Citizens for Better Transit

A transit advocate on the Charlie Brennan show just claimed that there has been a 20% increase in transit ridership in the last five years. That is true – but only because the caller conveniently selected one of the worst years ever for Metro. Here’s the whole story, from page 78 of the Metro 2009 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report:

So, between 2000 and 2009, Metro ridership increased by just over 1%.

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I’ve been involved in a lot of campaigns over the years, and have been outspent on more than a few occasions. But I can remember no more cynical a campaign than Advance St. Louis and its effort for Proposition A. Here’s just the most recent contributions:

There are many, many more, but I’m exhausted, and the point has been well made: Proposition A is supported by a well heeled, self-interested group of transit industry firms and low wage employers, all of whom have a financial interest in this tax increase. If it passes, we’ll all be a little more poor, and these powerful companies will continue to abuse the tax paying people of St. Louis county.

Nick Kasoff

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As 24th State reports, Charlie Dooley and Metro knowingly overspent on light rail, and knew it would lead to massive budget deficits that they’d have to shore up through higher taxes:

We open new lines, and what is the first thing out of this [CMT's Tom Shrout's] mouth? We need to find a way to fund what they built.  Pardon me for being naive, but wouldn’t it have made sense to figure out how we were going to fund the existing system prior to them building it?

Good question.

Later, 24th state writes:

The entire campaign is designed around guilt… The critics will scream that we are punishing the poor, but it is Dooley and Nations who are doing the punishing.  They have allowed this sorry state of affairs to exist.  These people built the Metro knowing it would lose money and require federal funding.  Whether through shortsighted planning or greed at the money involved, they built Metro to lose money.

Apparently, Charlie Dooley and Metro don’t respect the pocketbooks of voters. We’re all merely sheep to be fleeced. They do what they want, they ‘live beyond their means’ and we’re all supposed to pay for it all or risk being demonized as not caring about the poor.

——

24th State also has a great chart that demonstrates the utter failure of mass transit in the US, primarily as a result of the expansion of light rail, which is OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive…so much so, that it is essentially bankrupting a dozen US cities.

US cities on the chart below have an average budget deficit of $139 MILLION. NOTE: “% Operating,” refers to the amount of operating costs covered by ticket fares. Notice St. Louis’ Metro only has 21% of its revenue from ticket sales. If normal businesses (notwithstanding Government Motors and other nationalized businesses) ran their businesses this way, they’d be out of business.

Lucky for Zombie Industries like light rail, groups of wealthy special interests ( who benefit from tax payer subsidies and revenue) can lobby leaders like Charlie Dooley and repeatedly bring new taxes on the ballot to prop up their zombie cash cow.

With an average budget deficit of $139 MILLION (mostly as a result of light rail), Mass Transit systems accross the country are unmitigated DISASTERS.

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Friends,

CBT needs your help PRONTO to defeat Proposition A. PLEASE! Tell everyone you know to donate to Citizens for Better Transit. We desperately need to raise money in order to have a chance of defeating Prop A.

PLEASE MONEY BOMB OUR CAMPAIGN AND ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO DO SO AS WELL.

BTW: The Post-Dispatch just wrote about our campaign. Help us stop this bailout and 100% tax revenue increase for Metro!

Thank you,

John Burns

CBT

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Location: 41 South Central Avenue, Clayton, Missouri…St. Louis County Administrative Building.

BRING POSTERS AND FLYERS AND YOUR LOUD VOICES!!

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STAND UP AGAINST MASSIVE TAXATION BEING LEVELED AGAINST ST. LOUIS COUNTY FAMILIES! STAND UP AGAINST GOVERNMENT WASTE! STAND UP FOR A REFORMED MASS TRANSIT SYSTEM!!

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TELL CHARLIE DOOLEY AND CO., THAT YOU’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE! TELL HIM YOU’LL VOTE NO ON PROP A THIS APRIL 6TH!!

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Prop A Hurts St. Louis County Families: Family of 4 Currently Pays $350 Per Year for Metro. If Prop A Passes, That Family of 4 Will Pay $650 Per Year!!!!

On April 6th, 2010 Vote NO on PROP A – the Metro Tax!!!!

