When Mike wants something, he will say about anything to get it. He keeps bringing up the fact that we need to raise fees, especially on public transportation and Paratransit. He points out that the Feds give the city about $13 million a year for several different programs, then he makes the hysterical comment that we ‘should pay for these things ourselves’.
Let remind my conservative friends who think the Federal government is going broke (and now that Mike is a Trump loving Indy) that it doesn’t really matter. WE pay Federal Income Taxes for Federal programs, and I am sure it is WELL over $13 million a year in Sioux Falls. When the Feds ‘Give’ us money, it is OUR money.
But what I find hypocritical is that the same mayor didn’t blink an eye when FEMA gave us $10 million for the ice storm or $27 million for the RR track land that is worth about $2-4 million.
Which brings us to his continuous rant about Paratransit costing $30 a ride.
You want to know why? Inefficiencies. I don’t think or believe Paratransit has upgraded their dispatch system for probably over a decade. And why would they? When you had the cash cow called the Feds funding most of your program, inefficiency means you can charge more.
I will defend MMM on one thing, it’s time to start finding a way to save taxpayers money on Paratransit.
I did some rough 30 minute research on what a taxi company makes on rides, expenses, etc. Then I looked at the Paratransit route system in Sioux Falls. Even if we gave only one way rides to one person on transit system like a cab, and used a similar old school dispatch system, it shouldn’t cost more then $12 a ride. Now let’s say we put in a super modern dispatch system that picked up multiple riders at once we could probably get that number down to $4 or $5 a ride.
There is obviously some efficiency problems with Paratransit, so why punish the riders with higher fees? That’s business acumen for yah!