As I begin a new month I hope the $hot goes down well for you:
“It’s people doing really well, and people making espresso for people who are doing really well.”
Kind of a jolt, huh?
"Seattle driving down income disparity; City basing its transit fares on riders’ means" by Kirk Johnson, New York Times March 01, 2015
SEATAC, Wash. — The county transit system for the Seattle metropolitan area this week begins hurtling down a road that few cities have traveled before: pricing tickets based on passengers’ income.
The project, which is being closely watched around the nation, gives discounts on public transportation to people whose household income is no more than 200 percent of the federal poverty level — for instance, $47,700 or less for a family of four under the 2014 guidelines.
The problem it addresses is that many commuters from places like SeaTac, an outlying suburb, are too poor to live in Seattle, where prices and rents are soaring in a technology-driven boom.
If these commuters are pushed out so far that they cannot afford to get to work or give up on doing so, backers of the project said, Seattle’s economy could choke.
“I would characterize this as a safety valve,” said Dow Constantine, the King County executive and chairman of Sound Transit, a transportation agency serving multiple counties in the region.
From 1999 to 2012, Constantine said, 95 percent of the new households in King County have been either rich or poor, earning more than $125,000 a year or less than $33,000, with hardly anything in between.
“It’s people doing really well, and people making espresso for people who are doing really well,” he said.
*****************
The program hinges on smart-card technology, an aggressive outreach effort by King County officials to people like Jama, 27, an immigrant from Somalia who is raising two young children by herself, earns less than $25,000 a year after taxes from her full-time job cleaning office buildings in downtown Seattle at night, and a liberal political establishment that believes the region’s economy is unbalanced and vulnerable in its growing divisions of poverty and wealth.
I'm wondering which well-connected intere$t is getting the contract for the $mart card.
Politicians and voters have raised the minimum wage based on that argument, with an increase to $15 an hour, more than twice the federal level....
I'm not knocking it, but it's chump change as the policies driving inequality continue unabated. We get a lot of gas and hot air coming from their mouthpieces in the ma$$ media, and not much el$e coming from the very people enriching themselves while wringing their hands over wealth inequality (I love corporate liberali$m, don't you?).
The reality of public transportation in America is that almost all of it is heavily subsidized by government, no matter how rich or poor the riders are. And those budgets, not least in Seattle, have been under severe stress.
How can that be when we are in recovery (or so I am told by the pre$$)?
More than 70 percent of the nation’s transit systems cut service, raised fares, or both during the recession and its aftermath, according to the American Public Transportation Association, a trade group. King County Metro Transit has raised fares six times since 2008, including an increase of 25 cents that kicks in on Sunday.
Okay.
What IRONY that as they TALK CUTTING FARESNthey are INCREASING THEM?
Anybody catch that as the car whizzed by?
The second thing one notices is the recession being cited yet again when -- we have been told by the same corporate pre$$ louts -- the economy has been in recovery for six years.
And if it is the government economists and financial industry projections that are out of whack, why would anybody believe a goddamn word from them?
I mean, really, you guys can't have it both ways.
So WhereTF is all the loot going?
But income-based pricing is logistically complicated, which is partly why it has rarely been tried on any large scale, transportation experts said.
San Francisco got there first with a fare program called Muni Lifeline, which started in 2005. But after 10 years, Muni Lifeline remains tiny, with fewer than 20,000 card holders in a system that serves about 350,000 people a day.
Smaller, tentative experiments are underway elsewhere. Greene County, Ohio, near Dayton, recently started a program for low-income riders, with social service agencies buying travel vouchers and distributing them to their clients.
But at least for the moment, all eyes are on Seattle, transportation experts said.
“What Seattle has done is what others might consider,” said Art Guzzetti, vice president for policy at the American Public Transportation Association. “Everyone is watching.”
All the more reason to not.
It is relying on what transit experts say is the most innovative idea of all: tools honed by the Affordable Care Act....
OMG!
(At that point blog editor spits out coffee)
They are going to use that failed flop as a model?
May the Good Lord help the commuters of $eattle.
--more--"
"States Seek Alternatives For Highway, Bridge Funding" by DAVID A. LIEB, AP, 02/21/2015
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Touted as one of the first interstate highways, a 200-mile span of Interstate 70 between suburban St. Louis and Kansas City stands as a prime example of the challenges facing the nation's roads.
Related: Web Version Can't Cro$$ Kansas Highway
They really can't, readers.
