Kansas City Streetcar Has First Crash

Posted on by Joseph Miller

It was only a matter of time. During a test run, the Kansas City Streetcar collided with its first parked vehicle on March 1. Kansas City officials blamed the vehicle owner for parking beyond the white line denoting where it is safe to park along the streetcar’s route.

The city is correct to put the blame on the car owner for this accident. However, that doesn’t make it a good idea for a city to build a transportation system that relies on everyone studiously observing parking regulations. We put “all stops” in traffic signals, install high railings on bridges, and force McDonalds to serve cooler coffee, all because we correctly expect that some small percentage of people are just going to screw up.

Kansas City is not the only city dealing with these issues. Other metros, like Washington D.C., have had continuous problems with collisions on their recently opened streetcar line. Anecdotes aside, the federal government collects public transportation safety data, and from 2011 (when they started reporting streetcar data) to 2015, streetcars and their close cousins, cable cars, were by far the most collision-prone forms of public transportation. Streetcar revenue miles per collision were almost an order of magnitude lower than those for buses or other types of rail:

Transit Mode

Vehicle Revenue Miles (VRM)

Collisions

Miles Per Collision

Cable Car

1,472,949

23

64,041

Streetcar

28,114,830

303

92,788

Bus Rapid Transit

26,118,276

74

352,950

Light Rail

481,691,292

1,006

478,818

Motor Bus

9,057,322,042

16,810

538,806

Commuter Bus

458,816,768

140

3,277,263

Heavy Rail

3,184,358,401

546

5,832,158

Cities should expect collisions because of the streetcar’s very design. They share the road with other vehicles and, due to fixed rails, cannot maneuver around obstacles like buses can (or avoid obstacles completely, as separated rail lines do). An object in the path of the rails means either a collision or a delayed streetcar. This safety problem is one of the factors that pushed cities away from streetcars in the first place, and is something policymakers should consider as they plan to bring a small part of that system back. 

Working in Kansas City: The Rise of Johnson County

Posted on by Joseph Miller

Living in a quaint, leafy suburb and commuting to a bustling downtown for work is an enduring image of American life. The image is the unacknowledged philosophical backbone of regional planning, as civic leaders promote radial transportation networks and suburban towns regulate out construction that offends “village” atmospheres. The only problem is that these efforts are increasingly detached from reality in places like Kansas City, where the idea of a central city and bedroom suburbs is, at best, nostalgic.

For instance, if we go back to 1990, Jackson County, which contains the Kansas City core, contained more than half of all employment in the Kansas City area’s most populous counties (Jackson, Johnson, Clay, and Wyandotte). Johnson County (KS) was a distant second, with about a quarter of the region’s employment. Johnson County could even have been considered a bedroom community, with more people commuting out of than commuting into the county.

Flash forward to 2013 and the situation had changed radically. While Jackson County still housed about the same number of workers as it did in 1990, Johnson County added nearly 120,000 jobs. More workers still commute from Johnson County to Jackson County than vice versa, but the gap narrowed significantly. Johnson County is also now a net importer of workers. Jackson County’s share of employment among Kansas City’s largest counties dropped from 52% to 44% in the period, while Johnson County’s share reached 36%.

Residents in the Kansas City region are more likely than ever to work in, and not just live in, the suburbs. Unfortunately, Kansas City officials still have a tendency to channel investment to the downtown area to a degree that is disproportionate to its actual economic importance and promote transportation plans (public and otherwise) that would be more appropriate to 1920 than to 2020. The region would be better off planning for the city it has rather than an outdated image of the past. 

Race-Based School Choice Policies May Be in Violation of the Equal Protection Clause

Posted on by James V. Shuls

Sometimes we realize what we thought was a good idea at the time was really a terrible idea.  No, I’m not referring to mullets. I’m talking about the race-based policies of the voluntary inter-district school choice program in St. Louis.

In the 1970s, St. Louis Public Schools and the State of Missouri were sued for maintaining a segregated education system in the city. The U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the ruling and school districts in the area began working on a plan to fix the problem of segregated schools. The solution, from a 1983 settlement agreement, was to allow black students in the city to attend predominantly white schools in the county and to allow white students in county schools to attend predominantly black city magnet schools. This “voluntary” program was to improve integration in the city and county.

Although well-intentioned, this policy has become a roadblock for black students wanting to attend a high-quality school in the city. Take Edmund Lee, for example. As Fox 2 reports, Edmund is a bright African-American 3rd-grader at Gateway Science Academy in St. Louis. Gateway is one of many high-quality charter schools in the city. Edmund’s family will be moving soon to the county, but would like to utilize the transfer program to allow him to continue at the school he loves. There is just one problem—he’s black. Black county students cannot transfer into the city, because that wouldn't help integration efforts.

