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| Standing room only on buses(article) (105309) | |||
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Standing room only on buses(article) |
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Posted by Orange Blossom Special on Sun Jul 6 15:23:47 2008 Even as mass transit officials on both sides of Tampa Bay are seeing record demand for local bus service, they can't afford to put more buses on the road. In fact, they've been trimming service a bit. They're facing their own money crunch, squeezed by the rising cost of diesel fuel and a voter-mandated cut in property tax revenue that is the bulk of their funding."People are voting with their feet. As driving becomes more expensive for the consumer, transit becomes more attractive," said Tim Garling, director of the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority. "We have to provide a service that meets their needs — more frequent buses and shorter travel times. But that takes funding." Ridership on Pinellas County buses is up 9 percent this year, and it's up 7 percent on Hillsborough Area Regional Transit. For example, Pinellas buses carried about 1-million passengers in May 2007, and this May they carried another 90,000 on top of that. The smaller bus systems in Pasco and Hernando counties have also seen gains. ------ The bus and transit stories around here aren't the types of caliber bus chat expects. but it has a chart I've been referring to here and on o/t. They're complaining about state revenue cuts, and getting drastic, and yet the €€ $$ aren't even lower than 2005 levels, and they're acting like it's 1991!  They ran sunday service on a lot of routes 10 years ago, how come now they gotta cut? They talk about Hernando in that article, but they may lose the system altogether. I think the bus adds about 60 minutes for me, plus a .6 mile walk at work, or 1.5 hoursiwh, door to door, for my 20 minute ride. Lot of backtracking to a central terminal point for a limited service commuter run(3 in morning and afternoon). |
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