From the capital cost standpoint, as you say, the big question mark is how one accounts for local streets, which are often funded out of non-user sources. But indeed, the capital costs of interstates and major arterials are paid for by users via gas tax.

All of this ignores the "operations" cost, though: the different funding sources supporting police, fire, emergency medical, snow removal, etc. In many places, the police basically only exist to enforce traffic regulations, and the fire dept only exists to mop up traffic accidents, etc. When such services are paid by non-users, what percentage of the cost should be allocated as a "subsidy" to drivers vs. what percentage is appropriately allocated to all residents as an essential public service?

It further ignores the external costs and cross-subsidization (e.g. non-drivers don't pay lower health insurance or life insurance premiums than drivers do), but such calculations get very messy with the results typically foreordained by the input assumptions.

Of course they are unacceptable issues. But unless you want to start introducing hygiene laws, smelly people are going to coexist. The reality is that sanitary conditions are a luxury, not a right. You pay more for a chartered flight than you do on a commercial airline. You pay more for a night at the Ritz than you do for a night at the Holiday Inn. There are things we have to tolerate in this world simply because not tolerating them is elitism.

And I'm not sure what you do consider a world class system, but I've frequented New York's Subway and London's Tube, and both manage to have the same problems, with London's being slightly cleaner.

That seems non-obvious to me. You are basically saying that:

gas taxes collected > highway spending + local road spending + gas tax diversion to other uses

Granted, local spending facilitates car use which allows for collection of gas taxes. However it is stretch, IMO, to say that it is therefore cost effective on a macro scale, especially if you don't know the cost of local road spending. One thing I think is likely true is this:

local road spending > gas tax diversion to other uses

In fact, I think this is probably true as well:

gas taxes collected > highway spending + local road spending

However, without a clear picture of spending at the local level, it is hard to draw big conclusions. You yourself admitted that most local roads are paid for mostly by non gas revenue, further clouding the picture. In all, Chicago Shawn's conclusions seem closer to the truth to me, but I'll reserve judgment until I see local road spending figures.

Taft

Actually, table HF-10 does try to include all the operational costs of road facilities, including policing, snow clearance, etc.

The reason this isn't an easy-to-research question is because of all the different transfers among different levels of government, and because user fees at some levels go into the general revenue pot while expenditures might come out of a general revenue pot at a different level.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=32451

Signals indicate funding on track for plan to unsnarl rail traffic
By: Paul Merrion Jan. 02, 2009

A long-delayed plan to reduce freight rail bottlenecks, one of the Chicago region’s highest transportation priorities, could get significant funding from the incoming Obama administration’s federal stimulus package, according to a top local transportation official.

Industry observers were optimistic after meeting recently with President-elect Barack Obama’s transportation transition team to discuss the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency project — known as Create — a $1.5-billion project that would eliminate about 25 rail-highway crossings and six rail-to-rail crossings by building under- and overpasses.

You are right that they attempt to estimate local spending in that table. However, it does seem like you are misreading the table for the totals you gave above.

From my reading, I see (in millions):

So while 35 billion in non-gas and toll revenue is collected, only 24 billion is spent on non-highway spending. Also interesting to note is that about 14 billion of that 24 billion in non-highway spending goes to the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund and the Federal General Fund and to collection fees. Only about 10 billion (about 10%) of that money goes to mass transit.

Another interesting bit: while 35 billion is collected from non-gas and toll revenue (I am assuming that is local and state funding), only 20 billion is spent on funding local roads.

To me, it is less than clear cut that spending of gas tax and toll revenues is even close to balanced. The preponderance of the money goes to funding of highways and other road usage. Further, a significant chunk of non-usage local taxes pay for highway and other road usages.

Taft

An RFP is out for design of the Bloomingdale Trail. This will be like Chicago's version of the High Line in NYC

^ Can you please link to that?

It's about time. Of course, Obama wants to avoid any sort of preferential treatment so as to avoid the "earmarks" word, so this will have to be balanced with other spending throughout the country. If we get the lion's share, though.... :D

Why can't Daley have this kind of vision and ambition when it comes to transit? (see bold):

Yeah, the 55% figure I mentioned earlier actually comes from that table, which compiles many different spending figures such as gas station brownfield cleanups (underground storage tank fund) which do need to be factored in as a total cost of having an auto-centric society. It also should be noted that because VMT (vehicle Miles Traveled) is still falling and because newer car models have better fuel efficiency, people are buying less gas today than in the past few years, and it is eroding the key revenue generator of the Highway Trust Fund. The fund actually went into deficit already in 2008 (4 years ahead of expectations), and congress appropriated $8 Billion in other tax revenues to cover the short fall.

