Create your own budget for transit in Kansas

[Neo]

This seems to be a bit more realistic than SimCity (who here doesn't love that game?). Kansas has a new site that allows the public to play with the transportation budget and transportation policy to get a real feel of how it is done in real life. Pretty nifty if you ask me.

http://www.kansastlink.com/calculator/

[The Voice of Reason]

That was amusing.

I think that being from the North east it was very easy to balance the budget and improve the transit budget to maximum. mainly because they pay no gas tax!!! it seems the rest of the country has it pretty easy tax wise compared to what we deal with in the North east. It also seems like as a nation there is a hige ammount that can be done with a little intellligent taxing.

If Kansas were for example to add a $.25 gas tax on say all non renewable gas products(therefore encouraging ethenol etc..) the state would have 450 million a year to spend on transportation.

450 million could not only build a high speed rail system between Kansas City and St Louis, but also build commuter rail or some kind of feeder urban transit system. and in the mean time it would encourage alternate energy wich can only help the huge corn producing states econemy. the tax revenues would likely fall off fairly quickly, but the benefits would allready be there.

[Neo]

That was amusing.

I think that being from the North east it was very easy to balance the budget and improve the transit budget to maximum. mainly because they pay no gas tax!!! it seems the rest of the country has it pretty easy tax wise compared to what we deal with in the North east. It also seems like as a nation there is a hige ammount that can be done with a little intellligent taxing.

If Kansas were for example to add a $.25 gas tax on say all non renewable gas products(therefore encouraging ethenol etc..) the state would have 450 million a year to spend on transportation.

450 million could not only build a high speed rail system between Kansas City and St Louis, but also build commuter rail or some kind of feeder urban transit system. and in the mean time it would encourage alternate energy wich can only help the huge corn producing states econemy. the tax revenues would likely fall off fairly quickly, but the benefits would allready be there.

The problem with taxes for transportation is that they sometimes don't get used for that purpose or the money goes to a pet project of a politician. This is certainly the case in my home state of North Carolina where dinky towns get a bypass or loop...or get uncongested roads widened when other parts of the state are at gridlock.

It is a fairly nifty site though. I wish my state would offer something similar and maybe take the best configurations and get ideas from them. This would never happen though so I'm not holding my breath.