Built in the 1950s and '60s with a 20-year-life expectancy, the four-lane highway is crumbling beneath its surface and clogged with traffic as it carries more than 30,000 vehicles a day on many of its rural stretches, requiring more frequent repaving. The cost to rebuild and widen it is estimated at $2 billion to $4 billion — as much as five times the projected yearly construction and maintenance budget of Missouri's transportation department.
And there is no easy way to pay for it. The state fuel tax hasn't risen in about 20 years, and voters defeated a 1-cent sales tax for transportation.
BAD VOTERS!
Gov. Jay Nixon has since floated the idea of hiking the gasoline tax and reviving a previously failed plan to turn I-70's reconstruction over to a private entity that could charge tolls estimated at up to $30 per car.
And Nixon is a DEMOCRAT!
As legislatures convene across the country, lawmakers and governors are confronting similar realities in their own states: how to address an aging network of roads, highways and bridges during an era in which federal money for such projects has remained stagnant or declined.
Kind of scary when you think about it.
Figures compiled by The Associated Press show the total amount of money available to states from the Federal Highway Trust Fund has declined 3.5 percent during the five-year period ending in 2013, the latest year for which numbers were available. During that span, the amount of inflation-adjusted federal highway money dropped in all states but Alaska and New York.
In response, states have tried to devise ways to fill the gap. Governors and lawmakers in several states are proposing new taxes, tolls and fees to repair a road system whose historical reliance on fuel taxes no longer is providing enough money to cover its costs.
Oh, that's why there is no money. The gas tax didn't keep increasing. Sigh.
"You're seeing states all across the country that are looking to do something, because they realize you can't count on the federal government," said Missouri state Rep. Dave Hinson, a Republican who supports the idea of raising the state sales tax for road improvements.
Ain't that the truth, and here we got a Republican for raising taxes. Democrat for privatization, Republican for tax increases. $how Me State indeed!
The next removed had to hand type
"In the years since Massachusetts got $7 billion from the US government for the Big Dig, the state -- like most others -- has seen US funding for transportation upkeep slowly diminishing.
Despite an economic recovery better than the rest of the world, blah, blah, meaning all the road and bridge money has been poured into the wars and Wall Street. That's the only explanation for no revenues and state crying poverty.
The loss of federal highway dollars is but one piece of a transportation financing puzzle in Massachusetts. The Legislature in its last session approved a 3-cent increase in the gasoline tax and leaders have signaled a desire to explore other steps, though Republican Governor Charlie Baker has ruled out further taxes and fees for now.
Those hundreds of millions of debt interest payments every month for a shoddy pos? Not really an i$$ue.
According to Associated Press figures, money available to Massachusetts from the Federal Highway Trust Fund fell 3.1 percent between the 2008 and 2013 fiscal years. That meant fewer resources for shoring up aging roads and bridges.
Which totally conflicts with the line I was given during Deval the Dictator's reign! And he supposedly had an in with the big man in the WH!
The state's share slid from $680 million to $654 million between 2010 and 2011, and from $658 million to $620 million between 2012 and 2013.
Adjusting the figures for inflation, Massachusetts has seen a 10.1 percent reduction in highway trust fund receipts during five years."
I'm currently working on a fix for the MBTA post and this article looks like it will be driving me to complete it.
Here's the rest of the long print article I drew up in my search:
Roads, highways and their bridges form the basic framework of everyday life in America. They provide the crucial underpinning of daily commutes, the trucking industry's transfer of food, computers and other goods from seaports to suburban strip malls, and summertime trips to beach towns and mountain getaways. They also are generally an afterthought until they no longer are up to the task.
And some fatal disaster befalls them.
Governors, lawmakers, local elected officials and engineers across the country say that is where the country has arrived, with a decades-old highway infrastructure that is not receiving enough money to match its needs.
About 20 percent of the nation's 900,000 miles of interstates and major roads are in need of resurfacing or reconstruction, according to federal data analyzed by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. A quarter of its 600,000 bridges are in such poor condition that they are rated as structurally deficient or are considered to be functionally obsolete because they have narrow lanes or other features not designed for today's traffic.
The funding shortfall has led to rougher roads requiring more frequent, short-term repairs and jammed commuter routes that simply have more vehicles than the roads were designed to carry.
On Missouri's I-70, the surface remains relatively smooth, but its weakening foundation means the state must pay to repave it more frequently. Whenever a lane closes, traffic backs up for miles.
On one fairly typical recent afternoon, the congestion forced Tom Crawford to drive his Dodge Durango about 10 miles under the speed limit. Behind him, two trucks with oversized loads were backing up traffic. In front of him was another long line of blinking red tail lights.
