CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Last Saturday was Transit Equity Day.
The irony isn’t lost on me that the day fell on a day when the Wausau MetroRide busses aren’t running. It’s a Monday through Friday service only.
Actually, the concept of transit equity is woke ridiculousness.
And I am generally altruistic about public transit. In many cities, it’s a necessity. In my New York City, no one gets to work without subways and busses. The roads and bridges would be so clogged, they’d be impassable. The entire system is based on a certain percentage of people using mass transit.
And, since mass transit can never be profitable, it’s an appropriate use of taxpayer money – within limits. Why? Because it takes huge numbers of busses and subway cars to get everyone to and from work in the mornings and home again in the afternoon. Those assets generally sit around during middays and evenings and weekends. A private, for-profit transit system would never provide enough equipment or employees for the rush hour service. It’s too inefficient to be busy for three hours each morning and three hours each afternoon. It’s appropriate for the government to step into the breach.
That model works in the biggest cities; New York, LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco. Minneapolis is the mid-point for the asset utilization model. It has unique geography – a river that separates Minneapolis and St. Paul, and some unique assets like a large state university, an urban airport, downtown sports stadiums, and the largest shopping mall in the country. For smaller cities, bus systems are marginal. In places like Wausau, they should be shut down completely as a misallocation of taxpayer dollars.
Consider Wausau’s bus history. Regional transit authorities aren’t allowed in Wisconsin. And that’s a correct choice, so affluent suburbs aren’t left subsidizing nearby city bus services. In Wausau, Rib Mountain was invited to pay for bus service to the big box stores. They’ve always said no. Schofield used to pay for buses to Shopko Plaza. Weston tried an experimental route to the new hospital. Both were so lightly used, they were deemed to be a waste of money, and were quickly discontinued. If you take a moment to look inside Wausau’s busses, they are almost always empty.
What about the poor? We’d likely save money if we offered them Uber or taxi vouchers, or cut the busses back to paratransit only for the truly indigent and disabled. The idea that taxpayers must fund a bus service that no one uses is not transit equity, it’s a waste of money.
Chris Conley
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