Movemissouri

What about a nice small train that could make regular trips around Howell county? The original idea was just from Willow to West Plains and stops in between, but we also have Cabool, Mountain Grove, Mountain View and probably a few other areas in, say a 50 mile radius around West Plains? One little car with an engine running around picking up and dropping off passengers would be very helpful for those people who cannot afford to drive around as much anymore.

The State of Missouri needs transportation for the future, not transportation of the past. The transportation system of the past is neither feasible or sustainable, something our leaders must acknowledge. Missouri must have vastly improved public transportation, such as passenger rail.

Although providing other ways to get around is listed as the second priority in this plan, I did not see any projects not related to highways in the list of most critical major projects. In St. Louis, the most critical transportation need right now is funding for Metro. Yet the state is providing no funding for Metro.

MODOT is only paying lip service to transportation alternatives unless actual alternatives are listed somewhere in the most critical projects list. Getting viable interurban train service should also be listed in the most critical projects list.

The only way to move Missouri forward is to recognize that Missouri will never have enough money to maintain all the miles of roads we currently have and to find ways to provide transportation without the unsupportable tax burden that is required in our practically highway-only transportation system.

It boils down to the fact that if people want
A) Good roads and
B) Alternative transportation,

they will have to pay for it. To many people have the attitude of “MoDOT messed up in the 90s and we will continue to punish them by not giving them money!”

Wake up Missouri. Not funding MoDOT does not hurt MoDOT. It only hurts you, the traveling public by reducing the quality AND quantity of services provided by MoDOT.

In the light of asphalt prices doubling in the last year…it should be pretty obvious that the gas taxes put in place decades ago can’t continue to pay for all the new construction/maintenance and alternative transportation that the public wants.

I for one would pay a toll to drive on an 8 lane I-70. Or pay a toll to use a new Mississippi River Bridge. Remember – you can’t have the nice shiny new plaything without paying for it.

True we are paying a little through gas taxes, etc…but as stated previously those taxes are out of touch with the reality that everything relating to the construction and maintenance of transportation systems is more expensive than ever.

Consider this – half of the MO state budget is dedicated to “Social Programs”. Education takes another large chunk of the budget. Waaaaay down the list you can find “Transportation Department”. Cut the social crap, make the welfare babies get job in construction building bike trails, railways and replacing bridges and highways!

It could be argued that the economic expansion of the 1960’s was greatly influenced by the building of the Interstate system, and that the economic expansion of the late 1980’s and the 1990’s was due to the raising and then eliminating of the national speed limit, while the stagnation of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s had the national 55 mph as a major influence. At least these time periods coincide well. The reason that highways are getting the most attention is that personal vehicles are still the fastest way to get around. If we are going to reduce our demand on highways, this must change.

A good bus system would be part of that answer, and a good mixture of express and local routes with regular transfer points and park-and-rides. But congestion still needs to be reduced to get attractive on-time performance, but it will take attractive on-time performance to get enough riders to reduce congestion. This situation requires an expansion of the highway system or bus systems working in tandem with another type of travel.

Rail would be a good backbone to a transit system. With high speed rail and well chosen station locations, it would be possible to make speeds faster than on the highways. This, however, would be expensive for right-of-way and construction and could be very disruptive. This should be focused on intercity travel before proceeding to metro area travel.

There is one more element, which to my knowledge has never been studied as part of a transit system. This is the use of commuter helicopters. The right-of-way and construction cost are significantly less than rail and such a system could be much faster than the highways. The drawback is that you have to be much more aware of the weather, though the helicopters could also prove very valuable in a time of natural disaster. The experience of New York City with privately owned helicopter airlines in the early airline era should provide a good beginning point for studying publicly owned helicopter transit.

This is a list of things I would like to see happen:
If the Shared Four Lane concept works well, I would like to see it applied to all of the two lane National Highway System routes in Missouri.
I would like to see Missouri’s interstate system increased from the current 1189 miles to about 2100 miles.
I would like to see a state owned high speed intercity passenger and freight rail system of about 2500 miles of twin or triplet tracks. Private companies would be allowed to use the system by paying a toll.
I would like to see a bus system like I described above operated or contracted by MoDOT on at least 7000 miles of the state highway system.
I would like to see the research done to make commuter helicopters a viable option.
I would like to see the necessary changes made to the laws that limit to highways only certain funding that MoDOT receives so that MoDOT has the flexibility to use those funds for pedestrian, bicycle, and bus transit facilities as deemed necessary and desirable on highway right-of-ways.

Thank-you.

In the days before the interstate, US 67 was the main route between St. Louis and Dallas. The Little Rock to Dallas portion changed to I-30. As much as it offends the interstate numbering system, I-30 should be extended to St. Louis to keep the trip to Dallas on one road.

We need to look at first what we need to fix and bring the bridges up to 100% anything less is unacceptable. next we need to fix the roads we have and not spend money on increasing lanes for in good shape highways, and looking to the future we need to get the alternative transportations methods – namely rail up to speed in our state and make it convenient to use. on the last point i would lay out his example: i used to wok in Sedalia, Mo periodically while living in Independence, Mo both of which have rail stations within walking distance of my need. unfortunately I was never able to use it as the times for the trains were so inconvenient and unreliable. Also on this point I and many of my fellow suburbanites that live outside of downtown KC would love to be able to use public transit and not have to drive. This both prevented by a lack of train transit and the inability to use busses to get to work due again to inconvenient imposible schedules. Lets stop the madness and make this country make work!