I don't know where the City of New York is coming up with $2.1 billion, but I can assure you that the City of Chicago does not have that kind of money lying around. A transit taxing district does exist in the downtown area that could perhaps be tapped (it's not used right now) but tax increases are never popular, especially in a recessionary period.

NYC is gambling that the 7 Extension will help the West Side development to continue through the recession. I doubt they will succeed, but the new subway will definitely be a positive.

Here in Chicago, the only project that would interest the City would be the West Loop Transportation Center, and perhaps the Carroll Street busway. The line extensions (Red, Orange, Yellow) are not critical and would merely serve to relieve congestion on feeder bus lines. The Circle Line is... mired in complex issues and complex egos. The city is interested in the Mid-City Transitway, but not necessarily as a rail line... it could be a combination bus/truck highway, or perhaps even a full freeway once the studies are done.

Are there actually any studies underway on this?

Honestly? I don't know.

From CDOT's website:
"The city has begun some preliminary studies to assess potential demand/usership and look at some of the demographic data in the Mid-City corridor."

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not suggesting anything like hygiene laws, etc... but sanitary conditions are in fact our right. It is my right as a tax payer to demand that the public transportation system be sanitary. The real question is to what level we all consider sanitary.

To your point about elitism, why should we tolerate things if we have the means to solve the problem? isn't that just lazy?

Taxing people for driving is the last resort, it should only be done if there is absolutely nothing more you can do to increase effeciency and effectiveness of the public transit system.

I think there are a lot of people who would disagree with this statement. Whether or not you like the idea, there are a lot of laws in this country which create taxes not just for the purposes of additional revenue, but also to influence behavior. Laws targeting alcohol, tobacco, porn, etc, etc exist in an attempt to make people stop doing things that society considers "undesirable."

In the past, gas taxes and tolls were for the sole purpose of paying for the creation or maintenance of roads. Again, you may not like it, but many people consider driving to work when public transportation is an option a "sin" that should be taxed to discourage it. I'm not sure I share this view, but there is another way to look at it as well: when congestion and wear and tear due to too many people on the road becomes too burdensome for the local economy to bear, taxes to discourage driving when feasible alternatives exist help to raise the entire area's quality of life. In other words: you can argue that taxes to discourage driving work to the greater public good.

One last time: you may disagree with the viewpoints expressed above. That's fine. But you must admit that they are logical and reasonable points of view.

Taft

I suppose you and I have fundamental differences in the way we view things on multiple levels.

For one, I don’t see how it’s possible to legally block a fare paying customer because of the way he/she smells. The urination can easily be policed if they do it on the train, but I’m less sure that it’s illegal to just go in your pants…which many homeless do.

Secondly, I’d say that a “usage tax” is about the fairest tax in existence.

I agree that there are two sides to this issue and that there are valid points, especially ones you have made above. I just have a very hard time allowing the local gov. to increase taxes on drivers when I see so many ineffeciencies and wasteful spending of the tax money we already have. Which is another issue alltogether and not for this thread.;)

Snafu loses Chicago $135M grant
 

From Crain's:

^ What the flying fuck?
:shrug:

I hope Durbin and Daley (and perhaps Burris?) are able to get that money back from LaHood and Obama. Otherwise, that would be really sad and, honestly, pretty Goddamn pathetic

^ I hope so, too. The crazy thing is they were denied by an administration that favors privatization precisely because they were in the process of privatizing, according to the article.

I guess Kruesi isn't totally out of the limelight. Just like every public official in Illinois, they go into the private sector once they step down.

I'm pissed about the loss of the funds, but Daley really bungled this one. He knows the political fallout of these types of unpopular fee raises. If he wanted the transportation funds, he should have passed that ordinance first before the other fee raises, before everyone got outraged. The fault here is purely Daley's for sequencing things incorrectly.

And honestly, is there even a chance that Chicago will lose this funding for real? With Obama in the Oval Office and LaHood down at USDOT, the money is more likely to increase than to be forfeited.

