Oct

30

Paying for Light Rail

October 30, 2007 | 10 Comments

KC Light Rail has a recap of last night’s public meeting on the city/ATA plan.  That plan will probably be around $600 million for construction and $8-12 million a year for operation.  Sales tax is the assumed funding mechanism, but planners ought to think outside of the box.

In the last year the city has approved $43 million in TIFs for parking garages.  That doesn’t count subsidies from other forms of incentives like 353, PIEA, etc. Similarly large subsidies have been handed out previous years.

The amount of taxpayer money we are spending on parking garages is more than enough to pay for light rail.

Categories: Transportation


Comments

10 Comments so far

  1. DaveKCMO on October 30, 2007 2:40 pm

    does that include the P+L garages? were those earlier?

  2. Mike on October 31, 2007 10:00 am

    I completely agree with the idea of moving city subsidies from parking garages to mass transit. People will never use light rail if it’s too easy for people to drive/park their own cars.

  3. William Rockhill Nelson on October 31, 2007 11:06 am

    I’m not sure about the P&L garages and when they were put on the books. I took the info from the EDC web site and calculated a rough estimate from the numbers on the lower left side. All they say is that the numbers are for fiscal year 2006-2007, which is probably June or July.

    http://edckc.com/tif/index.htm

  4. luke on October 31, 2007 4:41 pm

    Your assuming the $43m in new taxes over the next 25 years would have come without parking garages. The “but for” needs to be considered.

  5. Larry T on October 31, 2007 4:56 pm

    Operating expenses will run about $2 million per mile.

  6. DaveKCMO on November 1, 2007 9:07 pm

    actually, operating expenses will be $8-12 million annually in total for the 12-mile route, according to the ATA presentation this week.

  7. Tim on November 2, 2007 7:44 am

    People will choose mass transit over parking once there’s a rail option. NO bus, regardless of how nice it is, can compete with rail, because the track gives a sense of permanence and if you’ve ridden a train once, it’s not scary because you know where it goes and it can’t deviate from that route. Not so with the constantly rerouted buses, especially in the summer.

  8. Larry T on November 4, 2007 1:25 am

    Dave where do you get your facts from.Check out the Kenosha ,Wisconsin line. [more up tp date.See the cost saveings.As you can see the bus system is a dollar cheeper than a bus per passenger trip.The streetcar has a lower cost per passenger mile in Memphis/Tampa/ Seattle over Miami/ Seattle/Jackonville.Streetcar high $3.47/Light Rail $6.47-Monorail $17.85, what more can I say.Because of populaton in Kenosha[which is low] In KC it could do much better.[a city of about 90,000]

  9. locomotivebreath1901 on November 5, 2007 8:52 am

    test

  10. DaveKCMO on November 5, 2007 12:50 pm

    the kenosha line is a 1.7-mile downtown circulator that uses vintage rolling stock. i think that says enough.

    my numbers come directly from the light rail presentation shown at KCATA public meetings. if traditional streetcars are the chosen alternative, then i’m sure those numbers would drop (but they haven’t yet).

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