Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Transportation topics in KC
flyingember
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by flyingember »

Texas just tried to do tolling for a bunch of new roads

It's ending up a disaster for the state. People simply aren't using the roads. When it's yet another road it doesn't work.

tolls on I-70 died when US 50 was upgraded to Jeff City and 36 was widened. it's too easy to avoid the tolls by detouring to a route that doesn't add that much time. Imagine if KC to Chicago truck traffic all started avoiding St. Louis

I-44 is the toll highway for Missouri. There's no realistic alternative route
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by pash »

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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by shinatoo »

pash wrote:The a Federal Highway Administration's latest statistics show that Kansas City has more miles of roadway per person than any other metropolitan area in the United States. Kansas City's highways have less traffic than those of every American metro other than Tulsa and Pittsburgh. Kansas Citians drive farther very day, on average, than their counterparts in all but a handful of metros.

We have too many highways. Way too many. We need to spend less money on them, not more. So there is no finer time or place to wait for a transportation funding bill, in my opinion. If Amendment Seven fails, we will still have way too many roads to drive on. There will be no bad consequences. So I see no reason whatsoever to vote for in in the spirit of compromise.
If you are only thinking of Kansas City then you are correct. But if you travel I-70 and I-29 you would know what poor shape those roads are in and how badly they are in need of repair and capacity upgrades.

I don't know that there is any capacity upgrade slated for the KC metro. Even if there was, most of that stat is slanted by the wayyyy overbuilt areas north of the river. You are making a propositional fallacy that just because the total metro is overbuilt that no part of the metro is under built. Roadways are fixed assets. It's not like you can move the capacity around like police officers or fire trucks.

Huge mistake building 435 through NE Clay County. But we can't pick it up and lay it alongside I-70.

If this bill doesn't pass our roads and bridges will continue to deteriorate to a dangerous level, that is a very real consequence.
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by shinatoo »

And just to split hairs, Nashville, Birmingham and Raleigh NC all have us beat on highway miles per person, and that's just on the first sheet.

You also have to remember that we are at the crossroads of three major transcontinental interstates. That skews the numbers too.
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by pash »

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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by flyingember »

shinatoo wrote:And just to split hairs, Nashville, Birmingham and Raleigh NC all have us beat on highway miles per person, and that's just on the first sheet.

You also have to remember that we are at the crossroads of three major transcontinental interstates. That skews the numbers too.
and add the transcontinental US Routes that get to KC
US 50, 40, 24, 69, 169, 71
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

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pash wrote:
shinatoo wrote:You are making a propositional fallacy that just because the total metro is overbuilt that no part of the metro is under built.
No, I'm not. I did not make the latter claim, much less say it follows from the former. But I'll make the claim now: no part of the metro needs new highway capacity.
shinatoo wrote:Roadways are fixed assets. It's not like you can move the capacity around like police officers or fire trucks.
A dollar is a dollar, and a dollar spent to maintain an overbuilt system of freeways is a dollar misspent. I am not willing to forgive decades of bad decisions if forgiveness means continuing to pay the high costs of maintaining overbuilt, under-used highways while chipping in further billions to add capacity where traffic slows below 50mph for a half hour or so five days out of the week.

The simple fact is that Missouri, and the KC metro particularly, spend way too much money on highways. Compare what we have, how much we use it, and what we're spending for it to what other states and metros have, use, and spend. The conclusion is inescapable: we have too much, don't use it enough, and are spending way too much money on it, even though we've been underfunding it for years. Now is the time to say so.
shinatoo wrote:And just to split hairs, Nashville, Birmingham and Raleigh NC all have us beat on highway miles per person, and that's just on the first sheet.
That's right for total miles of roadway per person, but not for highways. (Sorry, I misstated what I wanted to say in my previous post.) Multiply "miles of roadway per 1,000 people" by "% of total miles serving as freeways" and and KC is way out in front. Anyway, we're bickering about whether KC is in a class all its own or whether it's merely in the very top tier of cities with the most overbuilt highway systems.
I get what your saying, but it doesn't change the fact that I-70 is an ancient, dangerous and vitally important route across our state that needs to be rebuilt.
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

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shinatoo wrote: Huge mistake building 435 through NE Clay County. But we can't pick it up and lay it alongside I-70.
That's funny, because 435 is only in SW Clay County.
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by shinatoo »

flyingember wrote:
shinatoo wrote: Huge mistake building 435 through NE Clay County. But we can't pick it up and lay it alongside I-70.
That's funny, because 435 is only in SW Clay County.
You know what I meant.
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by shinatoo »

pash wrote:So put in some tolls or raise the gas tax to pay for it. Use taxes are fine with me. Users can overpay as much as they want for all I care.

