Milwaukee County Bus System Decline Is Just What Scott Walker Ordered
Milwaukee's bus system is losing riders at an historic clip while nationally the trend is the other way, the Journal Sentinel reports.
Imagine: bus ridership is accelerating most everywhere in America, but here the drop is perhaps the steepest.
Somewhere today, County Executive Scott Walker is lighting up a cigar, as his service-cut, revenue-starvation plan for the transit system is working - - the 'plan' wherein no rail is permitted, the bus system is rendered useless, and all low-income people can afford to buy and operate automobiles and drive to their dream jobs in rural Ixonia.
Now if Walker could just let the budget slide into default, and permit the parks decline to the point that his private sector pals could scoop them up for pennies on the dollar, his reign as Exec would be complete.
Then he could let the Republican Party promote him into the US Congress after Jim Sensenbrenner retires to work his public service demolition magic on juicer targets. Perhaps Amtrak and the national parks?
Truthfully, if we had something approaching a political culture where politicians took full responsibility for their failures - - especially conservatives who drag out the responsibility rhetoric when it applies to the powerless - - Walker would have apologized for his horrendous tenure as County Executive and joined his predecessor, Tom Ament, in the County Executives Hall of Shame.
Michael Rosen explains the economics of Walker's failure, here at his Midcoast blog.
2 comments:
This is just the way I've come to view all this talk of privatization and its claimed efficiency. I now question the authenticity of such claims and think it is just a way to, as you say, "scoop [up programs] for pennies on the dollar".
We've witnessed in Wisconsin alone that privatizing the power industry hasn't done much for the pocketbook of citizens. Access charge for this, tax for that, line charge to boot, etc.
Then when the whole private industry falls apart, where do they turn? Government bail out. I liked Neil Peirce's choice of terms, "corporate socialism". That's what America's idea of capitalism is. Is there any up-front cost for, say, disposal of products? How about cost to the environment? None of that is factored in, which it should be in a true capitalist economy.
When the County Board rolled back Scott Walker's bus cuts many said to me that we "won" in that the cuts were not so bad. Well, I didn't agree then. (I led bus ride protests from Bay View last August) And the evidence is coming in to show that cuts only postpone the big bill we will get when we wake up to the disaster that transit is in Milwaukee County.
Riders drift away; they find something a bit more convenient (neighbor, used car) than walking a mile or so. Or in the case of one of our neighbors whom I met during the protest rides, they move, hopefully, to live near a bus line that has a future.
This is a major concern for a neighborhood like Bay View that must be able to function without the big boxes and their land wasting parking lots to support the services we need.
Note that other cities are experiencing increases in ridership of public transit. Would this be a clue to Scott Walker that his policy is failing?
Bill Sell
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