I'd suggest the real reason liquor and tobacco are taxed is precisely because the taxes won't control them. That is, they have inelastic demand which means they are easy ways to raise large amounts of money, thought taxes that are highly regressive, incidentally. Also, consumers of those products qua consumers are politically uninfluential.

^ Well, there's always a chance, but you're right--I doubt Daley will lose this money

"Michael Cornicelli, executive vice-president of the Building Owners and Managers Assn., said, "To simply penalize motorists, to burden them with an additional tax without providing viable alternatives isn't helpful," adding that "the Chicago Transit Authority is in dire need of an expansion."

I couldn't agree with this statement more.

So who's going to pay for the expansion? Are Mr. Cornicelli and local businesses going to do it? Ha! Fat chance. Like always, this is going to come down to government funding. And with the state and local governments running deficits right now (and under requirements to balance their budgets), how do you expect them to pay for it except by raising taxes?

I would really love to hear an explanation of where else this money should come from. And I'm not saying that in any way sarcastically. I would really like to know.

Taft

If he's the city's lobbyist, he's not exactly in the private sector.

What, did you think Daley was actually going to get rid of him?

Oh, I know! We can just borrow it!

I'm not sure exactly where the money will come from, but the gov. of NY has a great idea, he's proposing a tax on soda, that's right, Coke, Pepsi, etc...:yes:

Perhaps Mr. Cornicelli has a point, why should the burden be placed on drivers coming into the downtown area only? Perhaps they should spread the burden to all off street parking in Cook County. Since the CTA is not only limited to the loop. just a thought.

The endless argument about who pays and who benefits is, I think, one of the driving forces behind why public goods like transit are ultimately typically supported by broad taxes like the sales tax - to paraphrase Churchill I think, the worst system, except for all the others. Continuously variable, cross-subsidizing user fees between various modes of transport would be economically ideal, but politically pretty difficult.

A different solution would be a downtown taxing district to fund downtown transit improvements, a la what was proposed to pay for the various renditions of the Central Area Circulator from the 1960s to 1990s - also fought vigorously by business interests, generally.

If congestion pricing is good for business (personally, I think it generally would be if it's done right), then the focus should be on convincing them why.

Is it expansion you want, or clean trains?

If we don't get the money back this needs to be put up on Daley's list as money he lost for the city. Sorry the buck stops with him. He was trying to kill us last month with his money cutting into a very basic required service called snow plowing....and yet he was off visiting places in the Fall and lost us $153 million dollars. Two huge mistakes. Maybe Daley doesn't care about Chicago anymore?

You're absolutely right. The problem, though, is that today's business culture is so short-sighted, so focused on the next quarter, that businesses refuse to consider long-term investment and delayed benefits. (This mentality is probably at the root of the economic collapse.) I don't see a welcome reception to even the most persuasive argument if it means even a minor cost in the short-term.

^^^ That's a silly thing to say. Of course companies are focused on long term growth. Its the government who has a problem with being short sighted. For some reason they can't get it through their heads that we can't just keep borrowing and encouraging our citzens to borrow by driving down the cost of debt. In case you haven't noticed, most US businesses have better long term solvancy right now than the US Federal government...

There are whole sections of accouting departments dedicated to tracking long term growth plans in most companies. Companies are obsessed with growth and expansion and long term success.


Actually studies suggest that liquor demand is relatively elastic because for most people, most of the time, it is consumed as a luxury. For example, if times are tough are you going to buy expensive $10 mixed drinks at a bar or a $6 beer? However, the effect of economic cycles on liquor demand is interesting because there is less of a decrease in liquor sales in a rough economy, this is probably because the 10% or whatever it is of the population that uses alcohol do deal with their problems probably increases consumption inversely with the success of the economy. So in effect, the demand is elastic, but the elasticity is muted when it comes to moving in step with economic cycles. However, if you tax the crap out of it when the economy is good, sales will indeed fall.

If you are interested in this topic and have an understanding of Economics here is the study I am basing this off of:
http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAb...103622537.html

Don't think I'm arguing this from the perspective of an anti-capitalist. I'm all about private entities and loathe big government and debt spending.

But what's silly is to imply that the 21st Century business gestalt is somehow okay. I guess if you see the Big Three and the former Wall Street financial giants as exceptions (of myopia) rather than the rule (of prudence and careful investing) I could understand where you're coming from; but I think you'd be alone in that assessment.

