Here are this week’s transportation headlines:
- A bill that would have raised the state gas tax and increased the metro area sales tax for transit failed to get out of a key Senate committee. Sen. Scott Dibble, chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, said he now has “no idea what the future will bring.” “The window may well close, and we might not get back to this conversation for 10 or more years,” Dibble told Politics in Minnesota. Ahead of the votes, competing opinion pieces made the case for and against transit expansion plans in the Twin Cities.
- St. Paul officials are looking to enforce a decade-old provision that required CVS to build an entrance facing University Avenue if the Central Corridor Light Rail Transit line ever came to fruition. CVS says it will build the new entryway but won’t say when it intends to move ahead.
- A steam locomotive will deliver more than 500 passengers to Duluth this weekend as part of a two-day trip to celebrate National Train Day, the Duluth News Tribune reports (the date marks the anniversary of the 1869 meeting of the Union and Central Pacific railroads in Utah). St. Paul’s Union Depot is also hosting events to mark the occasion, including the release of a new book about the train station.
- A series of crashes has the Minnesota Department of Transportation taking another look at the Lowry Hill Tunnel in Minneapolis. Minor improvements may be made but the key could be driver education, The Star Tribune reports.
- New survey data compiled by the Metropolitan Council show area commuters are driving less than they used to. Transit now accounts for 8 percent of all trips by Minneapolis and St. Paul residents and 16 percent of work trips.
In national news:
- Cash-strapped governments are increasingly turning to public-private partnerships to come up with the money needed to pay for transportation projects. Atlantic Cities offers a comprehensive rundown of the model’s pitfalls.
- Seattle officials hope expanding transit will help the city become carbon-neutral by 2050. A cost estimate hasn’t been put on the plan but revenue could come in part from a 1.5 percent motor-vehicle excise tax, The Seattle Times reports.
- A new report out of Charlotte, N.C. suggests doubling a half-cent sales tax directed at transit to help raise $3.3 billion for the construction a new streetcar line, commuter rail and other improvements, the Charlotte Observer reports.
- Development near transit outpaced the general market in four major cities – but not in Chicago – according to a new report from the Center for Neighborhood Technology.
- Why expanding sales taxes to online purchases will help raise cash for transit expansion.
