Because there’s federal money to be spent, and because everybody else has jumped off the cliff, the lemmings on the Milwaukee County transportation board want to spend $124,000 of local cash plus $230,000 yearly in maintenance costs to put bicycle racks on county buses. This comes at a time when cash is so “tight”, fares are going up and service is going down.
Beyond that, why should gubmint subisidize those that overestimate their bicycling abilities at the expense of not only the taxpayers, but the time of the 13 people that ride the bus? Even according to the rose-colored glasses of the transit folks, they’ll only take in $22,000 per year by hauling around 11,000 bikes per year. That leaves $208,000 in maintenance costs paid for by the taxpayers. Who here thinks that they’ll get roughly 11,000 trips that they otherwise wouldn’t get to even collect $22,000, especially since the bicycling season is at best 7 months?
While I like the overall idea and the possibilities it opens up (I for one would buy a bike and do a bus/bike combo to get to work, for exercise and to save some money), this strikes me as a lot of money to spend on this project. A good compromise might be to roll this out slowly as money exists to pay for it, perhaps starting on the east side near UWM, where a lot of students take the bus and ride their bikes due to tight parking, and a lot of folks in that part of town are envirowhackos. So, in short, let’s not kill the idea just yet, but let’s not spend money we don’t have on a system that needs improvements of other sorts.
I’ll kill the idea; the students at UWM, the ones most likely to cause the buses to be late, pay absolutely, positively nothing to ride the bus.