The MT Position

Post by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

It came out this week that several (numerous?) federal employees have been selling their transit subsidy passes on the Internet in lieu of using them for commuting as they were intended. How dumb are these people?

And let me clarify that, I don’t mean the people who sold the passes, but the government individuals who let this go on.

The federal transit subsidy program goes to 300,000 federal employees nationwide and seems to be abused just as widely. According to a report by the General Accountability Office, $17 million in the Washington area alone has been defrauded from the government.

The scam basically works like this. The federal employee signs up for the transit subsidy program, drives or is driven to work and then sells the passes via eBay, Craigslist or some other means.

And while they did break the law, I’m not as upset with the people who tried to do this as much as the government who let it go on. See, here’s the thing, the government is all up in arms that these people are making a quick buck off of them, but they’re missing the larger picture — how much money is being lost through this program overall.

Many of the people receiving this subsidy were also given free parking spaces at their workplace, some no longer worked for the federal government and some never had. First of all, these people working for the federal government aren’t like the guy who is flipping burgers at McDonald’s and takes the bus to and from work. They probably aren’t making minimum wage and more than likely are receiving decent insurance coverage from being a federal employee. Why would someone in this position need a transit subsidy?

Okay, let’s assume this is a plan by the government to increase the number of its employees who are using public transit. If that’s the case, then why are only these individuals receiving the subsidy?

And let’s not forget that there isn’t one department that is charged with overseeing this program. The larger question is how many of these subsidies are being handed out and not used at all — not sold, just not being used. Why even have this program then? Sure, free passes to transit are a good idea, but I am sure there are people out there who are far more deserving of (and who would be more thankful for) them than the current program.

I hear everyday how we need to break our “addiction to oil,” we need to look for alternative fuels and think “green.” Sorry, but how is anyone to believe any of that if our government isn’t behind it? We can sit back and bash the President all we want for not talking about public transit in the State of the Union Address, but this story just proves that it isn’t the President who is solely to blame here.

This story is an indictment of the entire federal government and its lack of support for public transit. If the government wants me to break our “addiction to oil,” we need to say, “No problem. You first.”

Thanks for reading the MT Position, updated every Thursday.

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Post by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

How many credit cards do you own? How about cards from places like Best Buy or Target? Every mid-sized or larger retail store has its own charge card, offering all sorts of discounts for you to use their card in their store. And yet, people more often than not use their own charge card instead of the store’s version.

Now how many farecards do you have? Sure for smaller agencies there isn’t such a thing. But with the advent of quick and easy (and increasingly inexpensive) farecard systems out there, more and more agencies are switching over to a card-based system. And the largest agencies? They are combining those farecards into multipasses available across several agencies all at once.

With the announcement this week of Chicago putting together a single farecard system allowing passengers access to CTA, Metra and Pace systems it sparked a thought. Seattle is doing this with its ORCA card. California’s Bay Area systems are testing out the Translink system and GO Transit, TTC and other agencies in the Toronto area are looking at creating a single farecard for multiple systems.

So, getting back to that idea, why not create a single farecard for all systems. So I can take the bus to the airport on one coast with the same card I use to take the bus to my hotel on the other coast. Would it work? Why not? If we can unify millions of riders in systems as large as CTA, why couldn’t we incorporate CTA with NY MTA or LA Metro?

I am sure there are all sorts of hands going up out there with potential obstacles, the most prevalent I am sure is who is going to pay for it. How about, each agency having different fare structures. Or this would just be confusing to our riders, they wouldn’t want to pay for something that is benefiting a different agency.

Now ask yourselves are those obstacles or objections? There is a big difference between the two. I come back to these massive population centers being able to unify all the municipalities in a region under one farecard. If they can do it regionally, why couldn’t everyone working together do it nationally. Maybe the first step in a nationwide transit system is a way for riders to pay to get on board.

At this point it doesn’t look to me as the problem is a matter of technology, but rather a lack of vision.

Thanks for reading the MT Position, updated every Thursday.

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Post by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

I like trains. I’ve been a fan of riding the rails ever since I was in second grade and my mom took me and some friends on a train ride. It was the coolest thing ever for an eight year old (well at that time anyway). Now you bus guys don’t go off on the “oh, see he’s a rail fan” bit. Buses are every bit as essential to a transit system as rail, and in some cases even more so.

