But now we have good news out of St. Louis County regarding transit. County government has rejected all of the various options for MetroLink expansion into St. Louis County. (This is different from the proposed MetroLink expansion in St. Louis City, which unfortunately has been approved locally. The East-West Gateway Council of Governments is currently seeking federal funding for this project, which I hope it won’t get.)

The problem for the various proposals to expand into St. Louis County is that there is no dedicated way to pay for them, at least not yet. The route starts in the city but the expansion primarily serves the county—so is the city or the county going to pay for the first few miles of the expansion? Would the county pay for light rail inside the city? Would the city pay for part of a light rail expansion that mostly “benefits” residents of the county? (Note the use of quotation marks as there is no overall benefit.) Who knows?

This doesn’t mean that light rail expansion in St. Louis County isn’t going to happen, but anything that puts it in doubt is good news in my book.

The other good news in the story is that St. Louis County is now considering bus rapid transit (BRT) as an alternative to MetroLink:

AECOM [the county’s consulting firm] also has been asked to study the use of rapid bus lines, either using new rights-of-way just for buses or designated lanes on existing roads. Those could be deployed instead of MetroLink expansion or in conjunction with it.

BRT has been used in Kansas City with success, and it is something that Metro should consider for St. Louis. BRT moves people effectively at a fraction of the cost of light rail, streetcars, or trolleys. Unfortunately, it seems spending enormous amounts of money is a good thing from Metro’s point of view, no matter how much of it is wasted.

Increased use of BRT could be the transit option St. Louis has been looking for.

The post The Light Rail Line Less Traveled appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As Metro prepares to expand MetroLink again, we must ask one simple question. Why? Why are we expanding an expensive system that very few people use when Metro continues to cut its bus system over and over again? The bus system actually serves the people who need and use public transit, unlike MetroLink, which is primarily for those who use transit occasionally for sporting events downtown.

Did you know that the St. Louis area had more transit riders before we built MetroLink than we do now? We spent billions of dollars to build a light-rail system, and fewer people ride transit than before it even existed. What if we had spent a fraction of those billions on building a better bus system? A bus system that gets people who rely on public transit to school, work, the grocery store, and, yes, the ballpark, too.

It’s not too late to stop the latest MetroLink expansion mistake. I hope that O’Toole’s report can be a part of the discussion that convinces St. Louis’s political leadership to redirect our money for transit toward helping residents who depend on transit to go where they need to go every day instead of focusing on getting suburbanites to the soccer game a few times a year.

The post The Folly of MetroLink Expansion appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Click here to read the full report.

The post Is St. Louis Transit Built for the 2020s or the 1910s? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Efforts to increase Missouri’s cigarette tax have been around for a while, and are often couched as an incentive to get smokers to quit and improve public health. The issue is now back on the radar in states like Missouri that are struggling to balance their budgets.

Using the Show-Me IDEAS tool, I was able to compare cigarette taxes across states. This chart shows the nation’s average tax at around $1.30 per pack, far higher than Missouri’s 17 cents per pack:

Click image to enlarge

Illinois legislators recently put a $1 per pack hike proposal on hold until later this summer. If this goes through in Illinois, smokers along the border and in the Metro East can look to Missouri for the cheapest cigarettes in the nation — but only if Missouri can hold on to its new title.

Although the majority of Americans don’t smoke, a new poll suggests that most voters would favor increases in tobacco taxes as an alternative to state budget cuts. This kind of discrepancy demonstrates one of the main problems with cigarette taxes — those least directly affected by the tax feel justified in imposing a tax on those most affected.

John Stuart Mill had it exactly right. Only six years before the appearance of cigarette taxes in America, he wrote in On Liberty:

The majority have not yet learnt to feel the power of the government their power, or its opinions their opinions. When they do so, individual liberty will probably be as much exposed to invasion from the government, as it already is from public opinion. But, as yet, there is a considerable amount of feeling ready to be called forth against any attempt of the law to control individuals in things in which they have not hitherto been accustomed to be controlled by it; and this with very little discrimination as to whether the matter is, or is not, within the legitimate sphere of legal control; insomuch that the feeling, highly salutary on the whole, is perhaps quite as often misplaced as well grounded in the particular instances of its application.

