, and from what I can tell everything seems to be going well. The Springfield Business Journal has a write-up on the expansion of flight at  Branson airport, and it also made Robert Poole’s recent Reason Foundation newsletter on airport issues.

Kansas City has considered this idea, and it would be wise for St. Louis to consider it as well. The idea that only the government can operate our airports may be deeply imbedded in public opinion, but private operators could certainly undertake airport operations if given the opportunity. Hopefully (and apparently), Branson will show us the way.

This morning at the office, David Stokes brought in a mailer he received from Advance Saint Louis urging him to vote in favor of Proposition A, which would institute a half-cent tax in Saint Louis County dedicated to funding Metro. The top fact used to support the mailer’s headline, “Our Economy Depends on Metro,” reads “Transit generates JOBS. To date, $15 billion in new development has occurred within a 10 minute walk of MetroLink.” Strictly speaking, I don’t think this statement is false, but it definitely misleads by omission.

First — and this should be pointed out every time a politician talks about creating jobs — it should be pointed out that jobs are a cost, not a benefit. Goods and services are the benefits we get from the cost of working, and if we can create more goods and services with less work, we should. If Metro could transport the same number of people just as efficiently with half as many employees, that would be a clear benefit to the overall economy (Metro might even come close to breaking even if that happened). Furthermore, creating jobs by spending tax dollars ignores the unseen costs of the taxes. If that money had not been taxed away, taxpayers would have spent it on a multitude of goods and services, or saved it to be lent out to entrepreneurs, home buyers, and the like. With the tax in place, those goods, services, and loans (and the wages that depended on them) will never exist, so we will never know the true opportunity costs of spending more tax dollars on Metro.

With regards to the statement’s second sentence, the mailer never claims that the $15 billion in new development near the MetroLink was actually caused by the MetroLink. I take the absence of such a claim to be good evidence that Advance Saint Louis has no good evidence that MetroLink has substantially contributed to this new development. I’m sure MetroLink is at least a marginal factor in some of this development, but I’m sure a much bigger factor is that MetroLink runs through the most desired areas in the Saint Louis area: downtown, the Central West End, Washington University, Brentwood, Clayton, etc. MetroLink follows development, not the other way around.

Finally, the bottom of the mailer informs us that Metro “operates with one of the lowest costs per passenger to the taxpayer,” which ignores two important points: 1) relative comparisons tell us nothing about the absolute costs and benefits of the system and 2) a new tax to support Metro will obviously lower Metro’s ranking on that metric.

The Tour of Missouri website encourages Missourians to lobby for restored funding. Here are some of the reasons it gives:

Contact your local representatives and let them know how important this event is to you and for what reasons, whether it is because of the economic impact it has on the local communities and state as a whole, the educational aspect of providing an interesting curriculum to the schools, that it promotes healthy lifestyles for children and adults alike (Bike sales increased the week of the event in 2009), the Tourism exposure as the eyes of the world focus on Missouri for a week each year, or the increased sense of community as all of the host cities unite to put together a special welcome to the visitors from nearly 100 countries and all 50 states. Or maybe you can just tell them you want it because it is a heck of a lot of fun!

The Tour of Missouri, like other potential recipients of state funds, does a lot of constructive things. But that’s not enough reason for the state to continue subsidizing it when revenue decreases.

In order to show that Tour of Missouri deserves a subsidy, supporters would have to demonstrate that a dollar spent on the Tour gives Missourians more benefit than that same dollar would if spent on anything else. There are other programs out there that claim to accomplish some of the same things as the Tour. For example, it’s been suggested that archery is a good basis for interesting curricula. Film tax credits are said to boost the economy, local food initiatives to engender healthy habits, and Census promotional events to build community.

This state representative gets the idea:

“You wouldn’t want to cut something that was proven to have brought money back,” he said, adding that the money has to come from somewhere. By way of example, he said you could ask educators if they would cut $1 million from Parents as Teachers or Career Ladders programs to fund the race.

Some people have told me that comparing programs like that is a “false choice.” They say that we don’t have to choose between Parents and Teachers and a bicycle race, because we can have both. They imply that it’s unfair to bring up education funding when you’re discussing a subsidy for an unrelated program — as if no program could appear deserving when held up against the schools.

