As a “small g” government guy, I always believe that the public option should be the option of last resort. Health care, health insurance, saving for retirement, education for children, and transportation–all are done better when provided by private entities . Those who are invested in “big G” Government insist that our future should be based on public-first (and sometimes public only) options. And one of their main arguments is that Government services are “guaranteed to be there” when you need them. But as those of us who have been around awhile know, that is not actually the case.
A number of years ago, I took a vacation to Toronto, Canada. Before heading there, anytime I talked to someone that had already been to Toronto they would say the same thing: “You’ll love it. It’s such a clean city!” Imagine my surprise when upon arriving in Toronto, I was greeted by large piles of garbage on every street. It turned out that the public works employees had gone on strike that week–and there were no other options to get waste to the landfill. Somewhere I have a picture of a McDonald’s restaurant not far from the Hockey Hall of Fame where the bags of garbage were piled up so high you couldn’t see into the windows of the building–and there was just a narrow path on the sidewalk for people to walk between the bag piles. The strike lasted about a month, during which time the city instructed residents and businesses to bring their garbage to parks to pile up like giant open-air landfills. I should also mention that temperatures that week were in the mid-30’s Celsius–or about 95 Fahrenheit–so you can imagine what the city smelled like.
Now we are seeing a similar situation locally. Valley Transit is cutting the service hours it provides on evenings and weekends. It puts people who have come to rely on the bus to get to and from work on off-shifts in a tough position. One member of the Fox Cities Transit Commission implored Valley Transit officials to change their minds about the hours reduction. pointing out that his own employees will be among those affected.
Normally, public service cuts like this would be blamed on Republicans or non-partisan conservatives for reducing funding for the program, or undermining public confidence in a program, or not giving the program the other resources it needs to succeed. But that is not the situation here. Instead, a public service needs to be curtailed because nobody wants to do the work to provide the service.
Valley Transit is currently operating with less than half the drivers needed to keep buses on the streets for the hours posted without forced overtime or other staff workers getting behind the wheel. This is despite increased pay and signing bonuses added to the compensation package. And once the reduction in hours goes into effect, they will still be only at about 65% of full employment levels. There will likely not be any buses running on July 5th this year because so many drivers are taking the day off for vacation.
And Valley Transit is not alone in this situation. Green Bay Transit has already made similar cuts in the hours that their buses run. Greater Oshkosh Transit is also very short on drivers, and has restructured its routes in hopes of increasing efficiency. Plain and simple, driving the bus is one of those jobs that “Americans just don’t want to do anymore”. Apparently, the need to pay close attention to the road takes away from creating viral videos about how much you hate your job and watching other viral videos about how much other people hate their jobs.
It’s interesting that the solution VT is proposing for its expanded off-hours is a shared-ride service–operated by a private company. It’s also somewhat ironic that the service–while costing the same $2 as a ride on the bus–will provide door-to-door pick up and drop-off pretty much any time a rider wants it–as opposed to a fixed route that may require a half-hour wait for the next bus and walking several blocks on both ends in weather that stinks worse than Toronto in the middle of another garbage strike. Even some of the Transit Commission members had to admit that sounded like a better deal for riders than the fixed-route service.
Speaking again as a “small g” government guy, I hope that the transit issues of today remain front-of-mind for residents in cities where urban planning is pushing for more and more density and less and less driving. I hope they ask “Where are the additional bus, street car, light rail, and subway drivers coming from tomorrow if we already can’t keep buses on the streets now?”. I also hope they consider what the alternatives would be if they willingly gave up their vehicles and the ability to go almost anywhere at anytime in lieu of promises of “easy and reliable” public options–and those public options aren’t going to be available because “everybody’s off today”.
Technology could solve this mess in the future. Our jampacked cities could some day be filled with driverless buses and trains controlled at unmanned artificial intelligence centers with wireless signals directing every stop, turn, and start. Or perhaps cities would purchase huge fleets of those tiny “Smart Cars” that could be operated via GPS to pull up in front of your high-rise apartment and drop you off at your girlfriend’s high-rise apartment the one day of the week that you choose to actually leave your residence for face-to-face interaction.
It seems like a plausible solution–well at least on the days when the solar and wind powered municipal utilities can provide enough electricity to power and charge all of that stuff. In the meantime, I’ll be stocking up on motor oil and parts to keep my trusty Jeep running whenever I want it to.
