The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) spends $50 million more than its peers on employee benefits, says KPMG in an audit of the agency. Reducing benefits to national average levels (easier said than done) and contracting out some services such as cleaning would allow MARTA to erase a $33 million deficit in its annual budget.
Comparing a transit agency to its peers is like criticizing a bank robber for stealing more than home burglars. The fact is that they are both ripping people off, and just because some are a bit less rapacious doesn’t make them any more morally correct.
Private jitney in direct competition with MARTA bus.
So the Antiplanner has a more aggressive agenda: complete privatization. Atlanta is one of the few cities that doesn’t outlaw private transit in competition with the public agency, and as a result it has a number of private jitneys that operate without subsidies and often charge riders less than MARTA. The jitneys even stop at MARTA’s bus stops.
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Many of the jitneys serve Atlanta’s Hispanic communities. One curiosity: according to one report, most MARTA drivers speak only English while most jitney drivers speak only Spanish.
Given that private operators provide transit service without subsidies, how can MARTA justify spending $400 million a year in taxpayer funds on transit? One reason is that MARTA spent $4 billion building a 52-mile rail system that serves a tiny fraction of the Atlanta metropolitan area. When counting amortized capital costs, this rail system costs about 50 percent more to operate, per vehicle mile, than MARTA buses, which themselves cost far more than private buses.
Construction of the rail system aimed to attract middle-class commuters out of their cars, but was done at the expense of limiting bus service to working-class neighborhoods. Although Atlanta’s population has grown by more than 150 percent since it started building rail transit, MARTA has done very little to expand bus service. As a result, transit’s share of Atlanta-area commuting declined from 11.0 percent in 1970 to 4.1 percent in 2010, which is hardly an endorsement of rail transit.
Contracting out and the other actions proposed in the KPMG audit can save a little money, but that savings will probably just be wasted on some other part of the transit system. In the long run, such reforms do little more than rearrange the deck chairs as the boat is sinking. Complete privatization would save Atlanta-area taxpayers more than a billion dollars every four years and still result in decent transit service to Atlanta neighborhoods that want and need it.
Antipalnner: Construction of the rail system aimed to attract middle-class commuters out of their cars
JK: Why would anyone want to attract people out of cars?
Cars are far cheaper than transit, especially rail.
Cars are faster than transit.
Cars use less energy than transit & under BHO’s new CAFE, will use much less energy.
Thanks
JK
Why would anyone want to attract people out of cars?
Ideology, Jim. Nothing to do with the car’s utility, which is very high. Just the ideology of a bunch of car-hating lunatics that have grabbed the reigns of policy in the Western world.
So are you pro slavery too?
How does one deal with a jerk like you? Violence? I think not.
Too bad, really.
Oh well, just have to repeat, ad infinitum, your fact free, logic free, miserable, nasty, waspish, shitty little insults are the true mark of a jerk.
Fred_Z, I have a modest suggestion.
Ignore the troll, and above all, don’t feed it with attention.
It’s the irony factor. Roads get carte blanc funding from government, yet you complain about the pittance of funding the transit gets.
Gee Antiplanner,
Why bother to build $4 billion worth of rail to serve a few thousand upper middle class suburbanites, when you can spend $500 million to replace a little under four miles of an inner city bus route which now draws some 3,600 boardings per day?
By the way, Antiplanner. The local government transit agency in my part of the woods is holding an election this November over whether to give up the 25 percent of the sales tax that goes towards road and street building. There is confusing ballot language (and why would they do that?), but the good news is that even if the rail fans get what they want, the political powers that be – who actually surrender the sales taxes that my local transit agency dines upon – are very upset with the fact that our local boondoggle transit agency has driven their train into the financial ditch (something I tried to stop), and it is expected that action of some kind will be taken in the next state legislature that will likely put an end to the daydreams of the rail fans.
I spoke out at one of a series of public meetings that were held over this election a number of weeks ago. It was only then that I realized how much political fighting transit agencies are subjected to. But that’s what you get when you weld together a transit agency whose taxing authority extends over a long list of political jurisdictions, and whose members are endlessly fighting over who gets to drive the bus light rail train.