"We've got trucks and cars that are just bumper to bumper — people hitting their brakes," Crawford, president and chief executive of the Missouri Trucking Association, said in a cellphone interview from the highway.
The increased congestion on I-70 often makes trips longer for truckers, he said, potentially raising their costs.
Calls for greater funding have been getting louder in state and local governments. This year, transportation funding increases could be on the agenda in as many as one-third of state legislatures. That comes after roughly one-fourth of the states increased transportation taxes or fees during the past two years.
The state proposals stand in stark contrast to the inaction in Congress, where a temporary funding patch is scheduled to expire in May and lawmakers have been at odds over a long-term highway plan. A federal fuel tax increase appears unlikely.
Earlier this month, President Barack Obama proposed a six-year, $478 billion program to pay for highway, transit and infrastructure upgrades, with funding roughly split between the current fuel taxes and a tax on the foreign profits of U.S. corporations. How much of that plan survives Congress, where majority Republicans seek to limit government spending and reduce taxes, will not be determined for months.
Related:
"The six-year, $478 billion infrastructure plan would provide a 33 percent increase in funding for big, new public works projects. The nation’s transportation trust fund is set to run out of money this summer, but despite broad, bipartisan agreement on the need to fix thousands of aging and crumbling bridges and rail lines, Obama’s proposal could face opposition in the Republican-controlled Congress because of the way he proposes to pay for the construction."
Obama's 2009 stimulus act provided a brief spike in transportation funding. But the annual amount available to states from the Federal Highway Trust Fund has hovered around $40 billion since 2007 while the needs have continued to mount.
Even though total state and federal road funding exceeded the general rate of inflation over the past decade, the pace has tapered off in recent years as the amount coming from the federal government declined. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials estimates that annual road and bridge spending by all levels of government is falling $32 billion short of what is needed.
The flat federal funding is having an impact because states rely on federal dollars for an average of about half their capital expenses for roads and bridges, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. The rest is covered with state money, which comes predominantly from fuel taxes.
Gasoline tax revenue has grown little since 2007 — and actually declined on an inflation-adjusted basis, according to some analysts — as vehicles have become more fuel-efficient and people cut back on driving.
"The method that we use to fund transportation — the primary method, the motor fuels tax — is a model that doesn't work anymore," said David Ellis, the top infrastructure investment analyst at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
So is the ACA, but.... sigh.
To compensate, lawmakers in Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wyoming passed gasoline tax increases during the past two years. But about half the states have not raised their gasoline taxes in at least a decade, and the federal gas tax has remained at 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993.
That's always the an$wer, isn't it?
Although some members of Congress have expressed a willingness to consider an increase, House and Senate Republican leaders have said there aren't enough votes to pass a gas tax hike. Many states are now considering alternative ways of paying for roads.
Virginia recently scrapped its per-gallon gasoline tax in favor of a new tax on the wholesale price of gas and a higher tax on other retail sales. The state also has turned to public-private partnerships to build projects.
Among them are new express lanes that opened in December on Interstate 95 in northern Virginia, a $925 million project financed partly by private investors who have a long-term contract to collect tolls.
At $30 bucks a car, or.... ????
Hey, why not? It's a corporate-controlled country now, right down to the literal pavement.
Lawmakers in Minnesota, Utah and Missouri also are expected to consider proposals this year that could levy a sales tax on fuel, allowing the states to reap more money when the price of gasoline rises. And Michigan voters will decide in May on a 1 percent general sales tax for transportation.
Yeah, that sounds great. Won't have the money to pay for the rising gas and there will now be an additional tax on it. I'll just have to cut back spending even more, and there really is only one other pre$$ing cost to my purcha$es, if you get what I mean.
In his inaugural address last month, California Gov. Jerry Brown cited $59 billion of needed maintenance on roads and bridges in the nation's most populous state. He said the state was falling "further and further behind" but did not offer specifics on how to address the deficit.
Then he took a big drink of water amidst the drought.
Most state are simply looking to maintain their current highway system rather than add to it, said Jim Tyman, director of policy and management at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
"A lot of those facilities are in need of really massive rehab, almost reconstruction from the ground up," he said.
Lot of unexpected traffic, huh, readers?
--more--"
Maybe it's just me, but that thing tasted a little $alty.
Well, I'm a little jacked up this morning so I guess I'll go play some ball. Where the rubber hits the court, if you will.
See ya' later -- maybe.
NDU:
Converse launches artistic ad campaign
That reminds me: I need new sneakers.
