Tag Archives: funding

A proposal to fund Minneapolis bike projects

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Parked Bicycle

The Minneapolis Bike Master Plan identifies many critical projects that lack maintenance funding, and the plan says these projects can’t go forward without it. Many potential maintenance funding sources are listed in the plan, such as bicycle registration, a special taxing district, a sales tax on bike products in the city, an endowment, advertising, and a number of others.  Some of these ideas may work and be palatable (like sponsorship), but many suffer from problems with enforcement or unintended consequences (bicycle registration, sales tax).

My humble proposal?  Increase parking meter rates and direct the additional revenue to bicycle capital and maintenance costs.  On-street parking and bicycle facilities often compete for space, and if the city is serious about encouraging more people to use bikes (and other non-auto modes) as transportation (as the Council goals, Greenprint and draft bike plan all state), increasing on-street parking rates would help.

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Minneapolis Bike Master Plan: What’s up with maintenance?

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One Less Bike Lane Pothole - Scholls Ferry Road, Washington County, Oregon

Minneapolis recently released a draft of a Bicycle Master Plan for the city.  It includes a list of projects with a summary of eligibility for funding based on a number of qualifying criteria.  As an astute commenter noticed, a surprising number of projects meet all the qualifying criteria except “Operations and Maintenance”.  The plan explains the Operations and Maintenance criteria this way:

Are the operations and maintenance responsibilities defined? Proposed projects must identify how a project will be maintained before it can be submitted. Projects must also demonstrate that the project can be maintained in a cost effective manner for the life of the project.

In Chapter 8 of the plan (page 8-5), we get a hint about why so many projects are not meeting the O&M criterion:

The [Minneapolis] Public Works operating budget has been stretched to the point where new outside funding sources must be identified in order to provide adequate maintenance for new bicycle related projects.

If the project doesn’t have outside funds for maintenance (not just capital), the city can’t build it.  That makes sense, because we don’t want brand new trails only to see them crumble in a few years.  The plan identifies a number of potential permanent funding sources for maintenance, including a maintenance endowment, a sales tax on bikes and equipment, bicycle registration fees, naming rights and advertising, and more.

This is an important issue.  Clearly this is one of the major barriers to getting new bicycle projects built in the city.  The plan proposes a dedicated funding stream for capital projects, but the answer for maintenance costs seems less certain.  What are your ideas for funding ongoing maintenance of bicycle facilities?  Would you support a sales tax on bikes and equipment?  What about a bicycle registration fee?

Freedom isn’t free, and neither is transportation

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“Freedom’s not free. You have to pay for it.  So if that’s what you want to do, that lifestyle, you want that, it’ll cost money to do that. That’s plain and simple.”

That’s a quote from Carver County Commissioner Maluchnik from a recent MPR story on the deficit between Minnesota’s transportation wants and the state’s funding ability.  The lifestyle I assume he is referring to is living in far-flung areas of the metro and commuting long distances.  The state’s transportation plan is under review, and many projects are being pushed way back, or into non-existence because of the lack of funding.  The Commissioner is reflecting the fact that people may be starting to realize that living with the country’s 5th largest road network may require additional resources.

Of course, it’s not exactly clear from the article that they are, since meeting all the needs would require a $2 increase in the gas tax (according to a representative of the Metropolitan Council), which they don’t seem to be proposing.  So while people may currently be starting to understand the costs of this road network by seeing (and feeling) it’s state of disrepair, it’s not evident that anyone wants to pay more for it.  And while some of these new projects may in fact have questionable benefits (or may not be deemed important enough to raise additional revenue for), its my opinion that maintenance definitely is worth it.

That brings us to another good conversation, this one at the Strong Towns blog.  Strong Towns is currently running a great series of point-counterpoint posts with (in)famous anti-planner Randal O’Toole.  Yesterday on the blog, O’Toole gave us bike-loving radicals a history lesson, positing that low-density suburbs would still exist without government “subsidies”.  While I generally agree with most of his points (even though he neglects to mention the massive subsidies that are the mortgage interest deduction and federal loan guarantees: land use is the other half of transportation), his post is at best a good history lesson, and not necessarily any indication of where we are headed. Strong Towns has a good rebuttal to O’Toole (although user fees only pay around 50% of the costs of highways now, not 70%), looking to the future and reminding us that a full-cost accounting would definitely make built form different.

So I’d say the evidence (in Minnesota at least), supports the Strong Towns point of view: the construction of the transportation system is at a cross-roads.  More of the costs of the system are evident (not hidden), and less of them are being paid for by users.  The benefits of sole reliance on auto transportation and low-density land use begin to look questionable.  As Strong Towns points out, “desire” does not equal reality.  While O’Toole pegs planners as favoring nineteenth-century development patterns, I’d say most of us are more open-minded, and perfectly willing to let the market work, as long as decisions are made with a full knowledge of all the costs.

US Road Funding From Non-Users At All Time High

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According to a new report by Subsidy Scope from the Pew Charitable Trusts, user fees for the construction and maintenance of US highways were at an all time low in 2007.  In other words, fees from non-users are at an all time high ($70 billion).  In 2007, 51% of funds for construction and maintenance was generated from user fees, down from 71 percent 40 years ago.  User fees include the gas tax, while non-user fees are things like bonds from local governments and sales and property taxes.

The main causes of this change according to Subsidy Scope?  No increase in the federal gas tax since 1993 and an increasing reliance on state and local governments to pay for roads.  People also drive less as fuel prices increase.  No mention of increasing use of alternative fuel vehicles, but surely that will play an increasing role in revenue declines in the future.

In contrast, I think 25% of transit’s costs are paid through user fees, although please correct me if I’m wrong.  Here is some data to wade through if you’re interested.  It should also be noted that both of these percentages include only internalized costs of roads and transit, not externalized (non-monetized) societal costs (pollution, congestion, etc).