Remember all those safety issues on busses? How about people with visual disabilities? What if we don’t get the revenues that are projected? And as Alder Golden points out in a way that only he can, what about the other departments that have increased fuel costs?
Ok- I think the bus wraps are ugly. And I don’t think that we should be subjected to the onslaught of advertising in areas where low-income people are essentially forced to be due to their economic status. But lets put those two issues aside and talk about a few other things.
Safety – Remember all the pleas from the city staff to allow cameras on busses? Remember how important it was to have more eyes on the people riding the busses to protect the safety of the workers? How does wrapping a bus in material that makes it so that you can’t see into the bus going to help with these safety concerns?
Vision – During my stint on the Transit and Parking Commission for three years I remember pretty eloquent testimony from people with visual disabilities and how these wraps hinder their bus riding experience. Yes, we have the talking busses now, but how often do you know where you are going by sight and don’t know the name of the cross street of where you need to go?
Revenues – Advertising in Parking Ramps is down 20% at the moment. I tried to find out from Metro staff and Comptrollers office how the other advertising on busses is going (inside and current advertising on the outside), in fact, I sent the following email to staff a week ago, but haven’t gotten a response. Not even an, I’ll get back to you courtesy response.
Could one of you tell me how much money we have made in advertising on Madison Metro for the past 5 years? I’m loooking for the annual trend . . .
b
I recall from my Transit and Parking days that the revenues have been steadily decreasing since 9-11. I was looking for the facts to back up my statement, but I guess I’ll just have to wait . . .
I did, however, get some really helpful information from Bill Knobeloch regarding the advertising in parking ramps. (Which I also opposed.) We had projected that we would make $75K but at $5193 per month we will likely only make $62K. This is only 82.6% of what we expected. Can we expect the same from this proposal from Metro?
Other Departments – I also tried to find out what the impact of increased fuel costs was on other departments. I asked this question a week ago as well, and tried to follow up on Friday and guess what – more of the same (not!) response. The emails I sent below:
Re: Fuel increases . . .
which departments are bieng hit the hardest and what are they doing to fill the gap? how much of a gap are they seeing?
b
Which was followed up with . . .
Re: Fwd: Fuel increases . . .
i didn’t see a response to this, can you help me with this on monday?
Anyways, the point is, if we know what other departments are affected and what they are doing, perhaps we could either do similar activities with Metro or . . . maybe Ken Golden is on to something?
Bus Fare Increases/Route Cuts – And finally, if we support this revenue stream does that mean that we won’t face bus fare increases and route cuts? How did we get ourselves into this ridiculous situation where we have a basic city service that is expected to break even? We don’t expect the police department or fire department or streets department to break even. Should we have them cut services and raise user fees so that they break even every year – or is theirs a basic service that needs to be supported by tax payers for the good of the community?
