Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

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David Greene
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby David Greene » November 12th, 2016, 4:17 pm

So I've been thinking more about transportation and infrastructure. I just posted something on the presidential election forum. Go read it.

Specifically talking about transportation, it's clear to me now that this will be used as a carrot and a stick to get people to do what Trump wants. It's part of the plan for creating an autocracy. Bribe people with shiny things so they think he's a normal president. Then come out with things people are uncomfortable with. Spend some more money to placate them. And so on.

Trump has said that sanctuary cities will not get federal funding. That's the stick and is part of his scapegoating plan. The immigrants are the bad guys (at least at first, more will be found). What better way to get blue states and cities to get out of the way than by promising big bucks to fix and build things and tell them if they protect immigrants they get nothing? Cities, urbanists, etc. have been so desperate for investment that it will be a tempting bargain to get that money just for letting ICE come in and work with the police to round up some folks who "shouldn't be here anyway."

We must resist that temptation.

We have to tell Dayton, Hodges, Coleman, Larson (Duluth), Brede (Rochester), other mayors, county commissioners, the Met Council and so on to stand up to Trump. If that means forfeiting federal dollars, so be it. If that means losing SWLRT, I'm willing to give that up because people are way more important than trains.

We also need to create more sanctuary cities. Will Willmar become one because of its large immigrant population? What about Farmington, Northfield, New Ulm? All of these places have large immigrant populations and often have long histories of immigration. If enough cities resist, we might get Trump to back down.

So that's my thinking today. I'm passed the shock, sadness and confusion. I'm on to clarity of purpose and focus on what's most important.

amiller92
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby amiller92 » November 14th, 2016, 11:31 am

A lot of people are going to have to make a judgment on whether he's a budding autocrat or just a racist, populist republican. I don't envy the job, because I do not know.

Then again, he can make it easy if the conditions are explicit.

David Greene
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby David Greene » November 14th, 2016, 12:49 pm

We have to plan for the worst. I hope he surprises us. But I am not counting on it.

EOst
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby EOst » December 1st, 2016, 3:06 pm


Silophant
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby Silophant » December 1st, 2016, 3:30 pm

Yeah. Do that.
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby Vagueperson » December 1st, 2016, 6:36 pm

Sounds great. Let StP and MPLS form a core city team to fund LRT, BRT, streetcar lines, and improved buses. Let the burbs pay for their express buses.

MNdible
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby MNdible » December 1st, 2016, 7:33 pm

Yeah, that math ought to work out great.

David Greene
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby David Greene » December 1st, 2016, 8:01 pm

Y'all are assuming all of the money would go to transit.

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Silophant
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby Silophant » December 1st, 2016, 10:07 pm

With no actual information beyond a one-sentence tweet, why not be optimistic instead of pessimistic? Plenty of time for sadness when Jeff Johnson proposes the tax increase to be used for an outer beltway because fiscal conservativism.
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby RailBaronYarr » December 2nd, 2016, 12:52 pm

Yeah I guess I'm not really sure what the alternative is? I seemed to have convinced DG that maybe Minneapolis should put up some dough for transit operations or capital. And that might help a bit. But we know we didn't secure state funding sources for transit capital projects with 1) full DFL control, and 2) 2/3 DFL control. I'd take my chances that Hennepin + Ramsey, each with a half cent sales tax (and encompassing plenty of suburbs on the lines we've already planned to help assuage MNdible's fear that Peter McLaughlin will all of a sudden focus on building Minneapolis-only subways because the streets.mn forum demanded it). There's still a probably net benefit even if some of it is used for spot road improvements (let's be serious here: the cost of roads isn't the financial problem with roads, it's the cars and gas and insurance that cost society so much).

I really liked the option for us to keep CTIB to fund all (or at least the vast majority of the local share of) the intra-county stuff (ex. Orange Line, Gold Line, etc), with Hennepin/Ramsey levying a tax to fund lines or projects above and beyond those that mostly serve themselves. It would have given the collar counties a much better share of expenditures relative to revenue, helping keep them in. Sadly, that isn't happening. So we do what we have to given constraints.

MNdible
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby MNdible » December 3rd, 2016, 5:11 pm

...to help assuage MNdible's fear that Peter McLaughlin will all of a sudden focus on building Minneapolis-only subways because the streets.mn forum demanded it...
To be clear, my fear was that a funding pool that was limited to just MPLS and StP proper, as was suggested above, wouldn't generate enough funding to do much of anything.