1. Metrolink’s history – huge cost over-runs.

The last Metrolink expansion ran at LEAST $150 Million over budget, and taxpayers are going to be paying down debt for 30 years.

2. Many more taxes will be needed.

St. Louis County Families (of 4) already pay $350 per year for Metro    sales taxes. If Prop A passes, families will pay $650 per year!!!

Prop A is a bailout for Metro mismanagement. Prop A, should it pass, will only be the FIRST of MANY new Metro taxes. Why?

Because Metro has major pension liabilities, overly ambitious expansion programs, and wrongheadeded expansion

approaches that are BANKRUPTING METRO.

3. Most will never use, but all will pay.

Only 10,000 people in St. Louis County use public transportation, and not all of them use Metrolink. Why should St. Louis

County tax-payers fund something they’re never going to use. 98% of St. Louis County commuters use ROADS, not mass transit.

4. New taxes in this recession will keep unemployment high.

Passing a new tax does NOT stimulate economic growth. Taxation in a recession is a BAD idea and hurts those that are

hardest hit by the effects of the recession.

The St. Louis Region has the highest tax rates of any peer city in the  Midwest. If we want to bring economic development, we

must build an economic environment conducive to economic growth. In these hard times, we need to focus on RIGHT

SIZING government, not recklessly expanding a dysfunctional system.

Find out more reasons to VOTE NO on Prop A @ www.stoptheprop.org      Citizens for Better Transit

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"Some of us ride it. ALL of us pay for it."

***24th State blog (www.24thstate.com) just put out a great piece on more Metro propaganda that completely misleads the public…

The Lie That Is The Metro Tax Advertising

I’ve now heard radio commercials and seen television commercials for the Metro Tax increase we’re supposed to vote on in April, and can say with a straight face it’s not truthful.

Some of us ride it, All of us need it.

How very clever, but that’s not what we’re voting on in April.

No matter how the vote goes, we will still have Metro.  People will still ride it to Cardinals games.  Wash U students and Wash U faculty and staff will still get free passes, and those who use Metro to get around currently are still going to have the services.

The increase in funding is to be used for expansion.  Note that nowhere in the advertising do they discuss extending the line.  No one talks about the fact that Metro has been losing money for years, long before the economic crisis hit. Metro is a money-losing operation.  If they wanted the money to shore up the program, they should say so.

But they don’t.  They want to take money and expand it, leaving us even further in the red in the future.  It’s like being underwater on a house, and then using a line of credit to add a garage.  It’s insanity, and the purpose is to shovel more of our money to the people building the lines and those running the campaigns.

Who do you think pays for those commercials?  Who is paying for the phone bank? Why is SEIU MO/KS State Council, the political arm of SEIU, in the Greater St Louis Transit Alliance?

It’s because this is about taking more of our money, and giving it to their pals.

If the Vote Yes on Proposition A people won’t even bother to tell you the truth about why they want the money, how can we trust them to take care of the money when they get it.  The loss in Metro services that will occur when the stimulus funds runs out is still going to occur.  This tax won’t fix it.  It will instead be siphoned off for $150 million a mile expansion.  That means they will have to come back to us in a few years, demanding more.

Educate yourself.

http://www.24thstate.com/2010/02/the-lie-that-is-the-metro-tax-advertising.html

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Eliot Davis, reporting for Fox 2 St. Louis, asked Bob Baer about Metro’s spending on art. For some reason, they are required to spend 1% of their Federal funds on “Arts in Transit” – somebody ought to talk to their Congressman about that – but in this case, Metro also spent a great deal of locals funds on the art. Check it out:

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On the Yes on Proposition A website, they say “MetroLink is one of the most successful light rail systems in the country with 70,000 riders per day on a typical weekday.” We’ll take that as fact, even though Metro’s most recent annual report (pdf here, see page 78) puts weekday ridership at 58,272. So does that make MetroLink successful? That depends upon one’s definition of success.

In 2006 and prior years, MetroLink ridership was about 44,000 a year. With the opening of a second line, which has brought Washington University, Clayton, and Maplewood into MetroLink’s service area, ridership increased, but not proportionate to our investment. The added passengers have been very expensive compared to those served by the rest of the system. So you can’t call MetroLink a success in terms of what our recent investments have brought us.

