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MOVING EXPERIENCE
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St. Charles
Countians share regional transportation funding concerns.
By Kevin Kipp
If you lined up all the St. Charles Countians who have an opinion
about transportation—that would be all 283,883 of them—along the
2,426 miles of roadway here, you’d find 117 residents per mile.
That’s crowded, and it’s likely to get more so, for three reasons.
First, there’s what policy wonks call “daily vehicle miles traveled,”
and the trend has been up statewide, confirmed friendly sources
at the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council.
County Executive Joe Ortwerth’s take on the phenomenon is, “Families
have two, three, four cars leaving the driveway everyday…two wage
earners, plus kids driving to school. It’s a lifestyle change of
individuals nationwide that in aggregate means greater stress and
usage on obsolete roadways.”
A second reason: Those 283,883 souls represent a 33 percent population
increase since the 1990 Census. If history is prologue—and in demographics
it usually is—St. Charles County will continue to welcome new families.
Previous decades of increasing population have been accompanied
by transportation improvements, including additional lanes at Interstate
70 and Highway 40, and new roads like Highway 370 and the coming
Page Avenue bridge.
So is it chicken or egg? Do new bridges and road improvements stimulate
population growth, or does growth stimulate demand for road improvements?
“No question both are somewhat true,” Ortwerth says. “I maintain
that the latter carries more weight. People will continue to move
here with or without improvements to the transportation infrastructure,
because of the tremendous quality of life here. People know they
can purchase an affordable home on a spacious lot, that they can
send their kids to quality schools—public or private— that the safety
in this community is the best in the region, and that there is an
extremely vibrant community spirit in place here.
“The big debate in [transportation policy],” Ortwerth continues,
“is how do we fairly distribute funds between preservation and expansion.
The focus of preservation has been rehabbing existing pavement.
But having fresh pavement on an inadequate number of lanes only
means no one can move more than five miles an hour.”
In his view, the more efficient transportation investment is “expansion
of the existing corridors to enhance our people’s mobility.”
City of St. Charles economic development director Nadine Boon is
thrilled with Highway 370.
“November 20, 1996, changed our whole perspective on development,”
she says of the bridge’s opening day, “because now you can get there
from here. It was the key component for almost all the large employers
who have moved there.” Among the companies she cites Coca Cola,
with 550 employees; American Freightways, with 385; Western Union,
with 260 and adding more.
Over time, Boon says the 12 miles along 370 will see the development
of 5,000 acres, the creation of 20,000 jobs and $1 billion in investment.
Jobs in St. Charles County, she points out can help reduce rush
hour’s intensity.
(Boon also announced that a St. Charles Area Transit bus would start
a rush-hour shuttle service in June between businesses along 370
and Bi-State’s #34 Earth City bus line.)
Increased business activity is also expected to help fund arterial
roadway improvements —the big roads that feed Interstate-quality
roads like Page and 370.
Transportation consultant, Gary Elmestad of Elmestad & Associates,
says the county assesses itself a one-half cent sales tax (due to
expire in 2006) for arterial roadway funding. The county shares
a portion of that funding with municipalities for projects and improvements—the
county road board decides how much and which ones—within their city
limits.
Those municipalities in turn have their own funding sources. For
instance, Elmestad says, “St. Charles may use capital improvement
funds from [a general] sales tax plus county road board funds plus
Surface Transportation Program suballocated dollars [awarded through
the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council.]”
On the other hand, O’Fallon assesses itself a half-cent transportation
sales tax. “The Cold Springs interchange on I-70 used county road
board funds and municipal transportation funding,” he says.
Todd Criswell, public works director at the city of O’Fallon, says
the interchange (which increases access to the River City Rascal’s
baseball games at T.R. Hughes field) cost $22 million: $14 million
in O’Fallon money, $8 million from the county.
The availability, or scarcity, of resources is the third factor
bound to affect the county’s 117 people-per-mile density index.
And it isn’t just St. Charles County.
Sources at the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council confirm that
roughly $2.4 billion of need is currently identified in the metropolitan
area over the next 20 years. Only $1.2 billion in available revenue
had been identified as of a few months ago.
The enormous imbalance worsened when the Missouri Department of
Transportation announced that available revenue in the St. Louis
region would sink by an estimated $75 million a year from $225 million
a year as of 2004.
Keith Hazelwood, a real estate development attorney with Hazelwood
& Weber LLC in St. Charles, suggests, “The county has done a great
job at using the resources they’ve had available for transportation.
But statewide, transportation is substantially underfunded. Missouri’s
population is in the middle pack, our road miles are at the front
of the pack, sixth among all states. But we tax ourselves at the
tail end of the pack.”
This disparity, he says, “is going to manifest itself poignantly
in St. Charles County, a growth county that needs state money to
improve I-70, Highway 94, Page and Interstate 64 [Highway 40/61].
And so our greatest concern throughout the St. Louis-St. Charles
region is how will the state allocate significant resources here?”
Kevin Kipp runs Bubble Communications, a creative services and
community relations firm in St. Charles. |
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