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Going west?
(by Rebecca S. Rivas & Tim Woodcock - August 20, 2008)
Is one year enough time for St. Louis County voters to forgive the Metro transit agency and the region’s political leaders for their messy mistakes of the past?
County leaders will find out this November when residents vote on Proposition M, a county-wide, half-cent sales tax increase for public transit. The proposition was taken off the ballot in February, in the light of the bad publicity Metro received after it lost a long-running lawsuit regarding cost overruns on the Cross County Extension.
The lawsuit ended in November 2007 with the agency owing $2.6 million to the contractors who built the extension and $21 million in legal expenses.
Many of the issues raised in the lawsuit will be revived in the coming weeks when the state auditor’s office releases its report on how the extension project was handled.
County Executive Charlie Dooley has told county residents that if Proposition M passes, half of the $80 million in revenue that is projected to be raised each year would go toward transit operation and maintenance costs, while the other half would go toward a MetroLink expansion from Clayton to Westport Plaza.
This route, called the Daniel Boone line, would start at the Clayton station on South Central Avenue, go through downtown Clayton, run alongside Interstate 170 to Page Avenue and then continue west to Westport, a major office complex and employment center in West County. The first half of the route would use an existing railroad right of way, while the remainder would parallel Page Avenue as it heads west through Overland and Maryland Heights.
This line is one of several that have been sketched out over the years. Two other routes that had been under serious consideration are ones that would head north and south from downtown St. Louis. Routes to North County and South County from Clayton have also been evaluated.
The East-West Gateway Council of Governments is the body that prioritizes and recommends particular routes, but once a route has been selected, the task of constructing and operating it is turned over to Metro, said Dianne Williams, a spokeswoman for the transit agency.
Tom Shrout, executive director of Citizens for Modern Transit, argues that Proposition M stands a better chance of passing now than it did in February, when it was originally scheduled for a vote. The stark reality of $4-a-gallon gasoline has led many people to reconsider the merits of public transit, Shrout said, and “Metro has been able to get out to talk to lots of groups as to what its situation is.” Still, the lawsuit did the agency no favors. “The suit is what it is,” he said.
Mike Jones, a senior advisor in Dooley’s office, said new tax money is required to make the transit system sustainable. Public transit addresses two major concerns for residents in St. Louis County: economic growth and quality of life.
“Either you believe that [the area] needs public support, or you don’t,” Jones said. “If you don’t, I’d advise you take your horse and buggy on the dirt road back out to the country.”
Bait and switch?
This is not the first time that St. Louis area residents have heard about the need for public subsidy to support its transit needs.
In 1994, the Bi-State Development Agency, now Metro, announced that it didn’t have enough money to operate the MetroLink line that it completed the year before. Bi-State told residents that it needed a sales tax initiative to pass in both the city and county in order to keep the light rail line running.
In 1994, voters in the city of St. Louis and county passed a one-quarter-cent sales tax. However, the tax raised barely enough to operate the single line.
Many question whether the political leaders knew the actual cost of building and maintaining the transit system before proposing the tax. Jones said, “At best, they were wrong. The worst is they were disingenuous.”
In 1997, another one-quarter-cent tax was put on the ballot in both the city and county. But this time only the city passed the tax, and for the tax increase in the city to be activated, the county had to approve the tax increase as well. Although more than 10 years have passed since the vote, the city’s quarter-cent sales tax increase will be automatically activated, if the county’s half-cent sales tax increase is approved this November.
This would bring the city’s transportation sales tax up to a full 1 percent and the county’s to 1.25 percent. Both would then be at the maximum levels allowed by state law. However, there is a key difference in how the two taxes are handled: In St. Louis County there is some discretion about how the money is allocated, and currently about a quarter of percent is used to subsidize road maintenance; in the city all the transportation sales tax money goes to Metro. If Proposition M passes, the county will cut its direct subsidy of transit by $5 million and put that money in its highways fund.
Rival routes
By law, Metro cannot take an active role in advocating for the new revenue stream. Metro is reliant on the persuasive powers of St. Louis County government, which will be the public face of the sales-tax campaign. Given that fact, it seems obvious that the potential expansion must be presented as something that will give county residents plenty of bang for their bucks. But it remains an open question whether the Westport Plaza line is really the best route.
For those who live in West County the benefit is obvious; for those to the south and the north, the value is less clear.
Last October, the East-West Gateway Council of Governments voted to approve a MetroLink route that would begin at I-70 and Goodfellow Boulevard, make a loop downtown and continue south on Jefferson Avenue to Bayless Avenue and I-55. This route combines the first legs of two routes that had previously been called the Northside and Southside routes. Other planning documents show the route extending deep into North County, with St. Louis Community College-Florissant Valley as a final destination and Interstate 55 and Butler Hill as the end point in South County. East-West Gateway’s approval of the route, however, means little without funding and, as with the Westport Plaza route, there has yet to be a federally mandated environmental-impact study.
