Should St. Louis Make Mass Transit Free?
Photo by klabusta via Flickr.Like so many systems around the country, St. Louis's Metro is facing a devastating budget crisis. And yet St. Louis Urban Workshop, one of the newer members of the Streetsblog Network, is adding its voice to a highly counterintuitive chorus of people
who are calling not for fare increases to help fund the systems -- but
for eliminating the farebox altogether. Some have suggested that free
mass transit be seen as a stimulus measure. Even MarketWatch,
part of the Wall Street Journal's digital network, has run an editorial
in favor of making mass transit free, saying, "This is not as
far-fetched as it looks."
So how would St. Louis replace the
20 percent of revenues the system gets from fares? here's what St.
Louis Urban Workshop suggests:
The region couldcharge employers (businesses, government offices, universities, co-ops,etc.) $1 per employee every day that he or she travels to theworkplace. This works out to a one-time "wage increase" of 12.5¢ perhour. That's not very much. If regional employers would commit to masstransit in the mode of Washington University and fully subsidizeemployee travel we would be there.
The region could alsoimplement a 1% sales tax to fund mass transit. We couldredistribute spending on roads. We could also end the wasteful use ofTIF for retail development, a practice that distorts commercialdevelopment and produces zero net gain for the St. Louis MSA (report here).Weshould also ensure that the system is useful and require retaildevelopments to make accommodations for mass transit (busturnaround/stop, walking connections to Metrolink, etc.) or pay a feeto build accommodations elsewhere.
Free-transit plans have come up before in New York and other places. Is there any real prospect of their implementation?
Elsewhere around the network, the National Journal opens a thread on what role public-private partnerships might play in the future of the American transportation system; Twin Cities Streets for People reports on a drop in crime near a new greenway in Minneapolis; and Trains for America digs into the reasons for an improvement in Amtrak's on-time performance.
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