Letter from a Transit Advocate
Dear Editor,
I would like to congratulate Cathy Holt on her excellent article “Asheville Transit — Not Cheap, Just Free.” It definitely defines the problem and should concern every tax paying citizen of
A 15% increase of transit riders with 1.1 million trips per year is 165,000 annual trips or approximately 41,250 additional trips in the 90-day “free transit period.” The projected cost is $150,000. Of the 20,625 rider trips (which assumes a person is making two trips per day) and we divide this by the number of transit days (72 days), we arrive at 286 additional riders per day (conversation with Bruce Black). However, with transfers being free, it is hard to estimate how many current riders would take another trip versus a person trying the system for the first time. The point being that a 15% increase in transit statistics may only add a small number of new riders for the high cost per passenger.
Let\’s assume the project is successful and the 15% increase is accomplished. The City then plans to continue night service for another $150,000. We are now almost to $4 million in operating expenses, ($3.6 million plus $300,000) for the year. But we are gambling since we have no idea how many people will stay with the system, and we have not included any major gas spike (diesel is now $2.76) in the equation. But the bad financial news gets worse if, as Brian Freeborn was quoted as saying, “we will be running our buses more often and they will not last as long and we\’ll need more buses‚Ķ.we need to double the amount of spending on transit, from $3.5 million to $7 million in the next five years.”
If the money reality is bad, the air pollution problem is worse. Everyone involved with transit will admit that there will be empty buses running on the system as it currently exists and more empty buses during the expanded hours.
Is there a better system? Looking at the transit system, this bus was designed in the 1950\’s and had a face lift in the 1980\’s but it is still the same gas hog, getting 3 to 4 miles to the gallon. The original bus was designed when gas was $.25 a gallon. Even the new hybrid electric buses only get 6 to 8 miles to the gallon. As a transit advocate myself, I believe that buses are great on trunk lines and with full occupancy, but are not appropriate in
Running empty buses in the
One system that has been tried and used successfully around the world is the “jitney,” a privately owned and operated conveyance. Each local area defines this public end-use transit system differently. Jitneys can be “on-demand” or run a fixed route. The jitneys can be “by appointment” or hailed at street side.
Unlike the taxi, a jitney can pick up more than one passenger going in the same basic direction, so the fares are cheaper than a taxi but more than then the bus. Jitney service can be regulated like taxi service. A jitney medallion (issued by the City for a reasonable market rate fee) can dictate the petroleum efficiency and even reward those with no CO2 emissions. By creating transportation options for the citizens through a fuel efficient “jitney” service instead of expanded hours, the City would be able to immediately lower the air pollution rate by not running empty buses. The demand response jitney service would also increase the City of
The jitney service as an end use transit option can help to get more of those 95% out of their air polluting and gas guzzling cars. A jitney service in
If the main transportation system was not in need of a make-over, expanded bus hours would be a good idea. However, with a broken system we need to look outside the box to find the solutions to our very real transportation problems.
Robert Eidus
