a:28:{s:9:"weblog_id";s:1:"2";s:8:"entry_id";s:0:"";s:6:"sticky";s:0:"";s:14:"allow_comments";s:1:"n";s:16:"allow_trackbacks";s:1:"n";s:10:"entry_date";s:19:"2009-05-02 06:00 AM";s:15:"expiration_date";s:0:"";s:23:"comment_expiration_date";s:0:"";s:8:"category";a:1:{i:0;s:2:"16";}s:9:"author_id";s:1:"2";s:6:"status";s:4:"open";s:14:"trackback_urls";s:0:"";s:18:"versioning_enabled";s:1:"y";s:5:"title";s:55:"Roads Tussle With Other Transportation Modes  for Bucks";s:9:"url_title";s:55:"Roads Tussle With Other Transportation Modes  for Bucks";s:6:"submit";s:6:"Submit";s:10:"field_id_5";s:55:"Roads Tussle With Other Transportation Modes  for Bucks";s:10:"field_ft_5";s:4:"none";s:10:"field_id_9";s:199:"Urban and rural interests continue to be at loggerheads, as traditional road building supporters vie with advocates of rail, bus, bike greenways and other modes of transportation for scarce dollars. ";s:10:"field_ft_9";s:4:"none";s:11:"field_id_13";s:1:"9";s:10:"field_id_7";s:48:"transportation, Missouri Transportation Alliance";s:10:"field_ft_7";s:4:"none";s:10:"field_id_8";s:12948:"<p>Missouri&rsquo;s Great Transportation Debate entered Round Two recently with
Missouri Transportation Alliance spokesman Jewel Patek saying that the
challenges of arriving at a consensus plan for transportation were
greater in urban areas. As if to illustrate that point, the two
district chairpeople of the Missouri Transportation Alliance found
their call for better roads fall a little flat when they brought it to
St. Louis in March. A cross section of citizens representing everyone
from service workers to CEOs responded that transportation means more
than roads and a transportation plan is more than a list of projects.<br /><br />The
Missouri Transportation Alliance was founded last autumn to develop and
recommend a statewide transportation program for the next decade to
enhance road safety, replace failing bridges, grow the economy, and
create &ldquo;quality&rdquo; jobs. It was founded because the road construction
made possible by voter approval of Amendment 3 in 2004 is coming to an
end and new funding must be found to continue the same level of highway
work. Construction groups, such as the Associated General Contractors,
SITE Improvement Association, the Eastern Missouri Laborers&rsquo; District
Council, and the St. Louis Building &amp; Construction Trades Council
are among the group&rsquo;s core &ldquo;stakeholders.&rdquo;<br /><br />The Missouri
Transportation Alliance was founded just in time to face the recession
and get caught in the crossfire of a dispute over the spending of extra
federal highway money made available by the &ldquo;stimulus&rdquo; act &ndash; the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. So, when Bill McKenna
and Susan Stauder opened up the transportation alliance&rsquo;s second round
of public hearings with a meeting in the student government chambers at
the University of Missouri-St. Louis, they encountered some push back.<br /><br />At
a meeting in the Student Government Chamber at the University of
Missouri &ndash; St. Louis on St. Patrick&rsquo;s Day, McKenna and Stauder
displayed maps showing how little road construction is planned for the
Missouri Department of Transportation&rsquo;s (MoDOT) District 6 in the
2009-2013 period compared to how much construction took place from
1999-2008. District 6 consists of St. Louis city and county, and St.
Charles, Jefferson, and Franklin counties. <br /><br />McKenna also
displayed graphics showing how much truck traffic has increased on
roads in the state in the last ten years, and said Missouri could
become a regional distribution hub if the state could maintain and
improve its roads. According to McKenna, Missouri is within a 10-hour
drive of half of the country\'s population. With improvements to the
state\'s highway system, river ports and railways, &ldquo;it could become the
nation\'s premier central distribution point and bring tens of thousands
of additional jobs to the state,&rdquo; he said. But if Missouri does not
invest more in its infrastructure, it could lose the competitive battle
for distribution center jobs to Kansas or Illinois, he added.<br /><br />Many
people in the audience of about 55 expressed more interest in moving
people than in moving products, however, and they expressed more
interest in alternatives to the use of private autos on public roads
than they did in building more roads.<br /><br />Garry Earls, chief
operating officer of St. Louis County, said the county&rsquo;s top goal is
expanding the region&rsquo;s light rail system, MetroLink. Representatives of
the Service Employees International Union said bus service is crucial.
