Instead of responding angry, I took a day off and cooled off before doing anything. I highly recommend it!
The Increased Revenue Scenario is already $40b. Adding a few more BRT and/or aBRT lines and a couple more LRT lines would increase it by no more than $5b. Don't be a dick and paint my vague demand for a transit vision that would allow transit to be a junior partner in the Twin Cities transportation program rather than a red-headed stepchild as "comical".
Look, don't get me wrong, but "no more than $5b" is still a big lift. Not only is that a more than 10% increase on the overall budget, it's more than the construction costs of Hiawatha, CCLRT, and SWLRT combined. Each billion is its own battle.
Name one. Considering the vast majority of the Increased Revenue Scenario is expected to actually be built in the next 10-15 years, it would have to be an extreme pessimist to not think that the whole thing could happen in 25. Again, the plan itself front-loads the projects.
Do you know anyone who thinks that we're going to have the entire arterial BRT complement, the entire highway BRT set (169, 394, 35W, 36, a very long Robert Street corridor (very long! three times the length of the Robert aBRT!), the Rush Line, the Gateway, the Red Rock, Orange Line Stage II, Red Line Stage III--that nothing is going to go wrong, no governor is going to veto funding, no Republican in the White House is going to kill federal funding for transit?
I'm not the one being paid to come up with a vision for transit in Twin Cities in the next 25 years, but I think it's reasonable to expect LRT plans to serve the 3rd and 4th biggest job centers at Southdale and the Bloomington Strip to be developed, and I think it's reasonable to expect BRT plans to serve Plymouth, Eagan, and Shoreview to be developed. These last three could be called "highway" BRT and therefore funded with CTIB funds, but even if they were Arterial BRT they would likely cost no more than $30m a piece and be funded with a combination of CMAQ, state & local, and Regional Transit Capital funding.
Many of those were in fact studied in the Highway Transitway study (Eagan, for example, is the "I-35E S Corridor"). They didn't score well at all, so the evidence is that "the ones being paid to come up with a vision for transit" actually disagree with you here.
My point in mentioning this was not that all the projects in the plan are being funded by CTIB, but rather that only CTIB phase 1 projects are contemplated by the plan.
CTIB Phase I is SWLRT, Bottineau, Orange Line, Robert aBRT, Gateway, and Riverview. Note, however, that the Increased Revenue Model includes such non-Phase I projects as Red Rock, extended Robert Street, the Rush Line, North Central, and the aforementioned highway BRT projects.
Please pay closer attention to what I'm writing.
Et tu.
The point of this document is not to analyze available revenue and come up with transit lines to spend it on. The point is to analyze the need for transit and develop lines that would serve it. How can advocates argue for new revenue if they don't have a plan saying why that revenue is needed? Consider how MnDot plans. It doesn't note that there's been a shortfall in the Federal Highway Trust Fund for the last 10 years and say "whelp, no new highways" does it.
Transit funding is starting from a position of weakness in this state and metro area already. Show
any Republican legislator or gubernatorial candidate the plans in this document, and they will tell you that they want to shut it all down. Hell, show this document to a lot of DFL people, and they'd say the same thing. You and I can agree that these and more are necessary for the long-term growth and sustainability of the region, but that doesn't make them funded.
Contra what you're saying, there is in fact a danger to being too ambitious with these plans, to asking too much. Transportation planners desperately need to show that they are
reasonable, that they are
mindful of limited funding, that they are asking for what we
need, not what we
want. When you need money, you don't ask someone for $100 (even if you need that much!), you ask for whatever they can give. That's the position transportation planning is in right now.
Off the top of my head, Denver, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, and Charlotte are just some cities who have dedicated capital funding sources for transit, many of which are higher than our 1/4 cent sales tax. If you want to spend all afternoon researching this and proving me wrong, go ahead.
My point is that you can't take it for granted that such a measure would pass. All the cities you've mentioned have very different circumstances from us and from each other. SLC is in a state with a tradition of Republican lawmakers who don't oppose infrastructure spending; the Denver metro is uniquely well-served by the Fastracks initiative (multiple decentralized urban cores, connected by rail corridors, as well as some of the worst congestion in the country); Phoenix has a transit funding measure because 2/3 of that money goes to building new highways, etc.
By the way, a flip of the Legislature would in fact be highly unlikely given that there is no Senate election this year.
You only need one house to block a bill. A Republican MN House means the same thing as a Republican House and Senate for transportation funding; no more of it.
If you expect people to react deferentially when you start arguments with "Frankly you don't understand...", then you operate on a plane outside of social norms. I do, however, find it amusing when arrogant people deny that they're arrogant.