City Councilmembers Berryman, Ross, Sattler, Sansing, and Brainard have all cited high cost and low ridership as reasons not to implement a bus system. The argument that no one would ride the bus if there was one is weak. If the bus system is well designed, which the proposed bus system seems to be, people will ride. To make full use of the proposed bus system it would take just 1350 regular riders. As far as the argument about cost goes, Georgetown currently spends $700 of tax payer money per household per year to subsidize car use (transportation and traffic related police costs). A bus system would cost the city at most $39 per household (an overestimate, probably more like $25). Keep reading for a more detailed analysis on how and why a bus system in Georgetown would be successful and beneficial to tax payers. Ridership A core group of 1350 individuals who would take at least 2 one way trips per week on the bus system would add up to an average of at least 10 riders per hour per bus, which on 15 passenger buses means the buses would generally be at least half full and at times be completely full.
In 2007 we had an estimated 47,000 people living in Georgetown. Over 9,000 live in Sun City, GISD has 3,500 secondary level students age 13 or older, and Southwestern has 1,500 students. Since the elderly, college students and teens are three populations highly likely to use public transit, it seems reasonable that 1,350 of the 14,000 people falling into those 3 categories would use a bus system. Add in the many families with one car, people with no cars, disabled folks who can't drive, but would be capable of taking the bus, and it seems highly likely that Georgetown would have 1350 ready users of a bus system. Cost The argument that public transit costs too much cuts to the heart of the public transit debate everywhere. The fare box does not pay for the system. This fact is used by opponents of public transit as a silver bulltet to kill transit initiatives. They say that public transit doesn't make business sense because the city is paying to subsidize transit. What this argument ignores is that cities spend much more to subsidize car use than any city would ever conceivably spend on public transit. Georgetown has committed to spending $8.6 million dollars (in addition to $ 13.5 million of tax payer money the Federal and County governments are contributing) to widen a 3.5 mile stretch of Williams Drive. That's a grand total of $22 million dollars to widen 3.5 miles of road. Widening roads costs a lot of money. Maintaining roads and policing traffic as more people move into town also costs money. The city of Georgetown currently spends $6.7 million a year to maintain the roads we have and police traffic on those roads. These figure comes from the 08/09 Georgetown City Transportation Budget which was $4.8 million. Added to that are the figures for the Police Field Operations budget for 08/09. About 35% of of police service incidents were traffic related. The Field Operations budget for 08/09 was $5.4 million. So the city spent about $1.9 million on traffic related police work (35% of 5.4 million.) The amount we spend to maintain the roads we have keeps going up as we add more miles of pavement. If Georgetown had a well designed bus system that met most of the transportation needs of even 10% of it's residents, we could reduce the need to widen roads. Let's get more out of the roads we have instead of building and widen more roads! The yearly operating cost of a bus system would be $780,000. Realistically that figure could be brought down to about half of that when you count likely sources of revenue such as government grants, business advertising, and fares collected. If the city was willing to make the bus system a real priority, then over time the need for widening roads and building new roads could be reduced. Also traffic violations and accidents would decrease (in proportion to the population) as more people rode the bus. There are roughly 20,000 households in Georgetown (taken from utilities revenues in 08/09 Georgetown City Budget). We are currently spending $700 per household per year (assuming average $7 million of tax payer money to widen or build new roads/bridges each year) to subsidize use of personal vehicles. A bus system would cost at most $39 per household. When you look at it this way public transit seems like a sound investment, not a waste of money. |
Cost and RIdership |