If by “false choice” people mean that we shouldn’t fund one program we like best to the exclusion of all others, then they’re right. We don’t want to fund public schools and nothing else; government funding is not winner-take-all. However, at the margin — when we’re deciding where to spend that last dollar of state funds, or where to make the next cut to balance the budget — we do need to compare programs. We need to make sure that we’re cutting funds from the program that is least necessary, not the program that is most productive.

People who still think these decisions at the margin are “false choices” are making a mistake. They’re assuming that their favorite program doesn’t need to be as productive as others when, in fact, it does. Resources are scarce. Tax dollars can’t go toward funding just any program that does a nice job. Deciding to increase funding for one program but not another would be a false choice only if there were some way to give every program the full funding increase its supporters want. There isn’t — so, as the state representative pointed out, a dollar spent on one program is a dollar that could have been spent on something else.

It’s also a mistake to think that schools would gobble up all the money if only the most deserving programs were funded. Suppose we decided to spend tax dollars where they’re most needed, and we started funneling dollar after dollar into education. Pretty soon, the state would be in dire need of other services that schools can’t provide. In that situation, a dollar spent on one of several other programs would be more productive than a dollar spent on schools.

Besides comparing programs as I’ve discussed, legislators also have to consider whether the last dollar spent on a state program would have been put to better use if left in the private sector. If the answer is “Yes,” it should be returned to the taxpayers.

Choosing between funding a program that’s “a heck of a lot of fun” and funding a program that’s boring but productive may be a difficult choice, but it isn’t a false choice.

That would be a ban on red light cameras, which was recently proposed in the Missouri Senate. Although I am not a fan of most rules, I have no problem with the fair enforcement of effective traffic laws. The problem is that red light cameras are not effective in preventing accidents — quite the opposite — and only serve as revenue streams for the cities that install them.

A 2008 study published in the Florida Public Health Review surveyed the literature on red light cameras and found that they actually increased the number of accidents at red light intersections. Here are some of the study’s key findings:

• Comprehensive studies from North Carolina, Virginia, and Ontario have all reported cameras are significantly associated with increases in crashes, as well as crashes involving injuries. The study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council also found that cameras were linked to increased crash costs.

• Some studies that conclude cameras reduced crashes or injuries contained major “research design flaws,” such as incomplete data or inadequate analyses, and were conducted by researchers with links to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The IIHS, funded by automobile insurance companies, is the leading advocate for red-light cameras. Insurers can profit from red-light cameras, since their revenues will increase when higher premiums are charged due to the crash and citation increase, the researchers say.

Langland-Orban said the findings have been known for some time. She cites a 2001 paper by the Office of the Majority Leader, U.S. House of Representatives, reporting that red-light cameras are “a hidden tax levied on motorists.” The report concluded cameras are associated with increased crashes, the timings at yellow lights are often set too short to increase tickets for red-light running, and most research concluding cameras are effective was conducted by one researcher from the IIHS. Since then, studies independent of the automobile insurance industry continue to find cameras are associated with large increases in crashes.

In the two years since the study was published, there have been numerous reports of cities shortening the length of yellow lights at intersections, which leads to even more accidents, purely in the name of generating more revenue from tickets. If the evidence showed that red light cameras made the roads safer, I would not complain, but they simply encourage cash-strapped city governments to deliberately make them less safe, so they can rake in some much-needed revenue. That’s an unacceptable set of incentives, and Missouri should put a stop to it.

Full disclosure: I did just get a ticket from the city of Saint Louis for running a red light equipped with a camera. I didn’t actually run the light, but a rolling right turn is apparently also illegal.

At the aforementioned forum/debate on Proposition A, which would establish a new half-cent tax to fund MetroLink’s expansion and other Metro services, an important question was raised: What constitutes a plan?

Speaking in favor of the tax increase, Mayor John Nations of Chesterfield said that the details of plans for future expansion are contingent on the availability of funds from the federal and state government. Speaking in opposition of the tax increase, John Burns of Citizens for Better Transit noted that MetroLink’s plans do not stipulate where and when a project would be built, and that a “plan” needs to answer these questions before it can really be considered a plan.

