When you add bus systems to the subway, farebox recovery ratios drop. New York City Transit’s overall ratio is 40% – it’s dragged down by the buses. However, by the same token, if you include local streets, which have a recovery ratio of 0, highway financial performance drops as well.

Commuter rail is a mixed bag: Toronto’s commuter rail, GO Transit, has a recovery ratio of 82%, higher than the subway; New Jersey Transit’s rail operations are at 67%; Metro-North is at 40%; the LIRR is in the high 20s.

Some people have suggested privatization of rail. Some Republicans are looking to privatize Amtrak – not just anti-rail people, but also people who think private operations would improve service. Back when the Republicans were in the majority, then-chairman John Mica of the House Transportation Committee tried to arrange a privately run high-speed rail service doing NY-DC in 2 hours.

Texas is the median state for population density; it has the longest run of a single interstate of any in the US, 880 miles of I-10, as well as massive interstate infrastructure in DFW and Houston. To find a good comparison between farebox recovery and gas tax/road cost recovery, I’d look further up the league table of population density, something more comparable to PA or NY but a car-dependent state with fewer lane-miles per resident…Indiana, Ohio, or Michigan.

Interesting, in terms of this post, that no one has yet suggested privatizing (or re-privatizing) a public transit system even as states seriously consider or actually accomplish privatizing toll roads.

Even 50% recovery of road costs through gas taxes is better than the current cost recovery from transit fareboxes in most cities.

The rest of the money comes from state spending, or federal transportation bills. For local roads, it comes from local property taxes.

SMH: there’s a solution to the education issue. It’s called equal funding per student, plus school integration. In areas where the government distributes the same amount of money per student to schools, instead of divides itself into small districts so that the poor have to tax themselves to pay for education, educational inequalities are much smaller than in the US.

Is this true? There’s a whole lot of driving that takes place that doesn’t involve the interstates. Plus, if the driving paid for the cost of the interstates, why are we always told there’s not enough money to maintain them?

Also of grave importance is education. Many households choose to locate in Johnson County, KS rather than in Kansas City, MO because the schools remain unaccredited on the Missouri side of the border. This, of course, means that those who choose to live in the city and can afford to send their children to private school do while the poor (overwhelmingly African-American) are forced into a substandard school district. I would argue that there is no lower middle class within KC proper. They simply can’t afford to educate their children.

There are other things facing the city of course. It has massive sprawl problems (which only exacerbates the transit issues!), overuse of TIF, and last but not least some currently god awful sports teams.

That said, I think KC could be the a great midwestern city. Its citizens just need to engage.

I’d love to write more about Kansas City. I do feel that I don’t give the northwest arc of the region – St. Louis, KC, Milwaukee, and the Twin Cities, enough focus. Part of the problem with KC is that I haven’t been there.

Are there any particular topics that you think I might want to look into there?