Bob Baer, president and CEO of Metro, said his agency wants money to
operate buses and the light rail system.<br /><br />&nbsp;&ldquo;We should be talking
about growth goals and revitalizing the built cores,&rdquo; said Thomas
Shrout, executive director of Citizens for Modern Transit. &ldquo;We need
density at transit stops. Your report has to include how zoning and
laws have to encourage that vision. A bridge in Tuscumbia is not part
of a vision. It is just a project,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Bicycle enthusiasts
also criticized the highway department for focusing only on cars and
called for incorporating bicycle lanes in highway and bridge designs.<br /><br />But
the torrent of demands also raised concerns about cost. &ldquo;The cost of
road transportation is tremendous. Then add in mass transit, ports, and
railroads and the tax needed to fund it all is exorbitant. How will you
decide what is to be included,&rdquo; asked Steve Hoven, corporate vice
president &ndash; public affairs of SSM Health Care?<br /><br />But Bill McKenna,
statewide chairman and District 6 co-chair of the Missouri
Transportation Alliance is an old hand at dealing with those sorts of
questions and controversies. As chairman of the Missouri Highway and
Transportation Commission, he faced tugs-of-war every time funding came
up, said Tom Stevener, vice president of business development at Horner
&amp; Shifrin, Inc. &ldquo;There is always contention over how much money
goes to rural areas and how much goes to urban areas,&rdquo; Stevener said.
&ldquo;Outstate people always feel they are getting the short end of the
stick and mobilize behind the Farm Bureau to get more,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Patek
is familiar with those controversies, too. In 2004, he successfully
managed a campaign to amendment the Missouri Constitution to dedicate
all state motor fuel taxes and vehicle user fees to roads and bridges,
effectively taking about $130 million out of the general fund and
redirecting it to road construction and maintenance. The promise of
Amendment 3, as it was called, was that the money would be used to make
roads safer and smoother and to fix failing bridges. The
newly-dedicated tax stream leveraged bonds that financed a $1.7 billion
gusher of projects that quickly raised that quality of Missouri&rsquo;s state
roads from among the worst in the nation to among the best, and also
reduced traffic deaths, but little of the money was directed towards
fixing failing bridges. All the bond money will have been spent by the
end of this year, however, and Amendment 3 revenue will be unavailable
for any new projects for many more years to come as it is dedicated to
paying off that bond. It is the exhaustion of the Amendment 3 bond that
prompted the formation of the Missouri Transportation Alliance.<br /><br />Listening
to county and municipal agencies and finding compromises between local
agencies and a common ground on which to erect a transportation plan is
the task that McKenna and the transportation alliance have set for
themselves. McKenna displayed the skills that will help him do that at
the meeting at the University of Missouri &ndash; St. Louis. Over the course
of the forum, it became clear that there was broad and deep support for
mass transit among the St. Louis attendees. <br /><br />Susan Stauder,
co-chair of District 6 and vice president - infrastructure and public
policy for the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association
(RCGA), expressed that support when she said, &ldquo;There is a very great
need to look at mass transportation. It is one of the things we need in
our toolbox to get people around&hellip;We have a very successful mass transit
system, but we&rsquo;re losing about 1/3 of the service at the end of the
month. We need to fix it. It is a real jewel. We need to preserve and
expand it.&rdquo;<br /><br />McKenna first explained that the Missouri Department
of Transportation and the Missouri Highway and Transportation
Commission, despite their names, cannot fund transit. &ldquo;The problem with
the existing system is that the transportation department is funded
like a highway department: taxes go into a road fund and the
constitution says that money cannot be used for anything but roads and
bridges,&rdquo; McKenna said.<br /><br />When Earls pushed back, saying that if
the purpose of the forum was to find out what were local priorities for
transportation, then St. Louis County&rsquo;s priority is expanding Metrolink
to double revenue miles and reach 95 percent of the county&rsquo;s
population. McKenna shot back: &ldquo;It has to be something that is saleable
statewide.&rdquo;<br /><br />But after several more speakers weighed in to back
Metrolink, McKenna accepted that for metro St. Louis, transit has to be
