February 2006 Archives

Public Transportation Supports the Community

• During emergencies, such as floods, hurricanes, and fires, public transit comes to the rescue of the public and workers alike.
  
• Vinyl wraps around buses promote community events, organizations, and public service messages.
  
• Public transportation provides special service to community events such as Christmas shopping, special tours, and concerts.
  
• Special programs are conducted for groups in need of discounts or adjusted fares.

Well I'm over analyzing the EZ-Rider bus sytem again over at Jessica's Well.

Why do I do it? It's not that I am against EZ-Rider. I think the system is useful (if not fully designed, implemented and optimized). I have actually ridden EZ-Rider and think it is O.K. Also, I am not against public transportation in theory, but some of the generic public transportation selling points for EZ-Rider were over the top for Midland/Odessa. (Congestion, Commute Time, etc.)

What I wonder about is what will happen when the Federal share of running the system drops below 50%, or what happens when the State $ get reduced to fund "education" expenses? I have these visions of MIDTRAN. Yes, ridership is up, but how did other similar system do in Year 2, Year 3? Yes fare collection is 70% of the measley local share, but what happend to systems that had their Federal share drop below 50% of the total?

For the uneducated, the day-to-day EZ-Rider folks are really a team of well trained Mass-Transit professionals who are employed by McDonald Transit. They are very good at public relations and pretty good at running transit systems. I do find it troubling that the Key personnel on their website are CPA's and Public Administration Types, NO ENGINEERS.

I think EZ-Rider has done a good job with building a system around the disabled and the low-income, but for them to grow, they need to branch out. I have always questioned the lack of route between Midland & Odessa with a transfer station at the Airport. I guess the problem is it would take at least 4 buses to make this system viable, and when you only have 30 buses to begin with, that is a big investment. I also think that EZ-Rider doesn't market itself as well as it could for special event shuttle services. There has been some small scale uses at Rock the Desert and the CAF AirSHO, but they don't seem to be plugged into big annual events in the area. Yes it would take time to develop, but my analysis for 2004 shows EZ-Rider is not really a take me to work/school transit system, so they need to be inventive to survive the eventual decrease in Federal Funds.

The wife and I have two dogs (no kids). Our oldest, Sandy, is a 3 and a half year old catahoula / coon hound. Our youngest, Buddy, is almost 2 and is a longhaired, healer-type, mutt.

I got Sandy from a mountain lion and bobcat hunter who lives in a town near the Rio Grande. The hunter had bred a female catahoula and a male coon hound and only wanted to keep part of the litter. I happend to be working on a job in this small town and found out about the pups through the construction workers. I took some pictures, took them home to the wife, and two days later we had Sandy. She was a very hyper puppy, but with training and attention she has grown into being a great dog.

Buddy is a different story. My wife decided that Sandy needed a friend to play with while we were gone during the day. So, my wife started going to the pound to try and find a suitable playmate. Buddy was the cutest little black and tan fur-ball in the pound, and from his paws was going to grow up to be about the same size as Sandy. My wife kind of ignored the fact that he was the loudest dog in the pound and the most hyper. My wife was only half hearted about training Buddy, so he is not fully broken of his hyperactivity.

Regardless, they are our dogs and we love them...even if Sandy can be a bit protective of me and Buddy is a sock and paper eating Spaz.

I read quite a few blogs. Most of the bloggers are what I would call quasi-anonymous.

If you put your mind to it and looked at domain registrations, read through the archives for different posts, you could figure out who they are.

Then there are those who come right out and tell you exactly who they are.

I tend to admire the second group of bloggers, which is why I'm not exactly going to any great lenghts to be anonymous.

I figure if I can't say it in public and be comfortable with it, I won't say it here!

Yeah Yeah.. I know "can't you do anything other than the default templates?"

At least it's not a Blogger Account.

Take a look around, there isn't much to see, unless you are really interested in the costs of public transportation in Midland, Texas. (I don't even want to look at the figures for METRO)

I got this blog moved to its own hosting site today and all of the default templates seem to be working.

I still have to install Gallery and so some more customization of the layout, but at least it is working again.

Since nobody reads this blog, I guess it doesn't matter that it is taking me months at a time to fix things.