Fuel Surcharge A Bad Idea

Image via Wikipedia Well it looks like UTA is going to implement a fuel surcharge to cover the cost of fuel that is escalating and despite prices for gasoline going down recently, the price of diesel is actually going up.

However, while the UTA is incurring additional the cost, the fuel surcharge is the wrong way to about collecting revenue. What UTA plans to do is charge an additional quarter to all riders. That means that even pass holders will have to fork out a quarter every time they ride even after they go to the trouble of buying a pass.

The UTA needs to be making the system easy to ride in order to encourage the choice customers to switch from driving to taking the bus or TRAX. If the choice customers find it too hard to use the system they will go back to driving their cars. The fuel charge will drive many of this choice customers back to their cars.

To make it a double whammy, not only are they going to start charging this fuel surcharge in December, then the following month they are going to increase regular fares by 10 cents. How what a Christmas and New Years presents the riders of the UTA are going to get this year.

Once again, the people in charge of the UTA are not thinking out of the box. They are doing nothing to encourage increase bus ridership to offset the increase fuel prices. UTA needs to start thinking out of the box and stop this dumb programs that only hurt ridership not increase it.