Nevertheless the freshness of the 2007 study contrasts with the last look at the Westpost Plaza route in 2000. The possibility remains that voters could endorse the Westport route, only to find future engineering studies conclude that it is less practical than alternative routes.
The rail line connecting North and South St. Louis is important because it would make downtown the crossroads of the light rail system, said Shrout of Citizens for Modern Transit. It would also bring more development to the areas that have strong potential for revitalization, he said.
Unlike a bus system, a rail system can stimulate economic growth, and in places such as north city that desperately need growth, a rail line could lead the way for real estate and commercial development. It might be possible to attract federal dollars for housing and business development if the region’s transit planning efforts were coupled with a comprehensive revitalization plan for run-down parts of the city and county.
The north-south line would also serve people who need it most. Metro’s Transit Needs Index indicates that most residents in the projected rail-line area have a high or very high need for public transportation, based on economic need.
Almost 30 percent of downtown St. Louis residents do not have access to a car, compared to 6 percent in the county, according to a study by East-West Gateway. In some areas in North City, 20 percent of workers use public transit, compared to two percent in the county.
However, even with federal help, the city’s quarter-cent tax would not be enough to fund the $1 billion line, Shrout said.
The city’s tax would only generate $8 to $9 million, compared to the county’s $80 million.
The cost of the Westport Plaza connection is estimated to run $500 to $600 million, said Jerry Blair, director of transportation planning at East-West Gateway.
Although there is nothing explicit in the ballot language that will appear in November about where MetroLink will go next, the MetroLink extension would most likely be entirely in the county, Blair said. As for the possibility of MetroLink expansion in the city, he said, “We’re going to have to get creative. The transit system is in financial strain right now.”
Buses versus rail
Some residents, however, don’t believe rail transit is the answer.
Richard Dockett, a spokesman for St. Louis Area Concerned Taxpayers, said the transit agency has pursued MetroLink expansion at the expense of the less prestigious bus system. And, two years after opening the Cross County Extension, “Metro has yet to come up with a budget to cover [the operations of] the extension they have,” he said.
“If you talk to most people who rely on public transportation, this is not a big priority,” said Tom Sullivan, with Public Transit Accountability, a watchdog group of Metro’s activities. “Every time they build a new light rail, they cut back on buses.”
Sullivan prefers the idea of Bus Rapid Transit, which is in effect an express bus system with fewer stops and priority lanes.
A Washington, D.C., think tank, Breakthrough Technologies Institute, compared the bus and light-rail systems. Its report shows that light rail systems cost between $40 and $60 million per mile to construct, whereas bus rapid-transit systems cost less than $20 million per mile.
Metro is exploring the greater use of express buses, and in recent publicity materials it has said that if it had more money, a top priority would be running routes along Interstate-64, I-44, I-55 and I-270.
John Roach, who owns a transit consulting company that advises St. Louis city, said that it does not have to be a choice between buses or rail. In St. Louis, MetroLink has generated greater public interest in mass transit, which means more people are riding the bus.
“If you’re going to create an efficient public transit service that’s going to be financed on a reasonable basis, you have to make sure it has a middle-class constituency,” Roach said. “Now we’re beginning to see … not only are we attracting the middle class on the MetroLink, but also on the buses.” This puts Metro in a better position to improve the bus system, he said.
‘The state is missing in action’
This financial year, which runs from July 2008 to June 2009, Metro’s budget contained a $8.3 million gap that, the organization hopes, can be resolved through a combination of fare increases that would take effect in January and new monies from Proposition M. The transit system’s total budget is $214.8 million.
However, many argue that neither Metro nor the St. Louis region can realistically sustain the system.
Roach said Missouri’s $6.8 million in public-transit funding lags behind that of other states, including Illinois’ $400 million.
“What’s missing in St. Louis is the state,” Jones said. “We’re reaching our maximum local effort, but the state is missing in action and has always been.”
Roach said that taxpayers will spend roughly $600 million on the I-64 improvement project. The first 17-mile MetroLink line, which was largely a conversion of existing railroad lines, cost $465 million, and the recent Cross County line of seven miles cost about $560 million.
“We subsidize roads,” and public transit should be seen as a similarly important part of the infrastructure, Jones said.
Yet, for many residents, it’s hard to shake the memory of Cross County line’s $126 million cost overruns and year-late completion. Even more, it is difficult to escape the thought of former Metro president Larry Salci and executives pulling the transit agency into a drawn-out, expensive and ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit.
“I’ll be the first to acknowledge that mistakes were made in the process, and we learned some things,” Jones said. A more incremental approach can be helpful, he said. For example, the expansion into St. Clair County in Illinois was successful because it took place in several steps.
During an economic downturn, a new tax is always a tough sell.
But, said Jones, “The reality is that the transit system isn’t sustainable without public subsidy.”
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