What is up with the lack of decent road lighting?

[huggybear28]

I for one am going to lay blame on the current and past governors and legislators for this issue. If anything Pawlenty's worst blunder was the idea to place the lt. governor in a dual role as transportation commissioner. The flaw from past politicians was the fact while our economy boomed in the 90's and congestioned increased significantly, they failed to increase transportation spending (whether it be a tax increase or general fund shifts). During those 20 years, going without a gas tax increase (1988-2008), shifting the motor vehicle sales tax receipts to the general fund, and limiting tab fees under the ventura administration is what has hurt maintenance and construction in our trasnportation system.

Looking more at Pawlenty's term, people do not realize what negative effects the Pawlenty-Molneau trasnportation bonding bill has on funding for Mn/DOT. Yes, it allowed projects like 494, 212, ROC 52, Detroit lakes bypass, etc to be completed. But to pay off the bonds, money was shifted from the maintenance fund, to the construction fund. That means future transportation planning (this category includes safety projects, future traffic predictions, future road project planning, etc) , operations budgets (this category includes traffic signal coordination, traffic signal upkeep, pavement marking upkeep, signing upkeep, etc) and road repair budgets (from pothole filling to repaving projects) decreased. As well we are still paying of these bonds (plus the 50 million per year interest that goes with them) . That means that through 2013, every district budget has upwards of tens of millions every year going to pay off these transportation projects that were "advanced". It also means since federal funding was advanced, the state is in line for less money from the federal government gas tax fund. With 50 million of interest per year for 10 years, we ultimately have lost 500 million in transportation funding to interest thanks to this bonding bill.

The positive things is because transportation funding is dedicated under the state constitution to roads and bridges (excluding the 40% of the MVST to transit), the last budget deficit of 2 billion and the next biennium the projected 6 billion deficit have virtually no effect on transportation funding.

The gas tax increase Minnesotans saw last year dedicated under legislative directive that maintenance and operations budgets return to the levels before they were shifted for the bonding bill. But since the state has lost 5 years of lost funding in these categories, it will take many years to make up for that lost maintenance. The remaining gas tax increase will go to paying off the rest of the interest from the bonding bill and the bridge directive to replace the states worst bridges. This increase in revenue gives those bridges their own source of money, taking a good amount of pressure off the general construction budget. An example would be when metro's construction budget is 250 million a year, it's hard to convince politicians and people to dedicate 150 million of that to replacing the Hastings bridge during one year, then the next year put the same amount replacing the Lafayette bridge, then the next two years put that amount into replacing the Stillwater bridge. That means virtually nothing else significant gets done in metro in terms of construction. This extra funding will help keep non-large bridge construction projects moving.

Finally to address the original topic of lighting directly. The stimulus money will replace lighting systems on 169 and 100 since they are over 30 years old. The other areas where lighting may be poor is construction zones although I know they try to keep the lighting up as directed in the construction contracts. Lights in general tend to go out easily due to burnt out bulbs, rodents easting through the electrical wires, accidents where people hit light poles, etc. The last thing is if there is one light out, they don't tend to go out and replace it as surrounding lights fill in the gap. If it is multiple lights that are out, then a crew is sent out to repair it. Although there is only one light crew in metro, there were two before the bonding bill and one was cut due to the funding cut. So it may take awhile for the problematic set of lights to get repaired.

[my54ford]

It's because we give @24% of our revenue base to social services..........

[nick is rulz]

thats true, they had a press conference where they said "well, its either street lights or handing out fat, fat paychecks to those on welfare...and we chose fat, fat paychecks".

[Ben Around]

Originally Posted by my54ford

It's because we give @24% of our revenue base to social services..........

So are you saying the revenue base is too small?