Of course, this problem is not new, and it goes both ways. White students in the city cannot transfer to Clayton, Kirkwood, or any of the high-performing county schools because they are white.

The case of Edmund Lee may not just be sad; it may also be illegal. In 2012, the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas found a similar policy to be in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Arkansas allowed students to transfer to another public school, provided they improved the racial balance of the schools.  As in the transfer program in St. Louis, black students in predominantly black schools could transfer to predominantly white schools and white students in predominantly white schools could transfer to black schools.

The court wrote, “The legislation was no doubt properly motivated in its desire to end segregation, but the question that must be addressed is whether the legislation infringes on federally protected rights.” In the end, the court decided the law did violate the rights of individual under the 14th amendment.

A similar fate could be in store for the St. Louis transfer program. For those who believe that the goal of the program is a noble one, wouldn’t it make sense to expand the program so that all students, regardless of race, could choose to attend the schools that fit them best? Doing so would not only avert the danger of violating the 14th amendment, but it would also allow students like Edmund Lee to continue attending the schools they love.

After Melissa Click, Higher Ed Reforms Must Stay on Course

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

News broke late last week that embattled Mizzou professor Melissa Click has been fired from her job by the state's Board of Curators. You'll remember that Click was the teacher who demanded "muscle" against a student during last year's student protests, and who was caught in recently-released body cam footage verbally assaulting law enforcement earlier that fall. 

Click may appeal the Board's decision, but whatever the outcome there, Click's case was always very separate from the important policy issues her behavior brought into focus. Policymakers should recognize that Click is a symptom of the broken campus culture at Mizzou, not the cause of it. Accordingly, legislators should not take their eyes off the reform ball that's already started rolling this session. 

Melissa Click represented problems that have institutionally bedeviled the University for years, and her departure should signal not just the end of her tenure, but the beginning of a round of higher ed reforms that taxpayers can be proud of. After all of the embarrassments Mizzou brought to the state last year, that would be a welcome change of pace.

Bridge Tolls Ready for a Comeback?

Posted on by Joseph Miller

Many of the bridges from Illinois into St. Louis were once toll bridges. Maybe Missouri should bring back bridge tolls to help fund its transportation needs. Click on the link above to see the video.

For a thorough analysis of the current state of Missouri's highway system and the challenges it faces in the near future, check out Joseph Miller's new Policy Study, Funding the Missouri Department of Transportation and the State Highway System.

Kansas City Prioritizes Transportation Few Use

Posted on by Joseph Miller

Kansas City residents rely on well-functioning transportation for virtually every aspect of their lifestyle, from getting to work to spending a night on the town. But to keep the transportation system working, the Kansas City region needs to make regular investments. Unfortunately, the most recent plan for transportation spending in the Kansas City area shows a troubling disconnect between the infrastructure taxpayers actually use and where city leaders want to put taxpayers’ money.

Not all transportation modes are of equal importance in the Kansas City area. The region’s dispersed population and employment mean that most residents use highways and streets to commute. In Jackson, Clay, and Platte Counties, more than 90% of commuters drove to get to work (according to U.S. Census data from 2009 to 2013). The next most popular form of getting to work is actually just not going anywhere (that is, working at home). Aside from commuting, much of the metro area’s freight traffic uses the highways, and the region’s bus networks also make use of city streets.

Highways and streets are indisputably the most-used part of Kansas City’s transportation network. The only rival for importance may be the freight rail network, as Kansas City is the nation’s second largest freight rail hub. That might lead one to predict that most of the spending in the Kansas City area’s Transportation Improvement Program from 2016–2020, which includes, “. . . all federally funded surface transportation projects and all regionally significant surface transportation projects planned for the Kansas City metro area during federal fiscal years 2016–2020,” would be for highways and streets. That prediction would be wrong.

In reality, 56% of all regional and Missouri-side spending ($1.35 billion) will be for public transportation projects like the bus system and the streetcar. Road and bridge projects only get 32% of the pie, with “complete streets” and pedestrian/bike projects combining for around 11% of spending. These numbers, if anything, overestimate Kansas City’s commitment to road and bridge investments, because the vast majority of spending on roads comes from the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT), which is tasked with maintaining the state network, whatever the ideological bent of Kansas City regional planners. MoDOT does not handle non-state highway projects. 

Spending allocation: KC area transportation improvement program

If we take MoDOT out of the equation, only about 12 percent of the region's spending ($124 million) is going to roads and bridges. That’s only slightly more than is going to the streetcar starter line, which supporters admit is not really about transportation at all. Seventy-two percent of non-MoDOT transportation spending is going to transit, which, as of 2014, accounted for less than 2 percent of the regions commuters.

