Make public transportation easy to use

By The Journal Times Editorial Board

Tuesday, December 2, 2008 7:23 AM CST

Correction:

The editorial below was intended to address the issue of bus passes for disabled people. The city does have monthly passes available for the general public, and those can be purchased at several locations in the area.

All that transit riders are asking for is some convenience. At a recent public meeting, and after hearing that recent decreases in the price of diesel fuel will obviate the need for service cuts or fare increases, some riders said they hoped that the City of Racine would introduce a daily pass.

It’s a perfectly reasonable and understandable request. It’s easier to carry a pass than to shuffle currency and count out the exact fare, and it’s easier to carry a pass than to always make sure one has the right denominations of currency to pay that exact fare.

A daily pass is a sensible step which the city should take. Convenience inspires use. Earlier this year, transit officials said ridership of the bus increased 1 to 2 percent in 2007, which they attributed to the increased price of gasoline. A pass would make it just that bit easier for people to get to work, to do errands during the day when the car is in the shop, or to do without a second car entirely.

As quoted in a recent article, city officials seem strangely resistant to the idea of monthly transit passes. It’s too hard to handle the cash; they’d have to have a security guard where the money is; people might abuse the system by buying discount passes for the disabled and then reselling them. Wow! Who could have imagined that the process of issuing transit passes is as fraught with danger as issuing driver’s licenses and passports.

Other municipalities have managed to stumble through these complexities. Kenosha sells monthly passes at not only the logical locations of transit office and city clerk’s office but also at five grocery stores in the area. Merchants — undaunted by money, checks, credit and debit cards, and even coupons — would probably welcome the additional foot traffic that selling transit passes would bring, because people stopping in for a pass might also take advantage of a deal on milk, or might pick up a salad and some fried chicken for supper.

The Chicago Transit Authority, an admittedly large operation, will happily sell you several types of transit cards. You can buy a monthly pass. You can buy a $5 daily pass. You can have multiple passengers use your transit card. You can buy online and have a card mailed to you. You can have your transit account automatically reloaded from your credit card. They make it easy, but then, they want visitors.

If our transit system was more convenient to use, maybe more people would use it.

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