Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

DASH Shows Some Dash

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

Reports Chuck Hagee

at the Gazette Packet:

Alexandria Transit Company (DASH) has partnered with nearly 40 local businesses to expedite buyers throughout the holiday season. “DASHing Through Alexandria” encourages holiday shoppers to “take the bus and leave the driving to us.” The program’s goals are to help shoppers reduce holiday stress, reduce traffic congestion, and alleviate the endless search for parking, according to the transit company announcement. They believe Alexandria enjoys a competitive edge over many other area shopping venues by offering accessibility by transit.

Good for DASH! Public transit companies need to create a lot more partnerships with merchant groups and real estate developers, and execute a lot more special promotions like this. That they don’t is one of the drawbacks of the public ownership of public transit. If bus companies were privately owned, as they once were, I feel certain that they would promote their services far more aggressively and gain significantly more market share.

While the publicly owned DASH deserves praise for its initiative in this instance, the “DASHing through Alexandria” promotion reminds us what could be possible on a much larger scale.

The automobile industry spends billions of dollars annually in advertising to hype the joys of car ownership (as they have every right to do). By contrast, public transit companies are notorious for skimping on advertising and promotion. As a consequence, publicly owned transit systems fall far short of the automobile industry in validating mass transit as a viable transportation and lifestyle option.

If mass transit is to have a prayer of making a comeback in this country, it needs to be far more aggressive in packaging promotions and advertising its allures. Lovers of mass transit should think seriously about eliminating the monopolistic franchises that protect the weak public transit systems, and start thinking about ways to create strong, well-capitalized private transit companies that can compete for transportation market share.

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8 responses to “DASH Shows Some Dash”

  1. Jim Wamsley Avatar
    Jim Wamsley

    Ed Risse provides the answer that also applies to Mass transit.

    “If the total cost of mobility and access was equitably shared these systems would be part of the America’s way of life and the American Dream instead of being fringe ideas for tree huggers.

    Appologists for Business As Usual and those who want to profit from dysfunctional settlement patterns will continue to look for nits to pick.

    EMR
    posted by E M Risse @ 11:54 AM “

    Is “If mass transit is to have a prayer of making a comeback in this country, it needs to be far more aggressive in packaging promotions and advertising its allures.” another nit?

  2. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    In my humble, ill-informed opinion, mass transit needs at least two things in order to compete with automobility: (1) more market-driven human settlement patterns along the lines described by Ed Risse (and less authoritatively, myself) ad nauseum, (2) radical restructuring and privatization of the mass transit sector itself so that it becomes more innovative and responsive to the marketplace. A mass transit sector that effectively promotes/packages itself is a sub-set of No. 2.

  3. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    I think we’re on the cusp of change but changes not predictable in precise ways.

    It used to be that the standard mantra for the status-quo of roads was that it really was nobody’s business because the users of the roads – paid for them – and roads were perceived to be essentially wonderful examples American Capitalism where market-forces drove innovation and competition.. blah blah blah..

    Now… we have that idea being exposed as more wishful thinking than actual reality – and changes are virtually guaranteed … here’s an excerpt from one local paper this morning:

    “Mike McCormack, VDOT’s residency administrator for Amherst County, said its six-year plan includes only three projects and most of those have been pushed back.

    The county has seen a $2 million decline in state road money over the last seven years. The current six-year plan allots $3.3 million.

    ThatThat’s why there’s been talk in the General Assembly about giving control of the secondary roads system to localities, Taylor said. It’s an option now, he said. Mostly cities have chosen that route.”

    http://www.newsadvance.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=LNA/MGArticle/LNA_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149191993544&path=

    articles like this appear every week in Virginia papers.

    The article above said that VDOT estimates that it costs 300K a year to maintain one mile of road.

    So… take a county with 100 miles of secondary roads… Maintenance ALONE will require taxpayers in that county to pony up $30 million dollars a year (if my math is correct). I don’t know about other counties but in my county, one cent on the property tax generates about a million dollars.. and our total rate is around 90 cents… so 1/3 of our budget would be devoted to maintenance ONLY (and the other 70 goes to schools).

    WOW! and this is maintenance ONLY – no new roads!

    The article points out that localities being financially responsible for their own roads is NOT a NOVEL concept. Many towns, cities and some counties in Va already do this.

    I think it would be interesting… to compare … growth and development … in these self-funded jurisdictions vs jurisdictions that think (thought) that VDOT would build whatever was needed to serve development no matter how much or at what pace it occurred .. or whether such developments were not “smart” and compact or “sprawled”…

    what does this have to do with transit?

    well … a lot… because transit almost invariably has to be a regional effort that crosses jurisdictional lines although I’ll admit that some smaller towns can have self-contained transit that stays within their borders.

    if we separate out bus transit from rail transit… the number of jurisdictions that self-fund their own jurisdiction-specific systems … I’d bet are few in number.

    From this… safe to say (I think) .. that rail transit is not only currently costly and subsidized but usually requires regional support, coordination, planning … that “logically” falls in scope and authority to the MPOS – vice VDOT or even the State level DPRT…

    If changes are to be made with respect to how roads are funded… I’d not be surprised is transit was affected more than tangentially….and in fact.. the ensuing dialogue might address the role of transit… and public money.

  4. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Virtually everybody uses and/or benefits from the roads, so how can we say that users don’t pay for them?

    We may disagree about the fairness of the various methods used, but we can’t contest the general idea that usere DO pay for what they get. If we are running out of money, then maybe we are wastingsome money, but mostly it is because we are not paying enough, by whatever method.

  5. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “Lovers of mass transit should think seriously about eliminating the monopolistic franchises that protect the weak public transit systems, and start thinking about ways to create strong, well-capitalized private transit companies that can compete for transportation market share.”

    Winston and Shirley have calculated that if this actually happens, then transit use wil drop substantially and auto use will increase slightly.

  6. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: Virtually everybody uses and/or benefits from the roads, so how can we say that users don’t pay for them?

    Because they don’t have a choice as to how it will be spent.

    “If we are running out of money, then maybe we are wastingsome money, but mostly it is because we are not paying enough, by whatever method.”

    Who decides WHO is “paying enough”? Why not let the individual consumer decide how much is “enough”?

  7. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    In Virginia, isn’t the answer: “lobbyists”? As I recall, that was the finding of the state auditor’s report. Both VDOT (indirectly) and the CTB (directly) make funding decisions based on which person/entity has the most persuasive lobbyist. What’s changed in the year since this report was released?

    Nothing, rien, nada!

  8. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Jim will probably have a thread on this but I was reading in the Post this morning that Kaine is going to target legislators in the 2007 elections who vote again transportation funding.

    Going to concentrate on NoVa demo-leaning areas..

    going to bring in Mark Warner since he’s freed up from the national scene…

    going to bring in Webb .. who beat Allen in NoVa

    …. is this a gamble or a slam dunk? thoughts? comments?

    oh.. and one more … suppose he pulls it off… and the result is more funding for NoVa…
    but it can’t be spent on new roads because of EPA Non-attainment.. does all of it then… go
    for WAMTA?

    inquiring minds would like to know.

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