But otherwise it's time to stop pumping so many billions of dollars of public money into highways. The money would be far better spent in other uses, and we're talking about locking up key local sales tax revenue, revenue that will consequent be off the table for more valuable projects for at least the next decade.
You act like I-70, and all the other interstates, are just a recreational highways for individuals in cars and not a huge economic driver for the state that is responsible for 80% of the freight traffic in Missouri.
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by flyingember »

shinatoo wrote: You act like I-70, and all the other interstates, are just a recreational highways for individuals in cars and not a huge economic driver for the state that is responsible for 80% of the freight traffic in Missouri.
depends on how you do the measuring.

If you figure that the Interstates led to the economic decline of the towns it bypassed on other highways, how much real economic gain was there and how much just moved to a different part of the state?

How much was a result of increasing population in general that would have happened anyways?

It's way more complex than looking at all the freight traffic which takes I-70 because it's the easiest way to get from Illinois to Kansas.

That 80% of freight traffic is on one highway and isn't spread all over the state shows just how much it hasn't helped the state as a whole with economic development. If we had massive economic development there would be way more trucks taking more routes from state to finish. There's 15+ major US routes and Interstates crossing the state
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by flyingember »

shinatoo wrote:
flyingember wrote:
shinatoo wrote: Huge mistake building 435 through NE Clay County. But we can't pick it up and lay it alongside I-70.
That's funny, because 435 is only in SW Clay County.
You know what I meant.
not really. it replaced US 71 bypass (Mo 291) so it's not like if 435 was a brand new road through that area.
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by smh »

flyingember wrote:
shinatoo wrote:
You know what I meant.
not really. it replaced US 71 bypass (Mo 291) so it's not like if 435 was a brand new road through that area.
Image
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by shinatoo »

flyingember wrote:
shinatoo wrote: You act like I-70, and all the other interstates, are just a recreational highways for individuals in cars and not a huge economic driver for the state that is responsible for 80% of the freight traffic in Missouri.
depends on how you do the measuring.

If you figure that the Interstates led to the economic decline of the towns it bypassed on other highways, how much real economic gain was there and how much just moved to a different part of the state?

How much was a result of increasing population in general that would have happened anyways?

It's way more complex than looking at all the freight traffic which takes I-70 because it's the easiest way to get from Illinois to Kansas.

That 80% of freight traffic is on one highway and isn't spread all over the state shows just how much it hasn't helped the state as a whole with economic development. If we had massive economic development there would be way more trucks taking more routes from state to finish. There's 15+ major US routes and Interstates crossing the state.
The measuring is done by measuring it. Not but looking longingly at quaint old sepia-tone photos of old horse and buggy towns.

And 80% of the freight isn't moved just on I-70, that's ridiculous. 80% of freight (total value, not tonnage, 60% by tonnage) in the USA is moved by OTR carriers. I don't know what % is moved just on I-70. Additionally, the prop is covering almost all of the routes you mentioned. Those routs and the trucking they support is an economic driver in much of rural America. Tracker Boat plants in Bolivar and Marshal. Briggs and Straton in Poplar Bluff, BASF in Palmyra, ConAgra in Macon, SAF Holland in Warrenton, Bodine Aluminum in Troy. Just to name a few.
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by flyingember »

smh wrote:
flyingember wrote:
shinatoo wrote:
You know what I meant.
not really. it replaced US 71 bypass (Mo 291) so it's not like if 435 was a brand new road through that area.
Image
except my point is valid. it was a counterpoint made that building 435 was a mistake. yet modot already had a bypass following the same route and in what world wouldn't it have been widened by now when every other major highway has been widened in the area.

not building 435 was unlikely to lead to any change of having a wide and fast bypass going through that part of the county.

the point at which to stop that road was way back when the US route system was envisioned.
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by shinatoo »

435 from 152 (really from Shoal Creek) to the Airport, and then down to I-70 in KCK has to be the most useless stretch of interstate in the metro, if not Kansas and Missouri. It was built on hope.

And it killed Derrick Thomas.
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by longviewmo »

shinatoo wrote:435 from 152 (really from Shoal Creek) to the Airport, and then down to I-70 in KCK has to be the most useless stretch of interstate in the metro, if not Kansas and Missouri. It was built on hope.

And it killed Derrick Thomas.
And a lot of it's three lanes! About the only thing it's good for is creating a river crossing between Leavenworth and 635.
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

flyingember wrote:That 80% of freight traffic is on one highway and isn't spread all over the state shows just how much it hasn't helped the state as a whole with economic development. If we had massive economic development there would be way more trucks taking more routes from state to finish. There's 15+ major US routes and Interstates crossing the state
At times I think the freight traffic on I-44 is as busy if not busier than on I-70.
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Re: Statewide transportation sales tax coming in 2014

Post by shinatoo »

aknowledgeableperson wrote:
flyingember wrote:That 80% of freight traffic is on one highway and isn't spread all over the state shows just how much it hasn't helped the state as a whole with economic development. If we had massive economic development there would be way more trucks taking more routes from state to finish. There's 15+ major US routes and Interstates crossing the state
At times I think the freight traffic on I-44 is as busy if not busier than on I-70.
Maybe, but it's a better highway, so doesn't seam as bad.
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