Operations: November 2005 Archives

This article in Da Paper is two weeks old, but the news is still current:

Transit plans to be delayed More time wanted to evaluate ridership

Still unsure of Hurricane Katrina's impact on Jefferson Parish's public transit riders, the Parish Council is expected to delay votes today on increasing fares, slashing routes and possibly hiring a new manager to oversee bus routes and point-to-point van service parishwide.

The proposals had been postponed several times before the Aug. 29 storm as the council awaited estimates of how much money each option might save the cash-strapped transit department, which faces a potential $1.5 million operating loss this year because of escalating gasoline and insurance prices.

It's good to see that one Parish Councilman is thinking outside the box:

Furthermore, the proposals, due in June, do not reflect changes in public transportation needs prompted by Katrina, possibly rendering them useless, Councilman Louis Congemi said.

Congemi said he might encourage the council to request new proposals, asking firms to consider such anomalies as an influx of riders from St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes whose jobs have relocated to Jefferson from Orleans Parish or other hurricane-ravaged areas.

"Those additional riders might help you compensate for increased costs, because that was one of the problems that we faced in Jefferson is ridership," Congemi said. "If you increase the number of people that utilize the system, that may help the system. At this point in time, we don't know that."

While another is not:

Despite the uncertainty, Councilman Chris Roberts said he would encourage his colleagues to vote today on the fare increases, first proposed in February. They include a jump in the Base Fare from $1.10 to $1.50, exceeding the cost of a regular New Orleans Regional Transit Authority Basic Bus Line ticket by a quarter. Four other Jefferson bus ticket types would be raised under the rate proposal

I'm with Congemi. This is a time to re-evaluate. Maybe it's time to really put the "Regional" into RTA.