By: Diane Benjamin
The number of riders in Champaign-Urbana has been declining since 2012 – see PDF page 17 https://www.cumtd.com/about-us/getfile/?fileid=7773
Below is the March snapshot – note they have MANY more riders than Bloomington-Normal, but note who they are:
Taxpayers pay for the University of Illinois, then U of I gives some of that money to the transit system so the students and faculty get passes.
See PDF page 53 – they transport kids to and from school.
Connect Transit has the same fiscal year. Through March they had a total of 1,726,212 riders, while C-U had 9,704,449. https://blnnews.com/2017/04/25/2-people-on-a-bus/
Unlike Connect Transit who publishes clear statements showing how much the lose every month, these guys don’t.
The chart below has their 9 month numbers – I put them in a spread sheet to get totals:
Yep, that’s an almost $18 million loss for 9 months.
Many more riders made them lose even more than here!
Their budget document doesn’t have totals, but they are planning on receiving $36,000,000 from IDOT: PDF page 6 https://www.cumtd.com/about-us/getfile/?fileid=7677
Connect Transit only budgeted a $12 million loss before subsidies! Obviously C-U is budgeting a MUCH bigger loss!
Go back to the story from yesterday: https://blnnews.com/2017/04/27/i-dont-make-this-stuff-up/
If you clicked on the story linked in the article, the first paragraph says this:
Fifty-three years ago, the transit industry was mostly private and earned a net profit. Today, it’s almost entirely publicly owned, and subsidies have grown out of control. It’s time to take a stand and say all transportation subsidies are bad, but transit subsidies are the worst.
Understand Limited Government yet?
How many people in Champaign-Urbana know this? I’d say about as many as knew about Connect Transit before I started reporting.
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The Champaign-Urbana newspaper highlighted Andrew Johnson yesterday, he did such a great job that not once did he talked about the job he did at CT. He also stated that he is always worried about people that have only themselves at interest – isn’t that him. Funny how he says he uses Public Transportation to get to work at C-U, never did that at CT and the fact that the Jeep that CT paid for is setting in his garage. What a joke.