By: Diane Benjamin
The Connect Transit Board met back on May 24th: https://www.connect-transit.com/file/586/05%2024%202022_Board%20Meeting%20Packet.pdf
Of course they lost over ONE MILLION DOLLARS. Ridership from March dropped 3.31%, maybe because service hours and miles dropped – See PDF page 8.
Connect Mobility ridership was down .52%, every ride on their smaller buses had a subsidy of $32.75!
Then there is this:
The Board got to see the 2023 budget, you don’t get to see it:
At a LATER DATE must mean AFTER the Board passes it. It isn’t on their website for transparency before they vote:
https://www.connect-transit.com/resources-and-documentation/financial-information
The budget wasn’t included in the April packet either, except for an addition $1.03 million for service to Rivian.
Connect Transit is completely subsidized by taxpaying citizens who don’t use the service. The budget would have to show that they cannot sustain themselves with fares. Just another colossal leftist progressive marxist democrat failure at the expense of hardworking tax paying citizens.
Have the electric busses arrived yet?
I’m sure that will boost ridership.
They have some, buying more.
Is there anything about Bloomington-Normal, McLean County, or literally anything that you like? All you do is degrade every service provided here, etc. Like if you hate it as much as your blog indicates you do — because you spend SO much time on this — then why don’t you just LEAVE?
Sit down and shut up in how you roll? If real media existed here I wouldn’t have started writing in 2012.
Telling you’re critics to shut up is just your style. Calling this WordPress blog “media” is a stretch to say the least. No mass transportation system makes money, not even in large cities like New York or Chicago. Why exactly does everything have to make money? They don’t, and somethings are subsidized just like oil.
Unlike “real” media you don’t check your facts and often write heavily bias articles. You’ve written articles with disinformation and out and out lies. You also don’t live in either Bloomington or Normal or Unit 5. So telling your critics to “shut up” is a lot of nerve.
Where does it say media?
No response of course! Exactly why should taxpayers fund million dollar losses for empty buses? I don’t expect a response to this either
People don’t like the facts and reality. Keep doing what your are doing ma’am!!!!
I’m just trying to reconcile the existence of a website that is full of thousands of complaints and derogatory comments regarding just about ANYTHING you can think of in Bloomington-Normal with the fact that the author is someone who chooses to remain in such a place — which, according to the blog, is beyond redemption! It doesn’t make sense. Either it’s a total hellhole, or it’s not actually that bad!
Information is a horrible thing, thanks for playing.
Keep up the good work Diane. Anyone that supports a transit system losing about one million a month and having empty buses circling the cites all day must be on welfare and happy to take working taxpayers for a ride. At that loss we could supply Uber or taxi service with door to door pick ups and drop offs. Wasting taxpayer money should never be a legitimate expense.