It's more complicated than this. The city delayed action on congestion pricing while it negotiated the metered parking privatization deal, which was only approved in December and netted the city over $1 billion. The Bush DOT was of course always huge on such privatization deals, so it was indeed sort of curious that they wouldn't grant an extension because of a delay caused by a privatization deal. There's something political going on and I don't think we're getting the whole story.

For example, what if the city gets BRT money from the upcoming "stimulus" instead, without the congestion-pricing strings attached? Wouldn't that be win-win from City Hall's standpoint, since it would avoid another confrontation with the 50 hooting chimpanzees in the City Council?

Or maybe this is a deliberate thumb in the eye by DOT.

Lots of possibilities, but I'm certain there's a lot more to the story than "Daley snooze, Chicago lose."

I think we've reached (perhaps surpassed) the psychological limit for sales taxes in Cook County. The income tax is probably the fairest, but geography is a problem in Illinois. Downstaters and even many suburbanites see no benefit in meeting Chicago's transportation needs. I can make an economic case that better Chicago transportation enables Chicagolanders to have higher earnings, but it's hard to reduce it to a bumper sticker, and the state constitution wouldn't allow a regional surtax anyway.

A gas tax is (or should be) quite painless to raise, especially at the moment. Just start adding 10 cents a gallon every 120 days until it's $1/gallon higher than it is now. The problem there, of course, is the sound-bite television ad: "Rep. Prudence Goodsense voted for the largest tax increase in Illinois history. What was she thinking? We can't afford four more years of Goodsense."

Have you thought about writing for Second City? :haha:


It's mostly irrelevant anyway, since Bush leaves in 12 days, and with his departure comes a sea change in Washington towards something vastly more urban-friendly and much less privatization-oriented.

Why can't we have both. Is that too much to ask for?

delete

So we would have had 1 Billion plus 153 million but don't...so we have been shorted $153 million. Again...glad this can be written off so easily by some people. We are pinching pennies at snow removal but losing millions by being stupid? Fire the bastards if they clean this mess up.

Money was offered...rules with dates were given. It was very specific.

We are already taking a loss with the $1 Billion over time. That was hard enough to give up.....but this deal has cost us even more money.

But we pay their benefit...not the other way around. Chicago...area pays a higher amount than we get back on most everything we are taxed on including transportation.

^ I think Viva's point was that Chicago may be making a deal to get this money anyway but without the strings attached that it has to create a congestion pricing system. So instead of accepting the deal now (with strings attached), why not wait another month or two, let Obama take office, get a massive stimulus bill passed, and get the same money without the strings?

I :hell: :yuck: despise:yuck: :hell: Bush, but privatization-oriented policy can be very urban-friendly; the two goals are not at all mutually exclusive like you suggest.

^^^ They are mutually exclusive in the eye's of the National Democratic party and that's what matters. Hopefully Obama will be closer to Clinton than the classic Democratic argument on this issue being from the University of Chicago, the bastion of free market economics.

Oh I don't, I just disagree with the idea that businesses today are not planning for the future.

Well that further proves my point, The big three would have gone out of business long ago if the government didn't keep bailing them out (Chrysler) and holding off on increases in emissions standards. The Financial giants would never had made those risky loans had they been able to charge a decent interest rate (7 or 8%) to people with good credit. Instead the government price fixed the price of money (interest rate) to around 5-6% and the banks were forced to find people who were riskier to charge higher rates to. That was the real problem behind the subprime crisis, not just reckless investing, but reckless investing encouraged/caused by the artificially low interest rates forced by the government. Again the government's fault...

^ You know, I really hope you're right here. Because from what I've read, the city has done a lot of work on this BRT system and has had several community meetings--doesn't seem to make any sense for Daley to just let this go without even a second thought or a bit of a fight. This is very weird..

I wasn't suggesting that they were mutually exclusive, but the Obama Democrats DO have both of these attitudes, which can be quite beneficial for the status-quo system of government-run transit authorities.

I think that is exactly what is happening. This was money that New York had lost due to the congestion pricing requirement. I don't think Chciago is going to find it hard to deal with the combo of Obama and LaHood, most likely there is a much better deal in the works.

This morning's Trib says one of the problems was that the city hadn't held enough public meetings.