The post Cheapest Smokes in the Nation appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

“The city doesn’t want to have to get between them,” Zoning and Planning Department head Ted Shekell said. “Let the best snow cone win.”

It is nice to see a planning and zoning official who understands that their role, if there is to be one, should be limited. But I do love the story and the dispute. I’ll let my friend “D,” who sent it to me, sum up all the great stuff included in one small story:

The story has it all. Misuse of needless licensing to stifle competition, a b.s. argument about protecting jobs, and sno-cones.

I can fairly claim to be more knowledgeable about the machinations of the snow cone oligopoly than most bloggers. I hope, for the sake of capitalist enterprise in the Metro East, that they experience a record heat wave this summer and both stands have a blow-out year — provided they only serve authentic Rio Syrup in their cones.

The snow cone market is highly variable and dependent on both season and weather. The obvious goal is to keep fixed costs extremely low and then the variable costs sort of take care of themselves. Sort of the exact opposite of the utility business model. If it is 102 degrees in July, trust me that people will pay just about any price for a snow cone. Unless, of course, some jerk in city government gives permission for someone else to also operate a stand nearby. Just who does O’Fallon think it is, that it refuses to prevent someone from operating a competing business? If governments at every level started acting like this, the next thing you know we’d be responsible for our own health care. …

P.S.: Here’s a link to the movie reference in the title of this blog entry.

The post Rent-Seeking Snow Cone Stands Wage Fight to the Stain appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post The Governor of Illinois Wants to Help Missouri’s Economy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For better or worse, the newly reopened bridge will no longer have tolls, like it used to. Because the fine people of Illinois paid for this project with their tax dollars, I really don’t care. I never minded paying the toll when I used the bridge before it closed in 2001, which I am sure was was no more than twice in my life.

That is not intended to discount the impact of the reopend bridge:

By contrast, when the McKinley Bridge opens next month, about 10,000 cars and trucks will cross daily. As proud as I-DOT officials are of the two-lane structure, district engineer Mary Lamie says another span is needed.

Ten thousand vehicles sounds to me like a lot of cars and trucks off of the Poplar Bridge. The article has a great nugget that effectively explains why mobility is so important:

The reopening is a big deal to people in the Metro East like Kenneth Wilkinson who crosses the river each day from Granite City to work in St. Louis. "This should knock off about 15 minutes each way a day," Wilkinson said at a ceremony last weekend on the McKinley Bridge. "If I can save that kind of time and money each day."

An additional half hour each day, either to spend with family or work to make money, rather than wasting it on gas while sitting in traffic. That is what mobility means to people.

Combine this with the repairs on 802 bridges that MoDOT will begin soon, along with the project moving ahead on the Paseo bridge in Kansas City, and it looks like Missouri and MoDOT — as well as IDOT — are seriously addressing the transpotation needs of Missouri, to the best of their abilities. But I have said that before. 

The post New Bridge to Madison County appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Dave has probably never been to Compton, Calif. Neither have I, for that matter, and I believe most sensible people haven’t. You can not honestly tell me that St. Louis is a more dangerous place to live, I’m sorry.

I believe that the St. Louis data might be skewed and there are a couple of reasons why. For example, Dave might remember a few weeks ago when the Post-Dispatch reported that the Illinois side of the river is more dangerous than the Missouri side (according to Illinois data, which the FBI rejects). In fact, Metro East is apparently safer even than the national average.

Really?

The first problem I have with the data is that St. Louis’ bizarre municipal boundaries make the per-capita crime statistics appear much higher than they otherwise would be. Crime is a problem in areas of most U.S. cities, but the difference is that it is generally spread out over a larger population. But when St. Louis unincorporated itself from St. Louis County more than a century ago, it effectively land-locked itself. So, unlike metro areas such as Phoenix or Houston (which continue to incorporate “safe” suburban satellites within their municipal boundaries), St. Louis is stuck with inner city crime with nowhere to run. And that is an idiosyncratic feature of the data that should have been accounted for.

