By: Diane Benjamin
The Connect Transit July loss report is out. This is before the route changes were enacted in August. July is the first month in their fiscal year. Of course they lost money:
All of this information is in the 8/23/16 packet: http://www.connect-transit.com/about/trustees/packet.asp
Note that Connect Transit PLANS to lose more than $12,000,000 this year! That is in increase of more than $2,000,000 from what they actually lost last year. Bloomington and Normal are both throwing more money at them.
Ridership continues to decline:
But it gets better!
Representative Darin Lahood featured Connect Transit in his newsletter:
A staged picture? You bet. Recognize anybody?
Darin Lahood thinks budgeting a $12 Million loss is effective and efficient government!
He is obviously a progressive – GOP. Progressives are why the country if $20 Trillion in debt. Progressives are why every taxpayer in Illinois is $45,000 in debt just to the State.
Connect Transit and Darin Lahood are wrong for America. So are the rest of the staged progressives.
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That’s the most people I’ve ever seen on a city bus. I keep seeing the brand new ones drive by with one or two people riding them. If Napoleon Renner and Koos Koos get their ways, we’ll all be riding these things – when we’re not riding our bikes.
Think any of those people actually ever ride the bus?
Where’s the diverse crowd that is usually riding? Where are purses, briefcases and backpacks? Look at Darin’s posture, how he owns the bus! He will also own the +$12,000,000 debt! Of course this is totally staged!! I’m offended how I’m being so abused as a hardworking taxpayer! Hauman is such a socialist on that bus, too. I could go on and on at the outrage I feel towards these politicians!! How do they sleep at night?
There are now citizens walking and riding their bike down South Veterans from South Main where the new CT South Terminal is located. The City and CT don’t care as long as they can rub shoulders with State or Federal elected officials.
Did you hear a pedestrian got hit at a 4-way stop in Normal today? Just the beginning.
I did. 4-way stops are always a problem because very few people know how to proceed–follow the rules of the road. There was no report as to cell phone distraction by either party though.
Fourth Ward Alderwoman is the one who wanted certain traffic re-routed off of White Place, where she chose to live, because of noise pollution and perceived safety issues for IWU students. I have news for her–that is the price of urban living!!
Those roads need to be narrowed!
The 74 you male pedestrian has deceased according to NPD release.
Is the average boarding per hour for each bus or for the entire system?
Looks like entire system to me.
Keep in mind, that number is for boarding, which includes transfers and return trips, not the number of riders.
SOMEBODY here is REALLY bad at math! If you take 12 million and divide it by 131,750 it comes to $91.08 PER PERSON, for that you could “group up” and get a limo!
That’s just wasteful!!!!! And that’s not TOTAL operating expenses! Bet that brings it to over $100 PER rider.
I didn’t check their math, just copied their report. I should have assumed math errors since they don’t see a problem losing tons of money.
It’s sad they have that low of a ridership per hour and still can’t hit over 90% with their on-time performance. That’s very poor performance. We’re paying Cadillac expenses for far less performance.
I’m guessing their calculation is wrong or not adequately defined since they say there is an average daily boarding of over 5,000. It looks like we’d be better off providing thousands of low-income riders with cards for so many free Uber/Lyft rides a year from an expense standpoint than still offering bus service.
You could argue that it would be “greener” because they’d be going from Point A (their residence) directly to Point B (their job/destination) versus operating busses to go from point A to C to D to E to F to G to H and then B hitting all the bus route stops along the way. People also save time not sitting on the bus waiting to go through the whole route.
Keep in mind – if somebody rides the bus they probably ride it again later to get back. That means “unique” ridership is much less.