Neal Meyer wrote:
I spoke out at one of a series of public meetings that were held over this election a number of weeks ago. It was only then that I realized how much political fighting transit agencies are subjected to. But that’s what you get when you weld together a transit agency whose taxing authority extends over a long list of political jurisdictions, and whose members are endlessly fighting over who gets to drive the bus light rail train.
Is it a good idea to allow a transit agency to have its own taxing authority? I think not, for that allows all kinds of wasteful boondoggles to get built. Now if the transit authority were collecting more dollars in fares and other revenues than it needed to pay capital and operating costs, well, then it would not need those tax dollars, would it?
CP,
Where do you think transit agencies in the USA get their money from? Of course they have their own taxing authority.
Not always.
Washington, D.C./Maryland/Virginia’s WMATA absolutely does not have taxing powers.
Baltimore, Maryland’s Maryland Transit Administration does not (it is part of the government of the state of Maryland, which does, of course, have power to tax).
Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) does not.
Port Authority of Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) does not.
Jitneys are alive and kickin’ in the Rio Grande Valley too. I’ve rode them a few times (even across the border) and they work well. The buses and vans are usual in rough shape as most seem to be old transit/hotel/church vehicles with high mileage. No English being spoken on the jitneys, but down there everybody speaks Spanish, even the gringos.
I feel like privatized transit services can work well particularly for intercity purposes.
Private jitneys provide the bulk of mass transit service throughout Mexico and Central America. Transit agencies in the US prefer them outlawed precisely because they are so efficacious and cost effective for riders.
An interesting case study for privatization is actually its opposite in Havana Cuba. Prior to the revolution, Havana had an entirely privatized public transport system. The private operators were slowly aggregated into the state run system. Today’s state run mass transit system actually has fewer riders and fewer destinations than the old private system, in spite of the fact that Havana’a population has tripled since then.
“…US prefer them outlawed precisely because they are so efficacious and cost effective for riders.”
I disagree about the reasoning. I think it has more to do with preventative maintenance standards, drug testing, professional drivers, etc. With public transit there’s more accountability from an operational side and that drives the cost up.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not excusing the exclusion of jitneys in the US. I just don’t think the exclusion is due to tyrannical efficiency-hating overlords.
I disagree. The only reason Jitneys are outlawed, where they are outlawed, is to insure that the taxpayer funded transit agency has a monopoly in its service area. There is no practical reason to outlaw jitneys, especially in light of their effectiveness at moving people in many, many other parts of the world.
I think we can agree that jitneys should not be outlawed. Jitneys are awesome. Even the bad jitneys are awesomely bad. Some are professional others elaborate or quirky. Some of my favorite traveling tales involve jitneys.
How many jitney operators have built rail transit lines?
C.P.,
A better question is: How many local rail and streetcar companies built bus and jitney bus networks? Answer: All of them.
The reason why jitneys have been banned in the past is this – you need a certain level of patronage to make a service work. If jitneys are taking a large chunk of this market, then it would be possible to end up without a viable public transport system a all.
In other words, government hates competition and establishes a monopoly that uses force to prevent competion. The result? The consumer gets screwed becuase “a coercive monopolist will tend to perform his service badly and inefficiently.” –Rothbard
CPZ, how many trucking companies have built roads?
The Antiplanner wrote:
Contracting out and the other actions proposed in the KPMG audit can save a little money, but that savings will probably just be wasted on some other part of the transit system. In the long run, such reforms do little more than rearrange the deck chairs as the boat is sinking. Complete privatization would save Atlanta-area taxpayers more than a billion dollars every four years and still result in decent transit service to Atlanta neighborhoods that want and need it.
Contracting everything out to the private sector (and making MARTA responsible for setting overall policies, such as headways and fares, and oversight of the contractors) makes plenty of sense. It’s been done in many EU nations (yes, the EU), where private operation of transit is increasingly the only way that it is done. London’s bus system has long been run by the private sector, as is its region rail system, though the Tube (subway) remains in public hands. Sweden has also contracted out transit service, nationwide.
I am not as convinced that transit should be privatized entirely (and federal laws and rules may well prevent that anyway – and federal laws and regulations do matter, since all or very nearly all transit systems in the United States have taken federal money in the form of capital subsidies). I am not opposed to it, but I am not convinced of its practicality. Would the Federal Transit Administration want its subsidy dollars returned if the capital assets were to be sold-off to the private sector?
