Debate Post-Mortem

The Antiplanner’s debate with American Public Transportation Association President Bill Millar focused on transit privatization. The Antiplanner argued that private operators would provide excellent, low-cost service where the demand for such service existed, such as in dense cities and low-income neighborhoods, while still providing adequate demand-responsive transit (like SuperShuttle) in low-density neighborhoods where demand was low. Millar expressed skepticism that this would happen.

But rather than debate this in detail, Millar spent much of his time claiming that I “cherry picked the data” to support my preconceived notions. He claimed that transit was not a business, but a “public service” and that everyone benefitted when taxpayers subsidized 80 percent of the cost of carrying a few riders. He pointed out that 26 percent of Americans rode transit at least once last year, which doesn’t exactly provide much justification for the other 74 percent to subsidize it.

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