Service to Nowhere
The Toledo Blade reports on a new study by the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments, which finds that 57 percent of jobs in the metro area can not be reached by public transportation. Thirty percent of Toledo's densely-populated areas are not covered by transit service.
On the surface, this would argue for a massive expansion of transit service. Unfortunately, previous experiments with that have not gone well:
Several recent TARTA efforts to expand service in suburban areas have achieved mixed results. A new route between downtown Toledo and Toledo Express Airport, among the destinations survey respondents listed as desired, has attracted minimal ridership during its first three months of operation - on average, 5.5 riders per day during March - despite a $2 fare. [W]ith an operating cost of more than $40 per hour, the airport bus needed a per-passenger subsidy of nearly $129 last month alone.
Which leaves a serious concern. City governments need to provide transit service to link up people with jobs -- we're clearly shown that with the massive unemployment rates in the inner city market as compared with the exceptionally low unemployment in the suburbs. But simply providing transit service isn't enough, as Toledo's example shows. The issue lies in not only setting up the right routes but figuring out what will make people actually use those routes.
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amg | 1:05 PM |
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