How about compared to other cities? Since cities vary widely in size, the meaningful way to compare them is daily boardings per mile. That is to say, a system with 50 miles of track ought to serve twice as many passengers as one with 25 miles of track. How does St. Louis stack up in that measure? According to a summary in Wikipedia, not well. The most successful line in America, in Boston, has a daily ridership of nearly 8,500 passengers per mile. Minneapolis carries nearly 2,700 passengers per mile.  In Philadelphia, they carry nearly 1,600 passengers per mile. St. Louis is way down the list, with just 1,252 passengers per mile. So by that measure, we certainly aren’t successful. And of course, if we expand MetroLink to suburban areas where ridership will be low, we will drop farther in this measure of success.

So how exactly is MetroLink successful? Well, if you stand at North Hanley station in the hours just before a baseball game, you can see lots of people in red shirts boarding the train. So I guess it’s a success in the “Gee, Bob, that’s a lot of people getting on that train” measure. But by any meaningful measure, MetroLink is a costly failure that must be stopped.

That’s why Citizens for Betters Transit believes that people who depend on our transit system should vote no on Proposition A. Metro needs to return with a reasonable proposal: A small increase in operating subsidy, no rail expansion, and implementation of a 21st century bus system. That is a transit system that could call itself a success.

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You can trust Metro this time...really."

Citizens for Better Transit

–Principal points–

VOTE NO on PROP A, the Metro Tax!

1) Tax increase hurts the poor

Prop A is a 14% sales tax increase that hurts the poor disproportionately.

2) Likely to be huge cost over-runs

Metro isn’t trustworthy. a) They won’t tell voters which light rail route they are definitely going to build b) they won’t tell us precisely how the money will be spent c) the last Metrolink expansion ran at LEAST $150 MILLION over budget, and taxpayers are going to be paying down debt for 30 years.

3) Local population numbers won’t support

St. Louis City/County does not have the population density necessary to make Light Rail viable. St. Louis City has a population density of 6K/square mile. St. Louis County has a population density of 2K/square mile. An area needs a density of 10K per square mile to make light rail viable

4) Most will never use, but all will pay

Only 10,000 people in St. Louis County use public transportation, and not all of them use Metrolink. Why should St. Louis County tax payers fund something they’re never going to use? It would literally be cheaper to buy a car for every St. Louis County public transportation commuter – EVERY YEAR, IN PERPETUITY – than to raise taxes to fund metro another 80 million dollars.

5) Will take years to build

How is the extreme cost of light rail justifiable? In the best scenario, it costs $60 MILLION/mile. Light rail routes also take a MINIMUM of 5 YEARS to build.

6) Other options are cheaper and faster

Buses and Bus Rapid Transit (high tech buses and bus routes) are a fraction of the cost, and deployable in a fraction of the time it takes to build a light rail route.

7) Many more taxes will be needed

Prop A is a bailout for Metro mismanagement. Prop A, should it pass, will only be the FIRST of MANY new Metro taxes. Why? Because Metro has major pension liabilities, overly ambitious expansion programs, and wrongheaded expansion approaches that are BANKRUPTING METRO. And all of this while metro isn’t anywhere near self-sufficiency. 25% of Metro revenue comes from fares.

8.) Bus line cuts will hurt the poor

When metro expands light rail, it cuts bus service, also hurting the poor.

9) New taxes in the recession will keep unemployment high

Passing a new tax does NOT stimulate economic growth. Taxation in a recession is a BAD idea and hurts those hardest hit by the effects of the recession.

10) Metro is supported by special interests

Tax payers are being asked to blindly fund an irresponsibly managed organization so that wealthy special interests can receive subsidies. Special interests will get fat, as the tax payers get thin.

11) Metro is deceiving the public.

The publicized “plan” is nothing more than a wishlist. It lacks specifics. Voters have no clue what to expect. Again, it’s Metro and the East West Gateway Council’s mentality of, “Give us your money, and we’ll be sure to make the right decision for you.”

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