Tuesday, April 6, 2010

St. Louis Kinda Back in the Transit Space Race

I haven't talked about the transit space race in a while because not a lot of big news has been happening. That and I've been a bit busy lately. But tonight a huge event took place in which a half cent sales tax was passed to better bus service and build light rail extensions to other parts of the St. Louis region, building off of one of the great light rail success stories in this country.

Yonah over at Transport Politic drew a map earlier this year of what the increase could help build over a 30 year period, though some of it is a bit wishful thinking because while $75 million a year is a lot of money, it's not the same as say Measure R's $40B in Los Angeles. But what it also did is trigger a City of St. Louis tax that was approved in 1997, raising an additional quarter cent, valued by some at around $8 million per year.

I hope that they increase the bus service much more because currently the service is subpar. This infusion hopefully allows them to fix that and move forward. I'm hopeful that the anti-tax sentiment out there didn't get to this plan and transit marches forward. Even sweeter in Wendell Cox's backyard.

1 comment:

Matt Fisher said...

Right. In Yonah's post, I made a comment there, in fact, I made the first comment there.