EWGCOG message to the City of St. Louis, “Fine then, walk”.

Sadly enough, the East-West Gateway Council of Governments gave the City of St. Louis exactly what we wanted out of the ARRA. Of the City’s $255,909,276 of requests, the EWGCOG granted the City a whopping $35,893,363 of streetscapes, streetlights, bridge repair and traffic signal adjustment! Mayor Slay expressed in his blog that he was not happy with the amount of money flowing into the City of St. Louis from the stimulus package. I think that to jump on the sustainable development bandwagon, we need to learn to ask for money for the right projects, at the right time. And now is the perfect time to ask for a lot of money to bring back our sustainable-propulsion St. Louis Streetcars.

I was reading EWGCOG’s Legacy 2035 plan, again, trying to make sense of their decision-making strategy for our region’s mass transit, especially their long-range plan for sustainable development. I think we all understand that the green movement and sustainable development are very popular terms in today’s media, and we are all trying to figure out what it all means, including the EWGCOG. On page 71, of Legacy 2035, EWGCOG defines the field of play:

Although no consensus has been reached as to how sustainable development is defined, two distinct principles have emerged. The first is making responsible use of natural and built resources by conserving non-renewable resources and preserving and renewing built resources that present generations value. This is a matter of stewardship. The second emphasizes maximizing the potential of human resources by ensuring that all people have real opportunities to learn, work, thrive, and be involved in decisions that affect their lives. This is a matter of justice. Sustainability, then, is about taking thoughtful and proper care of all resources, and ensuring that all have the opportunity to share in the benefits thereof (sic).

From the “Along for the Ride” blog, Chesterfield Mayor John Nations takes a stab at defining sustainable development for the Chesterfield Valley. Nations “learned that Metro’s bus service cutbacks would cut off workers from hospitals, nursing homes and retail centers.” Nations “considered it a ‘call to action’” to ask for federal grant money and local business donations, because “Public transportation is a vital element of creating sustainable economic development.” [http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/along-for-the-ride/along-for-the-ride/2009/03/deal-keeps-buses-rolling-to-west-st-louis-county/#comment-1525]. To Nations, “sustainable economic development” is keeping hospital, nursing home, and retail workers bussed into Chesterfield Valley.

How does the City of St. Louis define “sustainable development” for itself? Walking.

On February 13^th, 2009, the deadline for asking for federal funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, occurred. What exactly did the City of St. Louis ask for? The City of St. Louis asked for $255,909,276 worth of projects.

I have broken down the City of St. Louis requests into ten broad categories from the “ARRA of 2009-St. Louis Urbanized Area-Submitted Projects and Programs-February 17,2009” PDF [http://www.ewgateway.org/InfrastructureApp/infrastructureapp.htm], as follows:

	requests
streetscape	$86,123,686
resurfacing	$11,011,175
multi-use pathways	$3,675,200
signage	$760,150
sidewalks	$18,590,000
parking structures	$29,744,000
signals	$14,575,000
bridges	$82,135,001
lighting	$3,050,000
intersection const.	$6,245,064
total	$255,909,276

Our largest ask at 35% was for streetscapes, followed by bridge repair at 32%, and parking structures at 12%. “Streetscape” is a broad category that is akin to street beautification, including landscaping and sidewalk repair.

Of our $255,909,276 of requests, the EWGCOG granted the City of St. Louis a grand total of $35,893,363, broken down in the table as follows:

	granted
streetscape	$11,768,363
signals	$2,450,000
bridges	$19,025,000
lighting	$2,650,000
total	$35,893,363

The EWGCOG heard our cries loud and clear. On February 25^th, 2009, the EWGCOG published their list of ARRA Approved Projects. St. Louis City residents wanted prettier streets, more cohesive looking business districts, more places to park our fuel-thirsty cars, and safe bridges to drive them over. The EWGCOG gave us what we asked for.

St. Louis City Mayor Slay was none-too-happy about our ARRA haul. On his blog at MayorSlay.com, for March 6, 2009, Mayor Slay pleaded with MoDOT, through his appearance on CNN, to direct more money into economically distressed areas. In all honesty, I think MoDOT gave us what we asked for. We asked for streetscapes, bridge repair, and parking structures. We got signals, streetscapes and bridge repair.

In all due respect to our government leadership in the City of St. Louis, we don’t even know what we want and then we don’t know how to ask for it. It is obvious from the EWGCOG’s Legacy 2035 long-range plan that “sustainable development” has yet to be fully defined, it is a grey area. Chesterfield Mayor Nations feels comfortable enough to use it in a sentence. How would the leadership in the City of St. Louis use it in a sentence? We need to figure out what we are asking for, and then ask for it.

The EWGCOG has defined the field of play, “making responsible use of natural and built resources”, “conserving non-renewable resources”, “stewardship”, “maximizing the potential of human resources”. The electric streetcar would achieve all of those things for the City of St. Louis. We have to prove to the EWGCOG that this is an important effort toward sustainable development, or we’ll get a whole boat-load of streetscape.

