New Math for Public Transportation?

I don't see the link to the original article, but most likely the director is saying that the city's cost for fuel has gone up and even though the number of riders have increased and even though the fares have increased, the city buses are still operating in the red.

Basically, yes their revenue has gone up, but the cost of operation has outpaced the revenue growth.

Amtrack is an expert in this field as they have been running in the red for years before the fuel increases.

The facts are we had cheap clean transportation, and we were robbed of it.

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2006/12/who_killed_the_.html

Um: let us state for the record, they operated in a complete vacum, the Gov could not possibly have been involved.

As a resident of Cleveland I have been privy to all the local reporting of this issue. It seems one ofthe main culprits aside from the high cost of fuel is that a good number of the fare boxes on the buses do not work. So, when riders get on and are unable to pay because their dollar bills are not crisp enough the driver has to let them ride for free. Also, they have not raised fares YET, it is still pending. But they are predicting route cuts even if the fare increase goes into effect.

Here in Knoxville, Tn. the same thing is also happening. I bet there is cost of operations with government subsidize versus the number of riders, as riders increase the gov monies drop. But without adjustments for costs. So as more people ride they have more income from fairs but less from gov subsidize. So there income may be about the same as before but the cost of fuel out paces any possible profit they could make.

So to stay in business they half to cut costs/ routes to keep things balance

And if this is what's happing then the transportation directors need to tell the people.

That would let the people know and maybe help break the "Catch 22".

My two cents

metalSmit's

Spend Iraq war money on buses, ALRT, carbon-less cars and social healthcare.

I don't know what to do with the rest of the cash but maybe some one will have a good idea.

Wouldn't make a dent! You need at least 10 Iraq wars. Our current yearly cost for the US health care system is about 16% of our national GDP, or 2.2 Trillion dollars just for health care!

Add in all the other ideas you propose and you are even further in the red. Nice thought, but nowhere near reality.

Nope.

The low population density of homes and businesses in surburban areas makes public transportation (buses and trains) uneconomic. The low density means that the bus/train terminal is too far to walk to from your house, and the businesses are too far to walk to from the bus/train terminals for the average rider. Only a few riders will be lucky enough to live near a terminal and work at a business near another terminal. This means few riders per trip. Few riders per trip make each trip expensive in terms of fuel, driver, equipment and maintenance.

Suburbs were invented in the 1950's as a way of allowing ordinary people to afford their own house. The houses were built on inexpensive open land far from the city. The land was inexpensive because it was far from the big city. The automobile allowed the new homeowner would drive to work in the city and drive home.

Businesses learned the same lesson. It was cheaper to build new businesses on inexpensive land far from the big, high density city. Suburban customers, accustomed to driving, would drive to the businesses rather than walk to them.

Population density of homes was low because higher density tended to drive up the price of the land and the houses, making them less competitive with low density suburban housing. This is why the suburban land was cheaper than city land in the first place. The same effect applied to businesses.

A large fraction - perhaps 50% - of US population now lives in suburbia. Cities built or significantly expanded since 1950 are mostly suburban areas. For example, Los Angeles is a suburban area perhaps 100 miles in diameter. There is no high-density central city area in LA. It is all suburbs with business areas dotted among them.

We are stuck with the automobile. It is built into the physical structure of our society. Raising the fuel price affects both the automobile and public transportation equally. Higher fuel prices do not affect the underlying economics.

The main cost of the operation outside of fuel is the city, or government employee package. Health Insurance being the main cost.

This somewhat favors the automobile.

Buses, etc. require drivers plus supervisors. These people must be paid whether there are riders or not. Auto drivers are "free" in the sense that the auto driver does not see the time he or she spends driving the auto as a cash expense.

As noted earlier, fuel cost increases affect cars and buses equally. The economics do not change otherwise. If buses are not economical at low fuel prices, they are not economical at higher fuel prices, either.

The problem is suburbia, which cannot be made to go away. Suburbia's low population density makes all forms of local public transportation uneconomical relative to the automobile. You cannot get enough riders on any given route to make the fares competitive with the car.

When the bus size goes from 45 to 55 that little increase in size doubles the cost of fuel. Some cities, not all, could save money by running more small buses with only 40 passengers. Plus rural buses routes are not very tendable if the price of a barrel of oil drops below 90.00 a barrel.

Like owning a big pickup truck and driving it to work but not needing it everyday. Above $80.00 a barrel for oil it is actually cheaper to rent a truck just when you need it but personally I think these show trucks are silly to own anyway unless you haul more than groceries.

What about the Postbus?