Editor:
Rule of Life. You cannot get something for nothing.
How exactly does our government think they will pay for buses, drivers, operating costs, and bus stops? Well, they don’t know. They love to talk about grants and state money which can dry up in a second but in reality it would rest with the taxpayers.
Public transportation will not alleviate traffic congestion. It will create more. Those with vehicles will not ride the bus because the bus will not go where they want to and riding the bus inflates the travel time drastically. Bus stops will create backups that currently don’t exist. Those that want the system will not be happy with it because they will still have to get to the bus stops and wait for a bus. Besides, is there some vast population clamoring for a way to get to work in this city? I frankly don’t believe it exists. This will never be a big city type system where a bus comes every 10 min. There will only be a few buses on limited routes and might make a circuit in an hour which means an hour or more between buses. The system, like all public transit, will never make money or even get close to breaking even. This new expense to taxpayers will not result in an improvement of unemployment numbers or economic development. Why you ask? From a study by the Brookings Institution, “on average, only 30 percent of all jobs in the 100 largest metropolitan areas are accessible by public transit within 90 minutes.” Public Transportation does not travel in a straight line and it stops regularly. The same study also states,” For the first and second generation of Hispanic immigrants, owning a car is associated with wages that are 50 percent higher and with odds of employment that are 100% greater.”
From this information, we would save a great deal of money and be more effective by having a public system to help organize carpools or help companies do this for themselves. In a given area, help companies align their shifts so workers would arrive and leave in similar time periods allowing them to carpool to work. This type of plan could have a much more far reaching and effective impact at a fraction of the cost. I would even venture to state that this should already be a job performed by the Industrial Authority or the Chamber of Commerce. Neither of which is currently bringing real value to us as far as significant jobs but that is a topic for another day…..
Lonehorseman
