More on FLEXTRANS...

Over the last few months I have watched in interest the battle over raising fares on the Paratransit service known as Flextrans. Those of you who read my blog on a regular basis know my feelings on what is wrong with Flextrans so I will not repeat it too much here.

What is really frustrating about this whole debate is that there is no willing to compromise to make a better solution especially on the part of special needs advocates. They would advocate cutting regular bus service to keep Flextrans at its present levels no matter what the cost. You would think that this would put a certain group who shall remain names and worthless in a pickle because they want more bus service not less however, thanks to one of the local road warriors they have come up with a solution.

The road warrior has advocated making the people on TRAX "pay the price" for daring to actually want to ride TRAX by making them pay a surcharge to keep the overpriced Flextrans service running everywhere possible.

So let me get this right, we will take the group using the most cost effecient form of transit in the area who already pay taxes to keep FLEXTRANS running, and make them pay even more for the service that by law they have no right to ride. Of course the road warrior will always remind you that they are paying for transit if they don't ride it but lets remember that at least they have the right to ride it, TRAX riders cannot ride FLEXTRANS.

That brings up one of the biggest problems that has been created by the Fedrally unfunded mandate the ADA. As I remember the ADA had the noble purpose of giving people with disabilities equal access and that included transit service. Part of that included putting in high cost wheelchair lifts and kneelers on the high floor buses that were a maintance nightmare. Then we moved on to the low floor buses which is a boone not only to the handicapped but also to the elderly and others who had a hard time getting up the steps. The problem of course is that the low floor buses seat fewer passengers and do not hold up compared to their high floor brethren.

However, the ADA also created a second transit system for those who could not reach the regular bus route and that is where FLEXTRANS comes in. So not only do we have equal access to transit but we have a special privilage service that only a select group get to ride. Now this would be problem if the cost were reasonable but instead, it cost 20 times more per passenger than does someone boarding TRAX or 10 times more than a passenger on the bus.

Up to this point UTA like many transit systems provided FLEXTRANS service beyond the federal requirements. However, as the cost has gone up, tax revenue has gone down, and other transit funding sources have dried up, it is becoming clear that something must be done to make FLEXTRANS more effecient and cutting out areas that are not required by ADA is a good place to start.

Am I saying that people outside the area should be left out in the cold so to speak? Of course not but we also need to realize that is not a transit issue but a community issue.

The County Council has chimed in on the issue and opposed the FLEXTRANS price increases. However, once again the council doesn't offer any solutions to the problem, they just want to score some political points by saying they were not in favor of the price increase. If the county council really wants to do something, maybe they should come up with some funding alternatives for the service since this is a community issue.

Clearly we need long term solutions to the high cost of FLEXTRANS and the disabled advocates need to come to the table with some good ideas instead of the usual dog and pony shows.

What is Costing UTA?

UTA Route 45 Gillig Advantage
Originally uploaded by jmdspk

Today I will begin a four part series on what is really costing the UTA. As regular readers will know, I have been critical of organizations such as the Anti-Hunger Coalition and the Transit Riders Union as they often become pawns of anti-transit forces and also demonize the rail program as being cause of all the problems.

However, in this series I will point out the most costly program the UTA has to deal with and that is satisfying ADA requirements. Let me make it clear I am not trying to debate the needs of the ADA, I am point out what it cost to deal with it. In part one I will deal with the regular bus system, in part two I will discuss Flextrans and in part three I will go over the latest demands of the ADA, and fourth I will discuss some solutions.

In the late 70's wheelchair lifts started appearing on buses. The SCRTD in Los Angeles was one of the first agencies to purchase them with their AMG buses in 1977. However, until the ADA took effect, most transit agencies avoided them.

One of the problems with wheelchair lifts is that they can be extremely costly to operate and have been prone to multiple troubles. In addition the sidewalks need to be designed to be able to let the driver safely deploy the lift and everyone familiar with Salt Lake area sidewalks know they were not designed for that.

As a solution to problem of the lifts the bus manufacturers started coming out with low floor buses such as the Gillig Advantage pictured operating on route 45.

The idea of the low floor bus first came out with the Transbus program by the Federal Government in the late 70's. However most of the current bus manufacturers pulled out the program due to escalating cost, however when the ADA came along the bus manufacturers again started looking at the low floor buses.

There is two advantages of low floor buses:
-No Wheelchair Lift
-Faster loading and unloading of passengers if the transit system takes advantage of them (which UTA has not except in the poorly design BRT scheme on 3500 South).

There also several disadvantages:
-Reduced Seating Capacity
-Increase maintenance cost especially the front end
-Not Customer Friendly

There is other issues but those can be traced to poor build quality due to the transit systems not holding the manufacturers feet to the fire to build a better bus.

In conclusion, transit systems lost capacity and faced increased cost to cooperate the ADA. However, the real cost is Paratransit and in the next part of series I will go over the cost of providing Paratransit (Flextrans) service.