Until the 1950’s nearly all mass transit was privately owned. Private sector operators can sort out routes and headways without government supervision. Millions of individual drivers sort out their routes and headways every day of the week without checking with the government first. Fares are best left determined by supply and demand. Why do you think the government will be able to determine the fare more ably than the operator who knows his route, customers, competition and overhead?
Until the 1950?s nearly all mass transit was privately owned.
In and around the Washington, D.C. area, private ownership lasted until 1972.
Private sector operators can sort out routes and headways without government supervision.
I agree. Though remember that public transportation service, even when it was owned and operated by the private sector, was still subject to stringent economic regulation. In the Washington area, because so many transit lines crossed a state boundary, that meant regulation was literally in the hands of Congress and the (now-defunct) Interstate Commerce Commission, and later in the hands of a body established to regulate transit in and around Washington. In some other places, regulation was imposed by the same agencies that regulate utility service (frequently a “public service commission”). In other words, just because it was owned and operated by private companies did not mean that those companies could set fares and schedules, because they could not.
Millions of individual drivers sort out their routes and headways every day of the week without checking with the government first.
Though government action (and inaction) influences those choices.
Fares are best left determined by supply and demand. Why do you think the government will be able to determine the fare more ably than the operator who knows his route, customers, competition and overhead?
I don’t. As I suggested above, many (most?) public-sector transit agencies in the U.S. have accepted large sums of money from the Federal Transit Administration, and those dollars come with plenty of strings attached, hence my hedging and reluctance to support 100% private operation.
I think the jitneys mentioned above make it pretty clear that the private sector can indeed set fares and schedules.
In a perfect world (run by me), transit operations would be entirely turned-over to the private sector for starters. After that, the private sector would be encouraged to experiment outside of the fixed route system inherited from the public operator(s), perhaps leading to a truly privatized system.
I would also free all taxicabs from economic regulation (including barriers to entry and elimination of all restrictions on where they may and may not pick up and discharge passengers), and allow cabs to raise or lower their fares as they see fit (government regulation of the taxi industry should be limited to (1) mechanical inspections for safety and emission control equipment; (2) verification that the taxi meter is operating accurately at the advertised rate; (3) regulation of the drivers (to assure that drivers are competent, safe and do not have criminal records); and (4) some method for assuring that taxes and insurance premiums are paid-up).
I’m in.
“In a perfect world (run by me), transit operations would be entirely turned-over to the private sector for starters. After that, the private sector would be encouraged to experiment outside of the fixed route system inherited from the public operator(s), perhaps leading to a truly privatized system.”
In the UK, outside of London, bus operations are entirely private. Utopia? Hardly.
In the UK, outside of London, bus operations are entirely private. Utopia? Hardly.
Would you return to a rigid (and rigidly-regulated) and hugely expensive (in terms of taxpayer subsidy) system such as what we have in most of the United States?
I oppose any public transit operation but there are some extreme difficulties in setting up a free enterprise transit company. For some reason mafia type outfits tend to muscle legitimate operators out of business. You might have a commuter line that starts at 6 am and runs every 15 minutes after that. You have built up a good clientel. The mafia man shows up at 5:59 someday and 6:14 etc. He has studied your route and knows that he can eliminate one or two stops that have few fares. He promises to get passengers downtown faster and has a slightly lower fare. You just lost you business. If you fight back, you wake up some day and all of your tires have been slashed. Your competitor gives free doughnuts to the cops and they aren’t very interested if you ask for their help.
I have been thinking about ways to work around problems such as this. The Brits tried with regulatory measures but weren’t very successful. (Require operators to openly seek service permits and require that they post a bond for 6 months of service, etc. You would at least know that somebody was going to shadow your route 1 minute before your runs. You could jump a minute ahead of him for six months, after applying for regulatory approval, but that could take two months. And you couldn’t stop his henchmen from putting bullet holes in your windshield.)
Any ideas on how to control for this? If not, fixed route service is not likely to work in a free market.
A free market would mean there are no police.
If they shoot at you, you shoot at them.