Transformation in St. Louis! (St. Charles, Washington: section 8, houses, wedding)

[BoomBoxing]

Originally Posted by MORebelWoman

ewwwwwwwwwwww...just keep building!!! That is why I moved to the country.

Uhhh what? Should cities not build and renovate?

[DarkWolf]

Originally Posted by jskirwin

I love trains. I'm an avid rail fan and visit the Museum of Transportation every time I'm in town. I've lived in places where trains are part of daily life, particularly Chicago, and Kyoto/Osaka/Nara Japan, and even have a small train line that runs through my property with freight trains passing through twice a day. So it may come as a surprise that I am very skeptical of what I call "train dreams."

The reason why trains work in Europe, Japan and congested American cities like San Francisco and New York is population density. Tokyo and Osaka have population densities around 40,000 people per square mile. New York averages 26,000 people/sq. mile and San Francisco's is near 17,000 people/sq. mile. St. Louis city is only 5,200 and St. Louis county's is less than half that at 1,950 according to Wikipedia. There is simply not enough density to support these ideas. At a population density of 50,000 there are plenty of stores within reach to shop at, plenty of jobs to work at, lots of entertainment options. At densities of a tenth of that chances are you won't be able to work near the train line, or the grocery store you want to visit won't be near it. These things are density dependent too, but it's very difficult to create the density needed to combine work, home and shopping.

When is the last time you saw a public works project come in on budget? Boston's Big Dig project has ballooned to $24.3 billion. It was originally estimated at $2.8 billion. As for the other numbers I simply do not believe them and question the assumptions underlying them. For the Midwest High Speed Rail numbers, that's 67 daily riders per mile of track and $51 per trip. The former number seems a waste of resources, and the latter seems completely unreal. At the project cost of $70B those 67 people would have to generate nearly $40,000,000 for the system to break even, or a shade over $583,000 per person. At $51/trip that's ~11,400 trips. I could go on, but all I can say is that these numbers are completely ridiculous.

There is much to love about trains, but not when it comes to moving people around, particularly when it comes to spending taxpayer money to do it. There is no "if you build it they will come" Field of Dreams moment waiting in the future for train dreams. Instead governments need to put money back into the taxpayer's pockets and let them create the jobs and infrastructure demands that make sense.

Population and Density has very little to do with Train service , with most of the Midwest the Core is dense and the Inner Ring Suburbs are built around trains and not cars so rebuilding lines will usually gets alot of riders. Its not like Texas or Cali where the suburbs are built around the cars , Ive looked at most of the Older Midwestern cities and their dense. Even Towns and cities in between are dense , same with the Northeastern US and Northwestern US. Some states are moving fast with their Rail plans like Minnesota & Illinois and others slow like Wisconsin , Ohio and Indiana even though the public disagrees with that...

While the Big Dig is a example of corruption , at least 50 large projects have come on time or opened early on budget or with money to spare... Not Just any cities but large cities like Seattle , Portland , Dallas , Minneapolis , Denver , Salt Lake City , and Jersey City.

With High Speed Rail ,you don't measure per mile , you don't do that with any long distance type transit.. The Way you measure Commuter/Regional , Intercity and High Speed Rail is per station.... So maybe 4-6,000 per station outside the large cities and maybe up to 200,000 adding all modes in the large cities.

[jskirwin]

Nexis4Jersey
Most of my comments were directed at inter-city high speed rail, particularly the proposed high-speed line between Chicago and St. Louis, but I did mix in criticism of intra-city light rail which caused some confusion. Apologies for my sloppy thinking.

The light rail system seems to be viewed as a success. It has exceeded ridership expectations. It has gained ridership particularly during gasoline spikes. In fact it is difficult to find criticism of it at least in the first 5 pages of Google results.

I checked out the annual report of the Bi State Development Agency from 2011 viewed here. http://www.metrostlouis.org/Librarie...ial_Report.pdf
On page 7 it states passenger and service revenues in 2011 accounted for $57,403,000. It received $197,185,000 in grants and assistance from local, state, and federal authorities. So roughly 80% of its operating expenses are paid for by taxes.

Is this a necessary expenditure of tax revenue? Local funds come through a .5% bump in the sales tax. Consumption taxes are regressive, hitting the poor much harder than the rich because they consume more of their income than the wealthy. People are forced to pay for the system whether they use it or not.

I would have no problem with the rail system if it were privately funded. I would even have less of a problem if federal funds were not used to support it. Unfortunately all three levels of government are taxing citizens to pay for this system which benefits relatively few people.

Wouldn't the money be better spent by giving it back to the people it came from?

[flynavyj]

Originally Posted by Nexis4Jersey

...you don't measure per mile , you don't do that with any long distance type transit...

Eh, coming from aviation that's exactly how you measured it, ASM (Available Seat Mile).

[DarkWolf]

Originally Posted by flynavyj

Eh, coming from aviation that's exactly how you measured it, ASM (Available Seat Mile).

Air is different then Rail...

[DarkWolf]

Originally Posted by jskirwin

Nexis4Jersey
Most of my comments were directed at inter-city high speed rail, particularly the proposed high-speed line between Chicago and St. Louis, but I did mix in criticism of intra-city light rail which caused some confusion. Apologies for my sloppy thinking.

The light rail system seems to be viewed as a success. It has exceeded ridership expectations. It has gained ridership particularly during gasoline spikes. In fact it is difficult to find criticism of it at least in the first 5 pages of Google results.

