Kansas City Streetcar Expansion Could Buy More Than 100 Buses

Posted on by Joseph Miller

For the same cost as the proposed streetcar expansion, Kansas City could buy and operate 105 additional buses, even with a planned Transportation Development District (TDD).

The TDD is intended to raise $471.9 million to complete the nascent streetcar system throughout the inner city. Our position is that these systems are less efficient at moving people than buses and that the promises of economic development from streetcars are without empirical basis. To their credit, most streetcar supporters spend their time arguing that the streetcars bring economic development and do not try to claim that streetcars are more efficient people movers.

Nevertheless, many proponents have the idea that it is cheaper in the long run to build a streetcar system than to expand bus service. This post addresses these arguments and asks how many buses the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA) could buy and operate if it were given the resources of the $500 million streetcar plan.

Using data from the National Transit Database, KCATA, and actual performance of streetcars in Portland, I estimated yearly operating costs and revenue streams for the streetcar and an expanded bus system. While any such calculations on an unfinished system require some estimation, my calculations are streetcar-friendly by assuming high ridership, elevated farebox recovery, and controlled capital and operating costs.

The findings were that KCATA could buy and operate 105 additional buses for the same cost of building and operating 7.6 miles of streetcar lines.  To satisfy objectors who might claim huge life cycles for streetcars, I also made a calculation assuming the streetcars were not replaced and that only buses were replaced. This reduction in streetcar costs meant KCATA would only be able to buy and operate 100 buses.

To put that in perspective, KCATA currently only operates 257 buses for 61 bus routes that serve the entire Kansas City region. Adding 105 buses would significantly improve regional services and would utterly transform bus service if they were bound to the TDD meant to serve the streetcars. The chart below shows what type of bus service 7.6 miles of streetcar lines buys:

Matt Transit Graph

The case is clear. Whatever one believes about the economic development promises of streetcars, in terms of providing mobility, buses are far more cost-efficient than streetcars.

Does An Underfunded Formula Really Hurt Schools?

Posted on by Michael Rathbone

Does “underfunding” have a detrimental impact on Missouri school districts? The people at the Missouri Budget Project think so. According to their recent study examining Missouri school district funding, “The vast majority of school districts throughout Missouri have been significantly hurt by Missouri’s inability to fully fund the state’s education funding formula, which is the key to our kids receiving the world-class education they need to compete in today’s global economy.” However, Show-Me Institute Director of Education Policy James Shuls and I find that there is no correlation between how much a school district is “underfunded” and its actual performance.

I agree with Shuls when he says that, on principle, the foundation formula (which is the state’s method of determining how much of its annual appropriation to district aid goes to each school district) should be fully funded. The people at the Missouri Budget Project would have you believe that the more underfunded the school, the worse its performance will be. Shuls and I were skeptical that this was actually the case so we tested the Missouri Budget Project’s claim.

In our analysis, we used the Missouri Budget Project’s numbers for the amount each district was underfunded per student. In the past, I have raised issues with the Missouri’s Budget Project’s methodology (or lack thereof) in their work. However, for the sake of argument, Shuls and I decided to accept their results at face value. To measure a district’s performance, we used each district’s English and math MAP (Missouri Assessment Program) test scores and the percentage of students who scored proficient or advanced. We then ran the numbers through STATA to determine if any correlation existed between a school’s academic performance and their level of “underfundedness.” We found none (for more on our results, please see the comments section).

The underfunding of Missouri’s school districts “hurts” school districts if you define hurt as not getting money. If, however, you define hurt as having a negative impact on performance, these results indicate that is not the case. Even if these schools were fully funded, it would not guarantee that their performance would improve. A growing body of evidence suggests that increasing funding for schools will not necessarily lead to an improvement in educational outcomes. We believe in adequately funding our schools, but the state should first make sure that taxpayer money is spent wisely before asking taxpayers for even more.

All Hail The Taxi App

Posted on by Joseph Miller

The Saint Louis Taxicab Commission recently approved its first multi-company taxi-hailing app, allowing customers to book cabs from the airport. While this is a step in the right direction, Saint Louis should move aggressively toward allowing more ride-hailing apps and deregulating the taxicab industry.

