Transit agencies are “scrambling” to find funding to keep operating in the face of permanently lower ridership. At the same time, driver shortages are hampering agencies’ ability to keep running buses and trains.
This driver was so overworked that she fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a utility pole. Yet the bus she was driving was empty, so why were she and the bus there in the first place?
There’s an easy solution to both problems: reduce service. Why run buses and trains that are nearly empty? Ridership isn’t going to come back just because the transit vehicles are there. Cutting service to the levels agencies can afford to operate without further subsidies will also help alleviate driver shortages. Reducing service will in turn reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve social equity because most of the taxes that would be needed to maintain service are regressive.
Privatize jitney and minibus services
Rule #1- Transit, aka “public transportation”, is not about transportation. It’s about cushy union jobs and feeding the transit industrial complex.
https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=17445
Solution:
A handcar (also known as a pump trolley, pump car, rail push trolley, push-trolley, jigger, Kalamazoo velocipede, or draisine) is a railroad car powered by its passengers, or by people pushing the car from behind. It is mostly used as a railway maintenance of way or mining car, but it was also used for passenger service in some cases. A typical design consists of an arm, called the walking beam, that pivots, seesaw-like, on a base, which the passengers alternately push down and pull up to move the car.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handcar#Tourist_usage
Empty or nearly empty MARTA buses are not uncommon. Though, it is often hard to tell unless the light is hitting it just right. I used to think that the extremely dark tint on the MARTA bus windows were for passenger comfort. A few years ago, I started to wonder if it was to keep us from seeing how empty they are.