My second point of contention, though, is that crime at the national level is grossly underreported, particularly within low-income and minority neighborhoods. I imagine that Compton, Calif., gets a much better rating because most of the crime that occurs within its borders never gets reported to the police. I mean, it’s not like the Crips go to the police station every time a Blood robs one of their fellow gang members. In contrast, I imagine that a significant portion of the crime being reported in St. Louis comes from those trepid suburbanites that make the five-mile trek into the city and become easy prey.

The point of my post was that while I agree that the city has crime problems (I thought I stressed that point when I mentioned that I was mugged outside of my apartment), I believe it is unfair to single out the city for idiosyncratic features that should be washed out of any truly unbiased statistical study. Maybe the data is right, but even then, I don’t see how reporting these statistics does anything but blur the issue.

In closing, I want to add Mark Twain’s famous quip about statistics: “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." As a native Missourian, he might have had a problem with the St. Louis crime data, too.

The post No, Crime Statistics Are Statistics, Not Facts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It would seem Illinois could work with Missouri on this, because more Illinois residents work here than vice versa, but you also have to consider the number of Wisconsin and Indiana residents who work in the Chicago area (Chicagoland, as they call it). A solution that might benefit residents of the Metro East might hurt Illinois tax collections up north. Play along with me for a moment, as if I cared about a reduction in the state’s tax collections.

Or take Michigan. It’s famous for its property taxes, particularly in the counties and townships along Lake Michigan. Why? Because people from out of state, mostly Illinois and Missouri, own the vacation homes in those lake communities and having a large property tax is a good way for Michigan to fund its governmental entities. They can make it up to the locals in other ways.

Every state and local community is different, and each is going to come up with a unique tax structure to benefit its residents. Missouri has more employees coming into the state to work than leaving it, so Missouri benefits from a structure that realizes this. I am not saying we shouldn’t be good neighbors — heck, I agree with our study that says we should get rid of the state income tax entirely, and the earnings taxes as well. I am saying this is a complicated issue that would best be served by each state folowing an across-the-board low-tax strategy, and coming up with one-on-one compacts in situations where that would best serve the interests of two states that share a surprisingly large number of commuters — be it Kansas and Missouri, or Hawaii and Kentucky.

The post State vs. State vs. State Ad Nauseum appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Metro East area has two of these high school clinics, the one in East St. Louis and another in Cahokia.

In contrast, the whole state of Missouri has just three, according to the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care, a nonprofit group in Washington.

Providing preventative health care to poor children is imperative, but attaching the service to public schools is the wrong way to go. The existing system of public schools excacerbates disparities in education, because the children with the fewest choices are stuck in the worst schools. If a child’s health care provider also depends on his address, we’ll have greater health care injustice.

The post We Don’t Need More Clinics in Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Both of the options being considered currently:

Under one plan, Illinois would shoulder the cost of building a companion bridge to the Martin Luther King Bridge. Under another, a private group would pay for and build a bridge and collect tolls ranging from $1 to $6.

are preferable to earlier proposals.  The toll road idea is excellent.  I believe the fears of Illinois politicians are overblown, as most of their voters will remain on the free bridges while many of the same trucks that so often tie up those bridges will choose the new toll road.  Time is money in trucking, and toll expenses are tax write-offs. 

The MLK  companion / addition is also a good idea.  As anyone who had crossed the MLK knows, it is a little tight in the turns.  Making the current bridge all eastbound and adding new westbound lanes on a connected bridge will significantly improve flow into north downtown and onto 70 westbound. 

The final option I like, not discussed in the article, is expanding MetroLink into Madison County.  St. Clair County residents in Illinois use MetroLink more than any other demographic group in the area.  Going north from Fairview Heights to add a line and stations in Collisville and Edwardsville would serve many commuters who work in Downtown St. Louis and greatly reduce traffic.   Any of these three proposals will cost Illinois a great deal of money and Missouri little to none.  So I can’t really understand why Missouri’s reps on the Council all voted against the companion bridge proposal when they are not being asked to pay for it. 

The post Ask not for whom the bridge tolls, it tolls for thee, not for free appeared first on Show-Me Institute.