This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 12, 2011 - If Jerome Day's vision comes true, KanCol will one day compete with BosWash, ChiPitts and SanSan -- and St. Louis will be right in the thick of things.
Day's vision, outlined in a paper released Wednesday by the Show-Me Institute, is what he calls an urban corridor, stretching from Kansas City to Columbus, Ohio, along the path of Interstate 70, that could help make St. Louis once again a gateway to the west and southwest, the areas of the country that are growing the fastest.
It would also provide competition for three long-standing corridors -- Boston to Washington, Chicago to Pittsburgh and San Francisco to San Diego -- where the movement of goods and people has been streamlined and development has followed.
The first step, Day says, would be to establish the corridor from Kansas City east to St. Louis -- constructing new highways parallel to the current I-70 to provide express routes for rail and truck traffic. The best way to pay for the transformation, he says, would be tolls, a route not now legal in Missouri but one that best matches people's inclination to be most likely to pay for what they see benefits them directly.
"People are willing to pay for what they use if and when they use it," Day wrote. "They are not willing to pay for what they seldom use or perceive others using more and obtaining differential benefit to their own disadvantage."
In an interview, Day said that he began thinking about the best way to take fullest advantage of the I-70 corridor a few years ago, when he was driving on the highway and saw signs from the Missouri Department of Transportation asking for the public's views on three alternatives.
Should the state expand the current I-70 to add lanes for use by trucks only, or should it upgrade U.S. Highway 50, which runs across Missouri south of I-70, or should it build an all-new I-70 north of the current interstate?
The option for truck-only lanes got the department's nod, though it still awaits the money it needs to make it a reality. But Day said all three options could work together to improve the movement of people and goods across Missouri. A new I-70 to the north would open up new land for development and truck lanes and provide a wide enough median for high-tech train traffic, leaving the other two highways available for autos.
"I think it could happen," he said. "It doesn't require any new science. It's simply an engineering question. Whether it will happen is a political question. The trucking industry has a much larger constituency than rail does."
In his paper, Day traces the history of the development of interstate highways and their effect on urban areas -- how the construction of ring highways around inner cities encouraged the growth of suburban and exurban areas and led to further congestion, while making urban cores less desirable places to live in many cases.
"It aggravates the very problems that it is meant to solve," he said.
The pattern of urbanization also hurts rural areas, he said, by drawing people away from them and creating more urban congestion.
"Disparities follow," Day said, "intensifying this pattern. Inner cities tend to deteriorate, choked by congestion and sprawling parking lots. As commercial activity diminishes downtown, the inner city becomes populated by urban poor living in older, substandard housing, with substandard schools and low-paying jobs as businesses desert the cities for more attractive locations in the suburbs and exurbs."
Developing a corridor across the state, and eastward through Illinois and Indiana into Ohio, would help reverse the trend, Day said, spreading development throughout the route. It would also help Missouri take advantage of increased trade with Canada and Mexico through NAFTA, with links to existing trade routes.
He noted that the state of Indiana is trying to do something similar by building up Interstate 69, and he says Missouri needs to move in the same direction to reclaim its former glory and take a full role in the developing economy.
Taxes, tolls and transit
Paying for such a massive project, at a time of tight government budgets, is a problem that is large but not insurmountable, Day said. Gasoline tax revenue is likely to drop as cars keep getting better mileage and more vehicles use electricity instead of gasoline. So the long-accepted way of funding highway improvements will have to change.
In Missouri, where the gasoline tax of 36 cents a gallon is among the lowest in the nation, the problem will be even worse, he said.
Day considers the most likely solution is a system of tolls that amount to user fees -- people who use the new transportation routes and benefit from them would pay for them. Those that don't, wouldn't.
He envisions a system that works like cell phone plans do now. People who use the highways a lot could buy high-volume plans; those that don't could buy minimal plans and maybe even roll over their miles from one period to the next, or sell them to others.
"We're going to see an increased use of user fees," he said. "People are not willing to socialize the costs of services they don't use, having the government pay for them and building them into the general tax system. You see this in other areas of life. National parks are a wonderful thing, but only a small percentage of people use them, and fees to use them have been going up. They used to be free."
The system of paying tolls will change as well, using transponders and prepaid accounts so that you won't have to slow down to throw a few quarters into the basket -- or worse, get change from an ever-present attendant.
"You can go through toll booths at 50 miles an hour and never slow down at all," Day said.
Similarly, technological advances will help improve rail travel as well as intermodal spots where people and goods will be able to transfer from one form of transportation to another.
Day, a native Missourian who now lives in New Hampshire, has degrees in physics, business and economics. His family knows firsthand the effects of highway development on business; they used to operate a country store, gas station and tourist court known as the Dew Drop Inn on Highway 40 near Boonville until the development of I-70 took the land where the inn was located.
Now, he envisions that similar forces could restore Missouri to its former position as what he calls a national crossroads. It would once more become Gateway to the West and to the Southwest, more than it is today.
"Although it may seem that Missouri has little to benefit economically from traffic that simply transits Missouri," Day wrote, "such traffic is nevertheless very important. Its importance is that it builds Missouri's image as a place at the crossroads, and a center around which trade, commerce and people congregate. This translates into a desire for companies to want to locate their business operations in Missouri."