How long can Kansas City leaders go on ignoring the transportation modes everyone relies on while lavishing funds on modes few people use if they still expect to have a functioning system? 

Seattle’s Minimum Wage Experience A Cautionary Tale

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

When the price of a thing goes up, people buy less of it. We experience this every day when buying groceries, gasoline or anything else. So why are people surprised when it applies to the labor market?

We at the Show-Me Institute have written about the negative effect of increases to the minimum wage for some time. (You can read some of it here and here and here.) We were saddened but not surprised to learn that in Seattle, the increased minimum wage is decreasing employment while increasing unemployment and joblessness. One author wrote,

Early evidence from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Seattle’s monthly employment, the number of unemployed workers, and the city’s unemployment rate through December 2015 suggest that since last April when the first minimum wage hike took effect: a) the city’s employment has fallen by more than 11,000, b) the number of unemployed workers has risen by nearly 5,000, and c) the city’s jobless rate has increased by more than 1 percentage point (all based on BLS’s “not seasonally adjusted basis”). Those figures are based on employment data for the city of Seattle only (not the Seattle MSA or MD), and are available from the BLS website here (data are “not seasonally adjusted”).
 
Especially relevant to Kansas City is that the data also shows the suburbs of Seattle, where no wage hike took effect, have seen an increase in jobs. Had Kansas City chosen the same path, we likely would have seen the same results: jobs moving outside the city to where labor was cheaper.

Millennials Moving Out

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

My colleague Joe Miller has written much about the idea that millennials are flocking to urban areas. This is important because, at least in Kansas City, city officials hold up the prospect of attracting millennials as the reason for their downtown spending spree on luxury apartments, hotels, and streetcars. Miller has pointed out that at best, the research on millennials eschewing cars and preferring urban life is mixed.

On Thursday, American Public Media broadcast a story on NPR suggesting that millennials aren't that different from previous generations at all. 

But while we often think of millennials as a generation living in gentrifying neighborhoods in urban centers, 49 percent of millennial homebuyers are in fact moving to the suburbs, according to the [National Association of Realtors]. They are moving out of the city and away from the urban living culture with which they are closely associated.
 
Furthermore, the degree to which they ever diverged from previous generations' behaviors was a function of the economy, not some inherent difference in their makeup:
 
Part of the reason for that trend may be that some millennials waited longer to purchase their first homes, because of the soured economy, and may already have one small child and a second on the way. For those who themselves grew up in the suburbs and still have family there, [Chicago realtor Tommy] Choi said the decision to buy in the suburbs is an easier one. They often move back near their childhood neighborhoods…
 
"[Millennials] are growing up," said [NAR managing director Jessica] Lautz. And they are following in much of the same patterns of previous generations. "They are becoming homebuyers. They are saving. They are getting married. They are having kids. Much like all of us have done in past generations."
 
If Kansas City wants to grow its population, it needs to be a more attractive place to live and work for people of every age and race. This means focusing on spending efficiently on basic city services such as infrastructure, neighborhoods, and schools rather than diverting funds to big projects and praying for miracles.

Driving in Missouri Accelerating

Posted on by Joseph Miller

Over the last couple years, we’ve been following transportation trends on this blog. One metric we’ve kept our eye on is vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on Missouri’s roads, a proxy for the state’s overall demand for driving and highways. The latest federal data shows that not only are Missourians driving more than ever, but also that the rate of growth is accelerating.

After the recession in 2009, growth in traffic on Missouri’s highways slowed to a crawl and actually declined in urban areas. This led to some who were ideologically opposed to personal vehicle use and highway construction to claim that residents were abandoning their cars for public transportation or live/work communities. This point of view is still echoed by transit activists, and even the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) wrote this assumption into their planning in 2013.

But subsequent driving data has contradicted these assumptions (or hopes). As we’ve pointed out in other blogs, public transportation use in Missouri’s major cities is essentially flat, and does not indicate a demand-side sea change. And when the state’s employment level began to grow in 2012, driving (VMT) grew as well. Missouri’s roads were seeing more driving than ever in 2014, and the trend accelerated in 2015. Over the course of last year, total VMT in the state grew 4.6%, and driving on urban roads grew by 6%. The following charts show the trend:

Graph of vehicle miles traveled--Missouri

Graph of vehicle miles traveled vs employment--urban MO areas

Whether the acceleration in driving has to do with lower fuel prices or an improving economy makes little difference. The long-term trend in Missouri’s VMT has been growth, with recession numbers looking ever more like an aberration, not a harbinger of things to come. This has implications for future infrastructure needs in the state, which policymakers ignore at Missouri’s peril. 

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