Sustainable Development is Not a High Priority in St. Louis

Modern streetcars are a mode of sustainable transportation. They do not use gas or diesel, and even though they would draw electric current produced by Missouri coal power plants, in the future, coal can be replaced by wind, geothermal, solar, or even water flow from the Mississippi River. It seems like a no-brainer that there would not be more talk about modern streetcars in St. Louis, or that we hear absolutely no talk of Recovery Act money funding projects in St. Louis. To that end, I wanted to find out more about how federal money flows into the St. Louis Area, and if sustainable projects are on St. Louis’ transportation radar.

How do federal transportation dollars flow into the St. Louis regional area? And, how are those federal dollars allocated locally? The easy answer is that federal dollars flow through the East-West Gateway Council of Governments or EWGCOG [www.ewgateway.org]. The EWGCOG, an MPO, or Metropolitan Planning Organization, was created in 1965, in response to the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962 (FAHA), which created the federal requirement for urban transportation planning, largely in response to the construction of the Interstate Highway System and the planning of routes through and around urban areas. To receive FAHA monies, the EWGCOG had to produce a plan based on a 3C process of “continuing, comprehensive and cooperative planning” [About MPOs, The Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations, http://www.ampo.org/content/index.php?pid=15].

In the 1970s, at the time of the energy crises and after the Interstate Highway System was largely complete, MPOs, including the EWGCOG, actually shifted their planning focus to the needs of local areas, requiring shorter-range capital improvement programs along with long-range plans “to better integrate urban transportation planning at the local level”, [http://www.ampo.org/content/index.php?pid=15] and to relieve automobile congestion. However, at the same time MPOs focused more attention on local concerns, they removed the reins of broad federal government oversight, only submitting proposals for government money through the TIP, or transportation improvement program. “The result was an urban transportation program and process that languished, and the loss of much of the technical capacity that has been built up in the MPOs” [http://www.ampo.org/content/index.php?pid=15].

In order to lift MPOs out of the muck of myopic local interests, the federal government passed the ISTEA, or Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, to strengthen the metropolitan planning process by refocusing attention toward “integrated, modally mixed strategies for greater system efficiency, mobility and access” [http://www.ampo.org/content/index.php?pid=15]. As an aside, St. Louis is on Corridor 2, or the “Avenue of the Saints Corridor” from St. Louis to St. Paul, Minnesota.

So, now I have a better understanding how federal dollars flowed into the St. Louis region, but what happened once they got here? In 1995, the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council drafted “A Plan for the Region’s Future: Transportation Redefined." It’s a 267 page document located in the Library section of www.ewgateway.org. What most caught my eye was Section X “Choices”, which included the graph I crudely photographed and pasted above. It’s a very hard graph to explain, but the text next to the graph states that

“[t]he bold line which is positioned diagonally on the chart encloses a ‘budget envelope” which indicates the total amount of funds available to support the plan or the improvement program. That line will pivot up or down from the lower left axis point depending on funding, enclosing as many projects as can be financed. It is anticipated that projects from all seven focus areas would be funded in any given selection cycle, but more projects would be selected from the higher ranking priority areas than from the lower.”

What most surprised me, from this 1995 graph, was the priority of “Sustainable Development". Out of the seven possible categories, it ranks 6^th. And things don’t get better. In 1999, The East-West Gateway Coordinating Council drafted “Transportation Redefined II, Building a Solid Foundation for 2020”. On page 25 of that report, Sustainable Development still ranked 6^th out of 7 program priorities.

Most recently, in July 2007, the East-West Gateway Council of Governments released “Legacy 2035”, another planning document. The graph is no longer part of the report, but on page 71, we’re treated to a section on Sustainable Development. The section starts out by stating, “[s]ustainable development is a multifaceted concept that encompasses principles of environmental stewardship, social equity, and economic viability.” Wow, it’s scary to think that such heavy principles were ranked 6^th out of 7 categories.

This is a modern streetcar blog, and I was excited when I read Legacy 2035, further:

“[m]ost could not disagree that given the finite level of human fiscal, and natural capital that exists, pursuing strategies to implement a more sustainable approach to development and transportation investment is desirable. Widespread uncertainty exists, however, about how to go about achieving sustainability goals. Sustainable development is a subject matter that goes well beyond traditional transportation planning, and there are many obstacles and challenges in the path to achieving it.”

Streetcars are a sustainable solution that can only get better when wind, solar, and geothermal are added to our power portfolio. Sustainable development must get higher priority in St. Louis’ mass transit decisions. To look for potential help, I looked up President Obama’s Urban Policy agenda. Part of the current administration’s urban policy includes “strengthening core infrastructure” through the use of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank [http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/urban_policy/]. This bill was originally introduced by Senators Chris Dodd and Chuck Hagel in 2007, and it has since stalled, but it can be tracked at www.thomas.gov as Senate Bill 1926 and in the House as H.R. 3401.