Grand Forks Bus Subsidies Skyrocket to $5000 for a Daily Rider

The Whistler • July 10, 2009

Grand Forks Herald employee Tu Uyen Tran had a story in the paper the other day. This story was sadly pretty typical for what the readers get now days. After reading the story the reader is less informed than they were before. That is because he writes the article with an agenda which leaves the public without the facts they need.
The story is on bus ridership going up.

The Grand Cities’ bus service has seen a boom in ridership this year despite relatively low gas prices.
Almost every route throughout the two cities has seen more riders, from Route 3 to Altru Health System to Route 13 to Aurora Medical.
In the first six months of the year, there were 15,872 more rider-trips compared with the same month in 2008, an increase of 12.5 percent.

Tran wants us to believe that everything’s going great with the CAT service. While ridership may be up 12.5% but Tran conveniently forgets to inform the public that it cost the public 29%. That figure is easily obtainable on page 194 of the city budget. It’s this kind of mentality at the Herald that’s leading to their financial failure.
Not only that, part of that increase in funding is a $500,000 carryover. They’re spending savings. How much do you want to bet that when the savings are exhausted that the taxpayers are going to get hit much harder. Come to think of it, the purpose of this story was probably to portray the bus program as a success before the debate comes out to increase the property tax subsidy.
Tran mentions that “most” of the subsides comes from the federal government. Never mind that the subsidy that came out of your property tax bill rose as well (5%). Tran doesn’t tell you that the property owners are paying roughly twice as much to provide the bus service than do the guys that ride the bus.
A full fare passenger pays $1.50. The property tax payers are paying another $2.73 cents for that guy to ride.
The total cost for the guy to ride is over $10. Tran suggests that somehow that’s ok because some of the money comes from the federal government. No, that’s not ok. Wasting money wherever it comes from is not ok. The bus riders wouldn’t pay $10 to pay themselves so why is it ok to have everyone else pay for him?
Extrapolating the numbers from Tran’s story it appears that there will be 285,000 bus trips by the end of the year. That’s pretty pathetic. If you assume the average rider rides the bus five days a week it figures out that we have 548 bus riders (285,000 divided by two trips a day, times five days a week, 52 weeks a year. The total budget of the bus service less the user fees is $2,682,041. The subsidy per bus rider is $4,894.26 each and every year.
It’d be cheaper buying them their own car. It’d be cheaper yet to have their friends and family drive them around.
So now you can see why Tran’s story about booming bus ridership leaves the reader more uninformed than they were before. No wonder why their circulation is dropping off faster than can believed.

Tags: North Dakota News

http://SayAnythingBlog.com The_Whistler_ofnd

The new walkway is a UND project because the students can’t manage to cross a street or go under the under-walkway.

But one fairly busy day doesn’t constitute a crisis. I stay away from the South End on Saturdays so it doesn’t bother me.
robert108

For that, you could buy them all a good used car.
Bat One

If you bought each rider a good used car, there would be license and inspection revenues coming in, parking revenues, sales tax revenues and state gas taxes to consider as well.

As it stands, the taxpayer subsidy to provide public transportation could easily reach twice that $5k in a few short years, and the argument will be that too many people depend on that form of transportation to consider cutting back on the “service” and the taxpayer expenditure.

Like Social Security, Medicare, public housing and public schools, once you get people dependent on a public (taxpayer-funded) program, their hooked for life.
http://www.dinosucks.com/ Deeked

Man, this is great to see it broken down like this. I’ve always wondered just how much those things cost us. What a rip off. On another note, they also slow down traffic and cause some delays during rush hours too. They drive extremely slow, never pull completely over to let riders on and off and they also make it very easy for criminals to get around.

Public transit FTL.
jimmypop

few people have the ability to take it that next step as you have done. they dont think,
what about ‘x’?’ and as noted, this is why the papers will continue to fail…. when readers know more than the writers, we no longer need writers.
SigFan

But access to affordable or free public transportation is a basic human right. It says so right in the Bill of Rights! What’s that? It doesn’t? Oh never mind.

We have similar issues here in PA. PennDOT and PAT have buses running all over the area of Pittsburgh, plus they provide what they refer to as Jitneys to pick people up at their homes to take them to and from the bus stops. Now, for the elderly or handicapped I’m fine with it, but the number of able bodied people that scam and take advantage of the programs is remarkable.
http://SayAnythingBlog.com The_Whistler_ofnd

GF has a program called dial-a-ride for the truly needy. Basically they get subsidized taxi trips. I’ll bet per trip it doesn’t cost this much.
jimmypop

GF has a program called dial-a-ride for the truly needy. Basically they get subsidized taxi trips. I’ll bet per trip it doesn’t cost this much.

it doesnt. we have sober cab for college students here. it really makes sense when you take out the capital cost we tax payers have to use and overhead costs.

but, as noted above, the only people that should have access are the HC and elderly. lazy people can walk or find work close to where they live.
Frank

We have a similar waste of taxpayer’s money here in San Diego County. 80% of our highway taxes go to rail systems that less than 2% use. Necessary road improvements are ignored. It has been said that we could buy each train rider a Lexus and still have money left over.
badlands4

We just came back from Grand Forks today, and the crush of private traffic was unreal. I only saw two buses Thursday night-This morning, and that was near the hospital where I had an appt, and near Barnes and Noble…couldn’t tell if they were packed or not, but traffic seems to have gotten much worse, not better since we were last stationed there in 06, and def worse than when I had my dr’s appt last year…crazy
http://SayAnythingBlog.com The_Whistler_ofnd

Traffic usually isn’t too bad, but I think we should be spending the $600,000/year in local money on the roadways where it will actually do some good.

Spending on the buses is far too expensive for what you get. Plus driving those empty buses around has to be worse for the environment than if people were driving to and from their point of destination.
badlands4

I didn’t say it was a crisis, I said it was crazy traffic wise, since welived there, and if the city is bound and determined to spend that much money on transportation, maybe overhead walkways would be a better spending project:). I would have loved an overhead walkway from SuperTarget to Menards the other day lol

It is like children. You don’t notice how much your children are growing, but somebody who hasn’t seen them in quite a while sees a shocking amount of growing up

One of the few times I wish I was rich. There are SO many restaurants that we wanted to try! So many new places(to US), but alas, time and money confined us to just a couple..lol
badlands4

Well, your view gets skewed after moving away to progressively smaller cities , but traffic was just wild compared to 06 when we left the base after 4 years, and last year when I had an appt. Of course there has been quite a bit of growth.

I noticed there was a new(to me) overhead covered walkway tunnel…let me think of where it was…..I think it was from the parking deck over to the outdoor football field, much like the overhead walkways in downtown Minneapolis. I wonder if that would not have been a better use of all that bus money(since they seem hell-bent to spend it), as it took forever to get from Target over to Menards, etc

But, I am not paying taxes there, so…none of my business lol I only go once a year, and my dh and son only go twice a year(hunting in Nov….they still hunt over there vs over here). Billings is closer to me than Grand Forks(which says alot about my neurologist that I would keep torturing myself with this drive once a year for an hour long appt ).
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

What’s sad is that nobody seems to care how much public transportation costs the taxpayer. It is one of those things that politicians have decided is good, so it doesn’t matter how much is spent.

SayAnythingBlog.com

Grand Forks Bus Subsidies Skyrocket to $5000 for a Daily Rider

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