Per capita spending for transit for the Twin Cities and ten peer cities St Louis $65.65 Twin Cities $67.69 Cincinnati $83.54 Denver $88.95 Average for Group $122.32 Baltimore $125.36 Houston $127.69 Cleveland $142.87 Pittsburgh $164.67 Portland $167.88 Seattle $188.87 Data from 1998 National Transit Database. Data is based on operating budget divided by population of the service area. 1998 data is the most currently available. Peer cities were selected for comparability in population size, type of transit system, and geographic size of city. This data is from the "1999 Transit System Performance Audit" performed by the Metropolitan Council at the direction of the State Legislature. For anyone who wants to do additional research or look at spending for other cities, this data is available for all transit agencies in the country from the Federal Transportation Administration at this address. http://www.fta.dot.gov/ntl/database.html Carol Becker Longfellow ----- Original Message ----- From: Bruce Gaarder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Multiple recipients of list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2000 9:01 AM Subject: Re: response to CM McDonald re: city budget & use of TIF > Carol Becker looks at how hard it is to reverse commute (city to suburb) > on Metro Transit and bemoans the lack of what she thinks would be adequate > funding. > > If she feels that way, she should be fighting the Hiawatha lrt line, which > is now a documented $95-99 million above the official, "we won't spend more > than", $548.6 million budget. The Met council's dream of doubling the number > of buses by 2020 was projected at only $440 million. So the area is well > on its way to spending 50% more on replacing buses with rail when it could > do so much more. > > Interestingly, the recently released report on the possibility of improving > transit in the Riverview corridor in Saint Paul refers to the 2020 expansion > plan and assumes that it will be implemented, then projects that the number > of transit boardings in 2020 will only be about 40% higher than the 1995 > figure. The 1999 results were already about 15% above the 1999 numbers, so > that 2020 figure would only be about 21% above today's numbers. > > You need to go farther than the council's quoting of our area's rank in per- > capita funding of transit because such a comparison includes areas like > Portland which is way above the median expenditure nationally and throws off > comparisons. What is know in statistics as an outlying data point. > > > Bruce Gaarder > Highland Park Saint Paul > [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
