My response to the impending MoDOT budget collapse

[Fovea]

Having spent their last budget influx like a drunken sailor on new exit ramps in suburbia, MoDOT if facing the huge drop in revenue in the manner I expected- fear mongering.

Here is my response to their latest astro turf attempt to get new funding sources out of Missourians, just to maintain the bloated state highway system. It is our albatross.
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Bike/ped mode share seems to be treated like Missouri's dirty little secret. And yet we have a premier international cycling tour.

MoDOT and Kit Bond seem tragically locked in the Eisenhower era. Please note, the age of exurban expansion is over, and the days of four lane connectors plowing through former corn fields is gone with it.

Yet here is MoDOT asking to make the mistakes of the 50s through the 90's at a whole new level of funding.

I see few solutions to MoDOT's dilemma that do not involve shifting responsibility for the staggering number of letter hiways back to the counties they primarily serve.

Those MoDOT HIghways that remain could be multi modal adapted using funds from the overall savings gained that way.

Missouri will be crushed by the next oil price surge that will easily exceed the previous one.

The degree to which we are damaged will depend on how quickly we get an inter and intra urban electric commuter rail system online.

I am not kidding-- the light we see at the end of this economic tunnel is probably the UPac AutoParts train. Oil Prices are already rising and demand is still shrinking, or at best flat... that should tell you something.

We are already hurting in Missouri to keep up our high volume roads at expected levels of service. User fees are not just for commuters... *Everybody* has to pay.

What if trucking helped build the state rail system? What if UPac and KCSouthern helped?

Since the days of the Edsel, we have acted like the automobile based roadway was the only free lunch in town.

Now they hand us the check.

We need to look carefully at transportation in Missouri, not just as a Highway Department, which is how frankly MoDOT defines itself, primarily.

One thing is for certain, even if MoDOT needs more revenue, it needs fewer roads to call its own, and it really needs to have its back door access to the legislature locked up.