Taxi service in Saint Louis City and County, like most metropolitan areas in the United States, is regulated in terms of both price and entry. This despite the fact that most economists find that this regulation reduces the total number of cabs, raises prices for customers, and increases rents for taxicab companies. They find that cab companies end up using regulatory bodies to reduce competition and increase prices. A prime example: Not long ago, the chairman of the Saint Louis Taxicab Commission said he suspects there are too many cabs in Saint Louis. Residents have to question whose welfare is protected when a cab commission official believes that.

One of the traditional defenses of the regulated taxi industry was that a free market would allow too many different pricing schemes. This would lead to price gauging of less-informed customers and, in the long term, deter ridership.

Enter ride-hailing apps, which allow anyone with a smart phone to set up a ride whenever needed. Carmel, the app that the taxicab commission approved, only partners with existing companies. However, services such as Uber and Lyft in other cities can work with individual cabs.

The approval of Carmel did not come without opposition. Some cab owners fear that eventually Carmel will start to work with individual cab owners, cutting out traditional dispatches and devolving control. As St. Louis Public Radio reported, one owner stated:

“Right now, there’s other operators that operate illegally within St. Louis, sedan operators, and they’re not able to control that, so how are they going to be able to control and monitor this?”

Why is this a bad thing? If new apps allow customers to find a cab they want at a price they are willing to pay, what “problem” is the taxicab commission solving by controlling prices and market entry?

If the only answer to this question is “control,” it is clear that the taxicab commission should not regulate entry or market prices. They should focus instead on simple cab registration and safety inspections.

Bad Data, Bad Tech and No Expansion Lead to Fall in Missouri Medicaid Enrollment

Posted on by Patrick Ishmael

After President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimated that nearly 12 million people would be added to the country’s Medicaid rolls by 2014. At the time the expansion was mandatory, and the expectation was that most states would fall into line and enroll people. Hundreds of thousands were expected to enroll in Missouri alone.

Read the rest of this commentary by Patrick Ishmael in the March 7 edition of Forbes.

Patrick Ishmael is a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

No Environmental Or Energy Need For A New Terminal

Posted on by Patrick Tuohey

According to the so-called Fact Sheet that the Kansas City Aviation Department produced in April 2013 regarding the Kansas City International Airport (MCI):

The current terminal infrastructure does not allow the airport to meet the EPA’s new standards for capturing deicing fluids, which require capturing about 30% of run-off. The new single terminal will capture nearly 100% of the run-off and resolve Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issues the airport is currently facing. The single terminal will also require less [sic] bus trips to and from the consolidated rental car facilities than the current three terminals significantly reducing carbon emissions.

This is misleading, as it suggests that MCI is under some sort of EPA requirement to improve its ability to capture deicing fluids. The EPA is fine with how MCI performs this task now. While MCI could do a better job of collecting these fluids, the EPA allows for several much cheaper ways to do it than the one method called for in the proposed $1.2 billion new terminal plan.

For example, MCI could attempt either greater efficiency in use of deicing or greater collection of runoff. Ways of reducing runoff include using highly concentrated type IV fluids, anti-icing fluids before inclement weather, hot-air deicing, and infrared deicing. As for capturing more runoff, the EPA considers using collection trucks, improvements in drainage systems, and mobile deicing pads as viable options. These options are certainly cheaper than building a new terminal, aprons, roadways, and parking structures.

The airport’s fact-checking goes on to include:

The new single terminal, built as a replacement facility on the reclaimed Terminal A site, will be built to LEED standards. The  New Terminal’s enhanced daylighting concepts , thermally designed building envelope, and new high-efficiency systems will maximize energy performance to achieve sustainability goals.

Yet we learned from a recent study of LEED-certified buildings in Washington, D.C., that the rating is apparently meaningless (emphasis added):

The free-market group analyzed the first round of energy usage data released by city officials Friday and found that large, privately-owned buildings that received the green energy certification Leadership in Energy Design (LEED) actually use more energy than buildings that didn’t receive this green stamp of approval.

The Show-Me Institute has argued that it is unlikely that a new terminal will increase revenue or provide sufficient savings to make it a viable alternative. Now we know there is no environmental or energy necessity for it either.

Clayton Seeks Four-Leaf Clover Of Tax Increases

Posted on by David Stokes

As first appearing in the St. Louis Business Journal:

Like a mischievous Leprechaun sporting a four-leaf clover, the city of Clayton is proposing four new tax increases on its April municipal ballot. That is right, four tax increases at one time: two sales tax increases and two bond proposals involving property tax increases. If they all pass, Clayton will “boast” the second-highest baseline city sales tax rate in Saint Louis County, along with one of the highest property tax rates. What kind of luck would that be for Clayton residents and businesses? The answer can only be very bad luck, indeed.