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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby Qhaberl » December 5th, 2016, 7:02 am

Would the Demise of the CTIB allow Henipin county to ask voters for a sales tax increase, instead of having to go through the state? If this were to happen, other cities could gain from investment in public transit.


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Tcmetro
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby Tcmetro » December 5th, 2016, 7:11 am

According to the CTIB meeting materials, the idea is that the state is being uncooperative with regards to funding, and that a new Joint Powers Board could be set up with the counties able to levy a .5% sales tax. This would basically double the revenue streams within existing legislation.

Anondson
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby Anondson » January 9th, 2017, 11:17 am

MNDOT found $134M in "efficiencies".

http://finance-commerce.com/2017/01/pin ... iciencies/

mamundsen
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby mamundsen » January 9th, 2017, 2:20 pm

WOAH! $134M this year? Anyone care to give more details for those of us not with access?

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Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby Anondson » March 19th, 2017, 8:30 pm

StarTribune put an effort to examine if the Metro area gives more or gets more towards highway funding.

http://www.startribune.com/metro-contri ... 416565963/

Spoiler: the Twin Cities aren't getting back as much as their taxes pay for. Contributing over 1/2 but getting back less than 1/3.

RailBaronYarr
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby RailBaronYarr » March 19th, 2017, 8:58 pm

This is a trend that holds true across many other realms of spending (thread): https://twitter.com/alexcecchini/status ... 0742768642

What's amazing is that the legislature itself has a research team that puts this report out every so often and the narrative from outstate electeds is the opposite of what these documents tell them, time and again.

David Greene
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby David Greene » March 20th, 2017, 10:08 am

I'd like to see a per capita breakdown on Metro/Greater MN transportation spending. Geographically, the Metro is a small part of the state. I can certainly see how someone living in Greater MN could believe the Metro gets more than its fair share given that 1/3 of the transportation budget is spent in a relatively small area. That's reflected in Torkelson's lane-miles argument, which would also make sense to someone in Greater MN. I would like to know exactly what Torkelson is counting in those statistics. Interstates, state highways and CSAHs, or is it including more than that?

RailBaronYarr
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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby RailBaronYarr » March 20th, 2017, 10:29 am

Just have to click the pie chart image on the Strib site to see the full infographic with some detailed spending values. I'm guessing (based on the dollar amounts) the spending includes only funding MnDOT actually controls, which is mostly state revenues and federal pass-through dollars for interstates/trunk highways and NOT money that goes to CSAH and MSAS projects. If you added in those other pots, the balance would likely tilt slightly more toward outstate. That said, average spending between 2011-14...

- Per person: Outstate $384, Metro $149.
- Per 1,000 vehicle miles traveled: Outstate $31, Metro $16
- Per lane mile: Outstate $3,634, Metro $11,405

It's pretty hard to look at those 3 data points and paint it as still the metro getting a subsidy. Yes, MnDOT spends more per lane mile in the metro - likely because we plow more often, roads are designed for much higher AADT, interchanges are more costly to build, land is more costly to acquire, and projects cost more thanks to staging/etc to manage higher traffic flows. But on a per-capita or mile traveled basis, outstate is getting 2-3x the better deal.

Not saying there shouldn't be some sort of transfer. The nature of rural areas is that you've got population/economic centers with much more space between them than Bloomington and White Bear Lake. I do think there's an under-discussed middle ground where more vehicle miles traveled pay for the place they use roads. I'm not saying exactly how many outstate roads and lane miles we don't need, but it feels like more than is needed - and certainly played a part in making the trucking industry the defacto choice to move goods around the state vs rail.

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Re: Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

Postby LakeCharles » March 20th, 2017, 10:44 am

I don't have a problem subsidizing outstate transportation. It is bothersome that somehow they have managed to make the case that the opposite is happening.

But we probably have far too many paved roads. Looking at this http://blog.cubitplanning.com/2010/02/r ... -by-state/ we have the 5th most lane-miles of any state. When we are 12th in size and 23rd in population. Michigan, for comparison, is 12% larger in size and 80% larger population, yet has 40,000 fewer miles of paved road than we do. California is double the size with 7 times the population and only has 38% more lane miles.


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