1. treat pedestrians and bicyclists like humans.
2. electrify the KC-STL amtrak route and add routes connecting KC-St. Joe-Omaha-Joplin and STL-Joplin.
3. increase dedicated state funding for mass transit.
4. add highway capacity only when there is no other alternative.

I heard there is some issue with requirements on Highway fund money that prevents it from being used for bike/pedestrian and transit amenities. Wouldn’t it be ok to redefine highways as including all modes of road transportation—bicycle, pedestrian, transit? Would that require an act of the Missouri legislature?

I too echo the sentiments above—more rail that is on time, more transit, more bicycle amenities, more pedestrian infrastructure. In the long run it’s a cheap way to get people around the state. Much cheaper than widening highways and building new roads and it actually has been proven to reduce congestion unlike more and wider roads. See Los Angeles. Adding highway capacity in these tight-money times is just not needed

I especially don’t understand why Missouri needs more highways than Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa combined. Iowa? Would it be possible to assess the need for some of these roads and decommission them? Or just make them into bike routes.

Thanks for letting me comment. I would like to work with MODOT to make transportation around our state work for everyone.

Arguing that the interstate system and higher speed limits coincided w/ economic expansion is one of the more bizarre readings of American history I’ve ever seen. If that’s true, how do you explain the economic explosion in Vancouver, BC (no interstates), and the strong economies in Europe (much fewer interstates than the US, and no inner-city interstates).

This is really quite simple – the state does not even have money to maintain what it already owns. In addition, we face declining demand due to an economy that nearly all experts predict will be slow for at least the next 3-4 years, and the worldwide peaking of our oil supply. To expect the trends of the last 40 years to continue in a straight line is complete folly, especially in a state that sees modest population growth at best.

We need to focus exclusively on transportation projects that maximize the efficiency of what we already have. Those could be any number of things such as congestion pricing, toll roads, HOV lanes, far greater transit service (including inner city, commuter, inter-city and rural), bike lanes and pedestrian accommodations.

If we fail to do these things, and focus instead on capacity expansion projects, we will only continue to worsen our financial condition and our economic competitiveness. I suppose for some that puts me in the “wingnut” category, but if being efficient w/ our public dollars and giving people choice in transportation is nutty, than please count me in.

The United States got innercity interstates, for which FDR and Ike made no plans, to get the votes needed to pass the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, the Europeans have a more balance tranportation system than the U.S., and Vancouver has two interstate type highways in their metro area that connect the five largest cities in British Columbia and to I-5, not to mention a very enviable location for trade with the western U.S. and with Asia. It is not the Interstate system per se that caused the growth in America. If we had invested in a like upgrade of rail instead, the results would not have been much different. So what would have happened if we had invested massively equally in both?

The idea of vehicles piggy-backing on trains is intriguing, but I am concerned about congestion at the station. If we had rail cars that were wide enough so we could drive in on one side and out the other going across, that would help. But standard guage tracks would not work for such a train system and would be very expensive to build compared to our current style. I still think some research into how this could work would be good.

I have heard some good things about Portland, Or., too. I heard some time ago that Portland is keeping their rail system ahead of suburban growth. Is this still true? I hope they never lose their example.

Maybe we should turn many of the allies in our cities into golf cart trails. I live close enough to shopping areas to make that interesting to me. But that is an urban planning thing, and other than speak some encouraging words and keeping it safe when interacting with highways and rail, MoDOT should stay out of developing such things.

But what about setting some goals for mass transit. At last count more than 350,000 vehicles cross between St Charles and St Louis Counties on an average day. In my opinion, if a mass transit system fully implemented draws less than 100,000 of them, it is not good enough. How are we going to draw those kinds of numbers?

The ultimate renewable energy source for human transportation are human beings. Walking and bicycling are viable, renewable, non-polluting, and health promoting transportation means. We should be investing in the infrastructure to promote these modes of transport.

Let me paint this seanerio: A taxi picks you up at your home or office, you travel to a moderate size town to catch a train, to the big city and catch a bus to the airport and fly to your destination. While that is possible in todays transportation, the one thing you cannot do is travel all those modes with the same company. Freight transportation is a little better, but I have still yet to see “FEDEX” or “UPS” emblazoned on a boxcar. And why would you? Taking St. Louis to Springfield as an example, the interstate is both faster and shorter than the rail line. There are few cities in Missouri for which that is not true. But my main point is that our transportations system has inefficientcies because we make that different forms compete against each other instead of working with each other. If we were to have several companies competing across all modes of transportation, they would open up options that would make transpotation better and cheaper and profitable. We need to take a close look at the laws and regulations that govern the different modes of transportation and see what should be removed and what should be added so that competition is between companies and not modes. We will need to have publicly owned rail right-of-way on which private companies could run in the future, but we are not yet ready to purchase it from railway companies. Of course the other option to level the playing field between roads and railways is to privatize all the streets and highways, but then we would have to pay a fare/toll every time we left our driveways.

As I look out my window, it occurs to me that I do not see regular congestion in residential areas, and even it I do, it is because people are on their way to their business or to someone else’s. Many businesses employ a large number of people. It seems like at least some of them could effectively provide mass transit for their own employees, and there might be a few items of work that could be done on the ride, making the business more efficient.

It has been about a year since the Conversation started. I think it is time some of the documentation is updated.