So the recent story about a spark of life in the high-speed rail line connecting most of SoCal got me to perk my ears up a bit. High-speed rail? A SoCal rail network? Hrm?! Now before we get all excited, realize that the estimated cost on the project is about $40 billion give or take a few billion I am sure and the people looking into it right now see it funded through tax dollars and private investments. Of course, with the current governor continually slashing transit funding, those tax dollars probably aren’t going to manifest.

Now here’s where I get a bit rankled on the whole topic. The story cited Norm King, director of the Leonard Transportation Center at Cal State San Bernardino, as saying that money would be better spent on road projects since those would create more congestion relief than the rail line.

This is what keeps me banging my head against my cubicle wall every time I read something like this. It’s a vicious circle really, the roads are congested, so we build more roads to allow cars to move freely, giving room for more cars, inciting more congestion, so we build more roads to allow cars to move freely….

You see? We can’t just keep laying down concrete and asphalt, hoping that this new lane or interchange or bypass or whatever will magically make all the road congestion disappear. We’re not alleviating congestion, we’re just moving it to a different place, spreading it around a bit so it doesn’t look so bad. My eight-year-old does this with his room when it gets messy. Instead of cleaning up, he just shuffles things around a bit so the room looks clean. But wouldn’t you know, give it a week or so and that room is messy again. And if you give those roads a little while, they will be congested again.

For transit to succeed and for congestion to truly be alleviated people need to make a mental investment to fixing the problem, not just hiding it from whoever is telling us to clean it up. We need to make a mental investment in transit. These sort of things aren’t easy to do. Making a mental investment almost always also translates into making a monetary investment. We’re putting the money into a plan that we think will work, but we need to wait until it’s done before we can bitch about it. That’s making a monetary and mental investment. That’s what is needed to alleviate congestion.

Not just hiding the problem under the bed so mom doesn’t see it when she comes looking.

Thanks for reading the MT Position, updated every Thursday.

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Post by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

If there is one thing that I can’t stand, it’s self-proclaimed “journalists” who use the media as a personal soapbox. Nothing gets me more irritated than these cranks who try to tell me what I should think. Actually, no, the thing that gets me more irritated than that are the blind followers these New Age “prophets” gather in droves who mindlessly spew back their “truths” as if they were quoting from a textbook.

Okay, I’m not opposed to pointing a finger at myself. I know that this blog is largely my opinion, but I’m not trying to hide that behind words like “report,” this is a position piece and it is clearly stated in the title. And it’s separated from the news section, not wrapped up in it.

Let’s break out Webster here for a minute. Webster defines journalism as “the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media” and “writing characterized as a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation.” In other words, to quote Dragnet, “Just the facts, m’am.”

So what got me all fired up about this and how does it relate to transit? Well, I saw a news piece this week that stated that transit officials were more interested in building the system they could instead of what could work. Now, I admit, this was more op-ed piece than news, but hiding your opinions within a news story doesn’t suddenly stop it from masquerading as a news story and proclaiming it as an editorial piece.

Okay, so my first reaction to this was, huh? You have to be kidding me. Sure, historically I can see transit agencies being created under the principle of showmanship more than ridership, but with all of the legalities and funding issues they are faced with today, I just don’t believe that is, or could, be the case anymore. It’s not like transit agencies are swimming in money. Most of them have to fight to get what funding they can and process intolerable amounts of paperwork just to qualify for the review process for some funding. I know of at least one agency that has a full-time grant writer on its staff to help get such funding.

That comment then reminded me of a line from a movie. The person talking about transit here isn’t the least bit interested in solving traffic problems. “He’s interested in two things, making you afraid of it and telling you who to blame for it.”

I can’t help but look at this analogy for transit when it comes to the media. We’re always seeing how:

1. Transit officials are wasting money.
2. Agencies are “greedy” and want more and more tax money.
3. Transit officials don’t know what they are doing.
4. Transit is a waste of time since we already have cars.

I just sigh when I look at stories like that. That isn’t just how you win elections, it’s also how you get readers — by making them afraid of it and telling them who to blame for it.

Thanks for reading the MT Position, updated every Thursday.

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Fred