In order for Clayton to continue in its position as Saint Louis County’s economic downtown, it needs to maintain low commercial taxes. The April ballot proposals represent three or four steps in the wrong direction. Having the highest city sales tax rate in the county is hardly going to encourage people to shop in Clayton. High commercial property taxes will also discourage some business investment and give businesses reasons to locate elsewhere.

One of the two new sales taxes is for “economic development” efforts. Please do not let the positive name fool you. Raising taxes to fund government “economic development” is to modern communities what bloodletting was to 16th-century medicine. Whatever the sickness (and Clayton is definitely not sick), economic development taxes, like bloodletting, are best avoided. Clayton has, to its credit, been more disciplined than most other cities in its use of harmful tax subsidies such as Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and other giveaways. Hopefully that fiscal discipline will continue, so why would Clayton want to raise taxes to fund “economic development” programs that do more harm than good?

The other sales tax would be dedicated to emergency services: police, fire, and ambulances. General taxes already fund that city priority at a very effective level, with no plan to lower those general taxes if a new, special sales tax is added. Nobody disputes the importance of emergency services, but this tax increase is more about bookkeeping and higher city revenues than improving service quality.

The first property tax proposal is probably the most defensible spending. It would finance an overhaul of the city’s residential streets, many of which are legitimately due for replacement. Good roads are a necessary function of local government, and this bond issue is a reasonable way to accomplish that. However, it is fair to point out that the commercial sector already pays a targeted, extra property tax for the downtown area, which can include street and parking improvements. Under this proposal, it would face the same tax increase for neighborhood roads as the residents of those neighborhoods.

The other property tax increase is less necessary. It would fund a bond issue for Shaw Park, especially the ice rink. Instead of raising taxes to fund improvements to the ice rink, Clayton should follow the lead of the City of Saint Louis and outsource it to private operators. Steinberg Ice Rink in Forest Park is privately managed, and the city earns rental income each year without having to operate the rink. Taxpayers and customers all benefit from a well-maintained, privately run ice rink such as Steinberg, and Clayton should revisit that option instead of asking for a tax increase.

This four-leaf clover of tax increases goes in the wrong direction for Clayton residents and businesses, and would be very unlucky for them indeed.

David Stokes is the director of local government policy at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

Public Employee Pensions Are Great . . . Except When They Aren’t

Posted on by James V. Shuls

When people hear the word “pension,” they often think “retirement security.” That is the idea of a public employee pension system, to ensure that public sector workers, such as teachers, have a safe, secure retirement. Missouri has three of these systems for teachers and they are great . . . except when they aren’t. To understand what I mean, look at the two figures below.

Kauffman Pension Report Figure 8 KCKauffman Pension Report Figure 9 STL

Missouri’s teacher pension systems are back-loaded. That is, teachers accrue much of their pension wealth toward the end of their careers. Unfortunately, very few teachers in Saint Louis and Kansas City ever reach this point. The figures above come from a recent report that the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation issued. Today, Dane Stangler and Aaron North, from the Kauffman Foundation, have an op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. They wrote:

Because most of the pension value accrues in the final years of an educator’s career, the typical new teacher in Kansas City or St. Louis does not benefit from the current system. Based on our research, we estimate the likelihood that a traditional public school teacher in St. Louis stays in the profession long enough to earn the maximum pension benefit to be about 4 percent. In other words, 96 percent of teachers in St. Louis will leave prior to reaching the full benefit and the percentage is comparable in Kansas City (approximately 3 percent).

That is just one of the problems with Missouri’s current teacher pension systems. As I have written before, the separate pension systems for Saint Louis and Kansas City put the urban districts at a disadvantage.  Stangler and North pointed out:

There is no reciprocity between the plans, so if a teacher begins her career in Springfield and leaves for a position in Kansas City or St. Louis, she will lose much of the pension wealth she had earned by either forgoing the employer contributions or having the value of her pension frozen at the time she quits.

Missouri’s teacher pensions are great for teachers who stay for 25 to 30 years in a single pension system. For teachers who work less or more than that time in a single pension system, the current system is not so great. Indeed, those teachers are subsidizing the retirement of others.

More importantly, these systems are not good for kids in Saint Louis and Kansas City because they act as a barrier to recruiting veteran teachers to the cities.

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