This difference strikes me as an application of the following passage in Economics in One Lesson, “Public Works Mean Taxes,” by Henry Hazlitt:

But a bridge built primarily “to provide employment” is a different kind of bridge. When providing employment becomes the end, need becomes a subordinate consideration. “Projects” have to be invented. Instead of thinking only of where bridges must be built the government spenders begin to ask themselves where bridges can be built.

Public works projects are acceptable when they serve an actual purpose. However, successfully securing funds from the federal or state government does not constitute an actual purpose. This is a concept on which John Burns, Henry Hazlitt, and I appear to agree. If they are to be economically productive, such expenditures must fulfill a need other than diverting creating jobs — or, as Mayor Nations said during the debate, “providing an economic engine for the region.” At the very least, a plan should include basic information such as when and where a public works project will be built. Otherwise, it’s another proverbial “bridge to nowhere.”

Yesterday, I attended a forum/debate on Proposition A, the proposed half-cent tax to fund MetroLink’s expansion and other Metro services. Speaking in favor of the tax increase, Mayor John Nations of Chesterfield indicated that Missouri provides little or no financial assistance for projects like bus and light rail expansion, and he implied that the state should increase this amount. I disagree that Missouri and the federal government should provide financial assistance for Proposition A, for the following three reasons.

First, neither Missouri nor the federal government is presently flush with cash, and the money could instead be spent on other programs, like education, or returned to taxpayers. Missouri’s projected mid-year FY2010 budget gap is $690 million, and officials are seeking ways to reduce this deficit, not expand it.

Second, in general, public works projects should be paid as much as possible by the taxes of those who benefit. This is a more efficient means of taxation, and it encourages funds to be spent more wisely. If I were a taxpayer living in rural Missouri, I would not be enthusiastic about paying for the bus and light rail system in urban Saint Louis, which is something that I would use very rarely, if at all. If I were a taxpayer in a state other than Missouri, similarly, I would be even less enthusiastic about subsidizing public works projects with benefits concentrated in a state in which I may never set foot.

Third, federal funding is not “found money” — it still comes out of the pockets of taxpayers, no differently than money spent by state and local governments. Public works projects that use federal funds should exercise the same kind of fiscal responsibility as those that don’t. Unfortunately, when planners have access to federal funds, they are even more shielded from seeing the true cost of their spending, and this causes them to over-consume.

I’d just like to quickly promote the upcoming forum/debate on the proposed half-cent Metro tax for buses and light rail that will be on the ballot in April. The forum takes place this Monday, March 15, at 11:45 a.m., at the Center of Clayton — just west of downtown Clayton by the high school (on Gay Ave., just south of Maryland). Feel free to bring your lunch; it should last about an hour.

Mayor John Nations of Chesterfield will speak in favor of the tax increase, and John Burns, head of Citizens for Better Transit, will speak in opposition. I think they will both be very good, and it should be a worthwhile debate. The only thing I can personally guarantee is that everything will go according to the time schedule, because yours truly will serve as the timekeeper. The Clayton Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring the event, and everyone is welcome to attend. Please call the chamber at (314) 726-3033 if you have any questions, and to register.

Here are a few of the items that the Show-Me Institute has published about this important issue.

This notice may be too late for those of you who read our blog to tune in, but for those of you Columbia readers who encounter this blog entry right after I post it and find yourselves near a radio, be sure to tune in to The Eagle 93.9 FM at 4:33 p.m. to hear research assistant John Payne talk about unemployment and possibly our new study of the relationship between taxes and economic growth.

Charles Jaco just finished taping an interview with Show-Me Institute research assistant John Payne, about the Metro mass transit system in the St. Louis area. At least some portion of it is slated to appear in tonight’s FOX 2 news broadcast at 10:00. Be sure to tune in. [UPDATE: The video is now online.]