part of a statewide transportation plan. &ldquo;Obviously, mass transit is
important to St. Louis. That is a sea change. We&rsquo;ve never had state
funding for mass transit before,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; <br /><br />St. Louis&rsquo;s
commitment to a multimodal transportation system is more than just
verbal. A multimodal system does not just include mass transit as an
option, but it also provides connections between different types of
transportation. The Gateway Transportation Center, which opened in
November 2008, is an example of that commitment. The project was funded
by federal, state and local government agencies, with participation
from Amtrak, Greyhound and MetroLink. Construction on the project began
in 2006 with construction of a MetroBus station at 14th and Spruce
Streets that links MetroLink riders to the downtown bus system and vice
versa. That was followed by the construction of a 37,000-square-foot
Multimodal Center at 15th and Spruce Streets. <br /><br />The Multimodal
Center houses Amtrak train and Greyhound bus operations, a food court
and concourse linkage between Greyhound, Amtrak and MetroLink. Don
Koppy, vice president and director of architecture at KAI Design &amp;
Build, said the $27 million Multimodal Center was designed and built
with an eye on the future. Koppy, who began working with an earlier
design of the project in 1996, said that Amtrak&rsquo;s current service does
not justify the expense of connecting it to the Multimodal Center, &ldquo;but
the city decided to put infrastructure in place for when commuter rail
comes into the city, and commuter rail makes sense if people are going
to go out to the exurbs. So it was planned for long term.&rdquo; <br /><br /><img alt=\"Transportation Debate\" class=\"image-left\" height=\"303\" src=\"/images/uploads/transport_1.jpg\" style=\"float: left;\" width=\"266\" />&ldquo;We
invested in a multimodal system,&rdquo; Koppy said. &ldquo;The Multimodal Center is
at a centralized location and from there you can go to the airport or
get on a train, a bus, or a cab, and in the future you will be able to
get on commuter rail. I don&rsquo;t know what else we could have, except we
don&rsquo;t have bikes,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Joining KAI on the project were:
K&amp;S Associates as the general contractor, Jacobs Civil Engineering,
landscape architect SWT Design Inc., and St. Louis-based Kiku Obata
&amp; Company. <br /><br />Transit is important in many areas of the
state, not just St. Louis, Stevener said. &ldquo;Kansas City operates a bus
system and they have the same problems we do,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Places like
Cape Girardeau, Springfield, Joplin, Columbia and Jefferson City also
have transit systems. There are a lot of OATS (Older Adult
Transportation Service) systems out-state, and in southeast Missouri
there is MTS based in Fredericksburg. There are more and more folks out
there who are becoming dependent on transit of some form or other, if
just because people are getting older. I think there is demand even
out-state for something more than roads and bridges,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />&ldquo;I
think the guys at the state understand that. For years I&rsquo;ve heard the
commission (Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission) talk about
total transportation, now called multimodal, but the difficulty is
where the money comes from. Most funding comes from fuel tax and it is
dedicated by the constitution to roads and bridges, so they can&rsquo;t spend
it on anything else,&rdquo; he added. And when it comes to going to the
legislature for funding from general revenue, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re in competition
with everything else. That is real fisticuffs,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Finding
a plan that has broad support throughout the state is just the first
part of the process. The second part if figuring out to fund it to
avoid fisticuffs in the general assembly.<br /><br />&ldquo;The motor fuel tax is
probably the silliest way to collect a tax there has ever been, because
it can&rsquo;t keep up with inflation,&rdquo; Stevener said. &ldquo;If you apply an
inflation factor of three percent a year, we&rsquo;re collecting the same
amount of money now as when we first put in a tax in the 1920s to go
from dirt roads to macadam.<br /><br />&ldquo;We have to do away with this
archaic motor fuel tax and go to something more universally based, and
get away from a dedication to roads and bridges make funding available
for all transportation. Lots and lots of other states do that as normal
business,&rdquo; he said.</p>";s:11:"field_id_42";s:0:"";s:11:"field_id_43";s:0:"";s:11:"field_ft_43";s:4:"none";s:10:"category_0";s:2:"16";}