I checked out the annual report of the Bi State Development Agency from 2011 viewed here. http://www.metrostlouis.org/Librarie...ial_Report.pdf
On page 7 it states passenger and service revenues in 2011 accounted for $57,403,000. It received $197,185,000 in grants and assistance from local, state, and federal authorities. So roughly 80% of its operating expenses are paid for by taxes.

Is this a necessary expenditure of tax revenue? Local funds come through a .5% bump in the sales tax. Consumption taxes are regressive, hitting the poor much harder than the rich because they consume more of their income than the wealthy. People are forced to pay for the system whether they use it or not.

I would have no problem with the rail system if it were privately funded. I would even have less of a problem if federal funds were not used to support it. Unfortunately all three levels of government are taxing citizens to pay for this system which benefits relatively few people.

Wouldn't the money be better spent by giving it back to the people it came from?

Rail Transit spurs massive redevelopments which always offseat the cost within a few years and spur a decent amount of jobs. The Cost of Maintaining a Transit system in St. Louis is half that of the Road system its like that in every city and state. Private is not going to touch rail in this country since there are way to many regulations most going back to the 1950s. In the Northeast we use the Gas Tax to fund transit but that has flaws due to the taxes remaining stuck at 1980s levels instead of being raised to allow for more Public Transit and Road Projects so now many states barrow and put ourselves into debt...

[Dawn10am]

Originally Posted by Nexis4Jersey

Rail Transit spurs massive redevelopments which always offseat the cost within a few years and spur a decent amount of jobs. The Cost of Maintaining a Transit system in St. Louis is half that of the Road system its like that in every city and state. Private is not going to touch rail in this country since there are way to many regulations most going back to the 1950s. In the Northeast we use the Gas Tax to fund transit but that has flaws due to the taxes remaining stuck at 1980s levels instead of being raised to allow for more Public Transit and Road Projects so now many states barrow and put ourselves into debt...

This is true. The 2010 census showed that every neighborhood along the MetroLink line through the City gained population, while those without Metro access lost population. I'm not sure if the gain was 100% due to rail access because most of those neighborhoods are very desirable anyway, but having the MetroLink certainly couldn't hurt.

[DarkWolf]

^Thats been happening all over the US in strong and decent Transit regions , non Transit connected towns and neighborhoods are losing people while Transit connected towns that were once dying due to the Auto sprawl are growing again.

[DarkWolf]

a fun list I scrapped together from adding up projects and other things...

St. Louis Metrolink
Opened : July 1993
System Size : 46 Mi
System size by 2030 : 100 Mi
Stations : 37
Stations by 2030 : 64
Daily Ridership : 52,700
Projected 2030 Ridership : 120,200
Development connected to the Network : 2.6 Billion $

Hudson Bergen Light Rail
Opened : 2000
System Size : 20.6 Mi
System size by 2030 : 45 Mi
Daily Ridership : 41,600
Projected 2030 Ridership : 270,000
Stations : 24
Stations by 2030 : 35
Development connected to the Network : 10.8 Billion $ > 700 Million underway

Newark Light Rail
Opened : 1903/2006 Extension
System Size : 6 Mi
System size by 2030 : 27 Mi
Daily Ridership : 28,000
Projected 2030 Ridership : 75,200
Stations : 16
Stations by 2030 : 35
Development connected to the Network : 480 Million $ since 2006 > 260 Million underway

RiverLINE
Opened : March 2004
System Size : 34 Mi
System size by 2030 : 75 Mi
Daily Ridership : 12,400
Projected 2030 Ridership : 42,900
Stations : 20
Stations by 2030 : 39
Development connected to the Network : 372 Million $

Baltimore Light Rail
Opened : April 1992
System Size : 30 Mi
System size by 2030 : 52 Mi
Daily Ridership : 36,600
Projected 2030 Ridership : 91,700
Stations : 33
Stations by 2030 : 55
Development connected to the Network : 1.8 Billion $ > 360 Million $ Underway

MBTA Green line
Opened : 1897
System Size : 22.6 Mi
System size by 2030 : 37.5 Mi
Daily Ridership : 232,000
Projected 2030 Ridership : 310,000
Stations : 66
Stations by 2030 : 75
Development connected to the Network : 2.5 Billion since 2000 > 450 Million underway

[DarkWolf]

Now for whole systems...

St. Louis Metro
Founded : 1949
System Size : 46 Mi (LRT)
System size by 2030 : 100 Mi (LRT)
Daily Ridership : 147,579
Projected 2030 Ridership : 420,200
Stations : 37 (LRT)
Stations by 2030 : 64 (LRT)
Development connected to the Network : 2.8 Billion $

New Jersey Transit
Founded : 1979
System Size : 1,360 (Rail Mi)
System size by 2030 : 1,742 Mi
Daily Ridership : 1.1 Million
Projected 2030 Ridership : 2.6 Million
Stations : 520 (Rail and Major Bus Terminals)
Stations by 2030 : 750
Development connected to the Network : 34.8 Billion $ since 1995

Metropolitan Transit authority
Founded : 197
System Size : 2,282 Mi
System size by 2030 : 3,580 Mi
Daily Ridership : 11.7 Million
Projected 2030 Ridership : 17.8 Million
Stations : 751
Stations by 2030 : 823
Development connected to the Network : 460 Billion $ since 1999