For more information about St. Louis transit, read Payne’s recent op-ed about MetroLink, which also ran on the Riverfront Times blog and in the St. Louis Business Journal. His commentary attracted some attention from a Metro board member, who responded on our blog, followed by a short rejoinder by Payne.

The Show-Me Institute ran a trio of pieces in October 2008 about transit funding in St. Louis, considering the problem from different angles. We’ve also been fortunate enough to publish a few pieces analyzing Kansas City light rail plans, by transit scholar Randal O’Toole and policy analyst David Stokes. Although these latter pieces considered the issue specifically as it relates to the Kansas City area, many of the broad observations about light rail costs and efficiency apply just as well to St. Louis.

Today’s Southeast Missourian asks the above question about Missouri transportation funding in an editorial (link via a certain Mr. Combest). They leave it as an open-ended question, asked as a follow-up to a presentation by the Missouri Transportation Alliance at a recent forum in Cape Girardeau.

This is one question for which the Show-Me Institute has some answers. And, yes, those answers might have to include a gas tax increase. They should also include a dramatic expansion of tolling — and, if that tolling is done via public-private partnership (PPP), then it wouldn’t first be necessary to amend the state’s Constitution (at least, according to MoDOT’s opinion). The important thing, in my opinion, is to keep any tax increases as analogous as possible to user fees, like the gas tax, and away from general taxes that move in the wrong direction by externalizing internal costs. We should be striving to internalize costs to the greatest practical degree, such as through gas taxes, tolling, and license fees, not the other way around.

For more information, read the op-ed I wrote on the subject of private financing for Missouri transportation, the related testimony I provided, and our primary studies of tolling, PPPs, etc.

First, I’d like to thank Hugh Scott for his response to my op-ed arguing against expansion of the MetroLink system. I doubt we will ever see completely eye to eye on the subject, but an informed dialogue can still be illuminating for everyone involved.

Before I respond directly to any of Scott’s points, let me just clarify something that may have been unclear from the op-ed (a 700-word format does not allow for full explanation of every point): I was not arguing against the proposed half-cent sales tax. My point was that we should not expand the MetroLink system into areas with relatively low population densities because the lines would have low ridership and be even more heavily reliant on tax dollars than current lines.

Scott observes that the flexibility of buses is a disadvantage as well as an advantage, a point well-taken. Light rail is undoubtedly better than buses when it comes to understanding routes. However, the question is whether that disadvantage outweighs the advantages of flexibility and lower costs that buses provide, and my answer is that it depends on population density. The denser an area, the more rail should be preferred to buses, and vice versa.

With regard to the possible lines of MetroLink expansion, Scott is perfectly right that Metro does not plan on expanding the system without federal funds to diffuse the costs of constructing the line(s). However, even if a new line would not cost area taxpayers a cent to build, it could still be a bad deal for them if very few people rode it and they were then on the hook for operating costs. Again, my argument is that the best method of forecasting ridership is through population density. Aside from the north-south corridor, none of the proposed lines come close to matching the densities found along the current lines.

Finally, I agree that MetroLink performs well against the light-rail systems of other cities, but that is a relative metric when the question should be an absolute one: Do the benefits justify the costs? Even existing lines do not meet the profit-loss test used in the private sector, so light-rail systems are not efficient by our most common metric for success. Perhaps we need another absolute standard we could use to determine which light-rail lines are successes and which are failures, but for now the best that can be said is that it is unclear whether the benefits of MetroLink expansion would outweigh the costs.

The Show-Me Institute recently released an op-ed by research assistant John Payne titled, “Adding New MetroLink Lines Too Costly, Inefficient.” The piece appeared on the Riverfront Times blog on Feb. 15, along with comment from the paper, and ran in the St. Louis Business Journal on Feb. 19.

We recently received a thoughtful response from Hugh Scott, III, who has been a member of Metro’s Board of Commissioners for nearly five years, commenting on Payne’s op-ed. In the interest of furthering dialogue about important issues like public transit funding, his entire letter appears unedited below:

As even noted anti-tax advocate Glenn Beck acknowledged on his show yesterday, (2/22/10) some taxes are necessary. In the case of public transit, I would maintain that taxes supporting these systems inure to the economic benefit of metropolitan areas. Public transit enables people to commute to jobs and transit centers provide a critical mass of customers for businesses located near them. Not only does Metro employ 2000 St. Louisans but it assists countless thousands of workers to get to jobs in healthcare, retail, manufacturing and distribution. For many of these commuters, no public transit would mean no job.

