SierraScape April - May 2009
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by Virginia Harris
Transportation and Smart Growth Committee Chair

"Transportation design impacts our quality of life. Too often transportation design focuses exclusively on how many cars a street can carry. This limited vision exacted a high price on the environment, severed communities, and neglected the needs of non-motorists. …By 'thinking beyond the pavement, '…transportation design can improve our quality of life and preserve our natural resources." John Regenbogen, [Executive Director, Scenic Missouri]

Missouri lags behind other states in support for public transit and passenger rail. The downturn in local sales tax revenues (a primary source for transit funding) plus last year's fuel price spikes threw transit budgets out of kilter. So our transit agencies are drastically cutting service and raising fares. St. Louis' transit agency is cutting more deeply because St. Louis County continued to divert traditional transit funds to road building due to a loophole in the law. Meanwhile, the County asked voters to reverse transit's deficit through an extra half-cent sales tax on the lengthy November 2008 ballot in competition with numerous other tax measures. Not surprisingly, a slim majority of voters said no.

The cuts go into effect March 30. They will drastically affect the lives of transit commuters who use MetroBus or Call-A-Ride to get to jobs west of I-270. The cuts will also affect businesses that rely on these transit riders.

Local and state officials are now considering alternative funding mechanisms to avoid or reverse some of the scheduled transit cuts. The cleanest, quickest, but still partial solution is to ask St. Louis County to reverse its 2008 diversion of $10 million in sales taxes away from transit and into roads.

A partial solution to flex $12 million in federal air quality funds to transit operations was attempted, but USDOT said no, because the replacement service – although re-configured – would not be new service, which the rules require. The federal government does not want to set a precedent for other transit agencies to follow.

St. Clair County Transit District in Illinois offered a small loan to keep more frequent MetroLink service, but this would have put Metro even further behind in the long run.

Two longer-term solutions are for Congress to resume federal transit operating assistance and for the Missouri legislature to increase its funding of transit in all metro areas.

A distant-future, but long-term alternative is to create a Transportation Development District (TDD) covering portions of the City and County that want transit service, and to ask voters to approve a small additional sales tax in that area.

Only the first of these actions can possibly be achieved quickly enough to avoid major hardship to riders. Let your County government know how you feel about this issue.

As Missouri's Department of Transportation, MoDOT is supposed to be the agency that provides for all transportation modes in the state. However, MoDOT has chosen to oppose legislation that would require it to fully consider the needs of bicyclists, pedestrians, disabled persons, and transit users in its plans and projects.

Meanwhile on the highway front, MoDOT is pushing a $3.9 billion plan to replace I-70 with 4 automobile lanes and 4 truck lanes across the state, claiming safety as a major rationale. However, because this plan will attract many more huge trucks onto Missouri highways, while discouraging the safer rail mode, it will not achieve the safety it claims to offer. No price tag has been revealed to the public as to how these 4 truck-only lanes (equivalent to an interstate) will come through Kansas City and St. Louis.

MoDOT is reluctant to ask truckers to pay for their exclusive lanes and expects the "highway lobby" to put an initiative petition on the ballot for a new 1% sales tax on all Missouri goods to fund truck-only lanes. This "freebie" to truckers is an additional incentive to move freight by truck rather than by the much more efficient rail. Since this exclusive truck-lane corridor is planned as part of a 4-state freight corridor, the freight could be carried more efficiently by rail trailers, if we invest that same money in a public-private partnership to improve rail infrastructure across Missouri and the other 3 states.

Join us in talking with state and local officials about better alternatives. See the chapter's official comments via missouri.sierraclub.org/FrontPage2008/trucklanes.htm, and follow the links.