No Way To Run A Railroad

Imagine an organization that has seen its number of customers grow anywhere from 11 to 18%. Sounds like business is thriving, right? Wrong. What if I told you that that same organization was actually losing money? Such an unlikely scenario is only possible only in the quasi-governmental world of mass transit. According to the Dallas Morning News, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) is facing a 2006 budget shortfall of $3,000,000.00, despite the fact that higher gas prices have greatly increased the number of people riding their buses and trains. See, at its core, DART is nothing more than that a tax-guzzling machine. Running buses and trains is a sideline to them. Fares paid by riders only cover about 11% of the cost of running its system. DART gets the vast majority of the $887,000.00 it costs to run its buses and rail lines each day from sales tax.

DART uses this tax money to subsidize transit service, the price you pay to ride a bus or train doesn't even begin to cover the costs. DART's goal is to keep this subsidy at $4.50 per trip. But things don't always work out that way. Consider Route 234, which runs from Plano to Irving. It averages only 59 riders a day. DART calculates that each passenger cost it $24.00 more than they pay in busfare. DART could actually give each passenger a pretty nice used car, discontinue the bus service and still come out ahead. All this talk of cutting service is upsetting to Kenneth Day, who just happens to be president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1338, which represents many bus and rail operators. "Taking service away is not always the right thing to do," Mr. Day told the News. "I don't know how they can cut services when buses are so full." They can do it because they are not in the bus business, they are in the tax collection business.