Show-Me Research Assistant John Payne misses the mark in his article, “Adding New MetroLink Lines Too Costly, Inefficient.” While he tacitly agrees that public transit is important for our community, he advocates opposition to the proposed referendum for a ½ cent sales tax on the April ballot. The focus of his criticism is on the part of the proposal which suggests some the addition of light rail corridors. Extending light rail is however, not the major thrust of the proposal.

Throughout its history, BiState (Metro) has not had sufficient dedicated taxes to support its operations. It has relied on the beneficence of the City of St. Louis and the adjoining Missouri and Illinois counties, the States of Missouri and Illinois, and the Federal government to provide operating subsidies. Some of these entities have been generous over the years. Others have been quite parsimonious. In all cases, awarding of funds is arbitrary and Metro must beg for money from its stakeholders on an annual basis. If Metro is expected to operate in a business-like manner, it must have a stable reliable source of revenue. This, in fact, is what the April 6 ballot proposal is really all about.

When the last tax measure failed in a very close vote in November of 2008, Metro was forced to cut 40% of its bus and train service and 400 staff members. This resulted in the loss of at least 5000 jobs in our community. While half of these cuts were quickly restored due to the receipt of emergency funds from St. Clair County and the State of Missouri, deeper cuts will be necessary if the proposed tax is not approved by the voters. With the approval of the new tax, pre-2009 service will be restored and the current system will be able to operate on a stable financial footing for the first time in memory.

Other short term (1-5 year) priorities include implementation of a bus rapid transit system similar to the “higher speed bus routes” advocated by Payne, adding amenities such as a “smart card” fare system, and beginning planning for more light rail. These programs will be implemented only after the pre 2009 service is in place and only when funds are available. The five year plan does not call for construction of new light rail corridors.

Putting a light rail extension in service will take a minimum of ten years. It will also require large amounts of federal funds in order to build. Metro does not believe that the community should “foot the bill” for any Metrolink expansions without the majority of the funds being provided by the federal government. Instead Metro is asking for funds to begin the planning process so that when federal funds become available for light rail expansion, St. Louis will be in line. It only makes good sense to spend some money on planning. Otherwise, federal money for light rail will go to other cities and St. Louis will be left out.

Payne tries to make a case for increased bus service as opposed to more light rail. He asserts that buses are a better form of transit because they are cheaper and provide more flexible route opportunities. This was precisely the argument made by former BiState CEO, Col. Rudolph Smyser in the 1960’s when he ordered the shutdown of the last of the street car lines in St. Louis.

While it may be argued that buses are superior to light rail from an economic standpoint, flexibility of routes is precisely the problem with buses. Businesses which might prosper by being near a transit stop do not locate near bus stops because a bus stop might easily move to another street or corner. Many non-transit dependent customers will not ride buses because it is often difficult to know where the bus is going. With streetcars, subways and light rail, one need only look at a map showing landmarks or look down the track to know where the car is headed.

In some ways, Metro has successfully mitigated the confusion caused by changing bus routes by creating a hub and spoke system integrating buses and light rail. Thus a person who boards a bus that says “Clayton Station” can expect to travel to the Clayton Metrolink station. Similarly, a passenger who boards our most heavily traveled bus route, Grand Avenue, can be confident the bus will travel north or south on Grand without deviating. In a sense, our increased market share in buses may be in part attributed to our lack of flexibility with routes not the reverse.

In conclusion, Metro has built a world class transit system which integrates bus and rail service quite successfully. While our population density might be low for light rail travel our market share compared to peer group cities is very high. Light rail continues to gain popularity from non-transit dependent riders and nationally, our market share is in the top three cities in our ten city peer group. The April ballot proposal is about preserving this fine system. Our first priority must be to stabilize the existing system. Future planning is always important but it comes further down the list of priorities.