We keep hearing that Metro needs Proposition A to pass to continue operations. We were told the same thing about Proposition M - which threatened tens in millions in cuts if we didn't approve the November 2008 measure.
So what would you do if I told you they planned for these deficits? YouTube was new at the time but you can see this video of Tom Shrout, misguided champion of St Louis light rail transit, in 2006.
We open new lines, and what is the first thing out of this mouth? We need to find a way to fund what they built. Pardon me for being naive, but wouldn't it have made sense to figure out how we were going to fund the existing system prior to them building it?
Of course not. They can always pull out the "Opponents Hate The Poor" card. And they've done that repeatedly.
These people are insane. We face a $500 million shortfall in our Missouri budget. 40 out of 50 states are in deficit so far this year, and we're only in March. The federal government is broke. Social Security just ran out of money and is in deficit, and we're only solvent as a nation because we're buying our own debt in a process called Quantitative Easing. Short definition? We're broke as a nation and printing money so all of Western civilization doesn't fall. It would make September 2008 look like a cake walk. But it only buys us time.In the teeth of this financial disaster, the far left groups are allying with Democratic donors and consultants to shove another tax down our throat? Why are they doing this? They want us to fund their lifestyle. They want you to think some poor latte maker is using the Metro to get to work, while you cruise on through the drivethrough, but lightrails aren't built for large populations in the suburb. It's too expensive, inefficient, and like the Shrewsbury line, is more about paying off the connected than it is actually easing congestion. Shrout says this in his video. The areas he pushed to out Metro are suburban, and gosh he'd like to see them made more urban.
Get that? Us rubes - us hicks in the county don't understand the magic of city life, and thus he think those of us who don't convert into urban spaces go ahead and pay for it anyway.
The entire campaign is designed around guilt. And for that, we should punish them. The critics will scream that we are punishing the poor, but it is Dooley and Nations who are doing the punishing. They have allowed this sorry state of affairs to exist. These people built the Metro knowing it would lose money and require federal funding. Whether through shortsighted planning or greed at the money involved, they built Metro to lose money.
But that's the history of lightrail. It loses money every where it's tried, no matter what the geography or density. In 2008, a blog called Transport Politic built a chart of transit financial disasters around the country.
That's a lot of red. Even in places like San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, and New York, where we hear about how wonderful light rail is, we see massive cost overruns. Who in their right mind would vote to build something like this if it wasn't funded?
Ask Tom Shrout. Ask Charlie Dooley. Ask John Nations. Ask them why they continue to talk about expansion when their current system, and that of every other system in the nation is in the red.
Proposition A must be defeated. In the worst period of economic stress we've experienced in generations, it is simply irresponsible to add to the county tax burden to boost the bottom lines of the politically connected.
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