The rush to dismantle OCTA's bus service — conservatives applaud Moorlach

I'll be out much of this week so there will be more fluffy articles starting Wednesday.

There seems to be more and more posts agreeing with OCTA director John Moorlach's idea to cut 100% of OCTA's bus service, and unfortunately, a lot of them are resorting to lies and exaggerations.

The Orange County Register, a libertarian-leaning newspaper, wants to see OCTA bus service decimated and reduced to a privately run system :

Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach raised eyebrows with his comments last week in response to plummeting bus ridership numbers. "Is there a point where maybe a bus system isn't even necessary?" he asked at an Orange County Transportation Authority board meeting. Mr. Moorlach, who also is an OCTA board member, was referring to a $4 million to $5 million bus revenue shortfall because of a 20-percent drop in riders. The agency has increased fares – an odd thing to do when ridership already is falling – and cut back on its bus service by about 7 percent. Mr. Moorlach explained that his comments were "theoretical."

Although OCTA officials and some local observers were aghast by the statement, we applaud this thought experiment, which challenges a taken-for-granted institution. The bus service is highly subsidized – fares pay 20 percent of the cost of the service – and rather inefficient. As always happens with government agencies, they tend to operate mainly for the benefit of the well-paid people who work there rather than for the benefit of customers. We see that whenever there are driver contract negotiations or whenever we get a glimpse of the sort of salaries and benefits paid by the agency. The customer is something of an afterthought in this system.

When revenue is down or state funds dry up, the first instinct of OCTA is to cut service, not to cut salaries or staff or to create better efficiencies. The public transit model encourages agencies to have drivers haul around large buses, which often are nearly empty. ...

It's too bad that the OC Register is resorting to lies like the buses "often are nearly empty"; I challenge them to find an empty bus running down State College Blvd in Anaheim, Westminster, or even down Culver in Irvine. And it's too bad the OC Register exaggerates about how government agencies "always" exist for the benefit of themselves. That's clearly not the case for agencies like BART (the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in the San Francisco Bay Area), which, were it not for its existence, would result in unusually jammed freeways and heavy traffic if the system were shut down. That particular government agency — just like OCTA's bus system — benefits the environment, unclogs freeways, and provides mobility for seniors, the disabled, and those not privileged enough to have drivers' licenses.

Matthew Cunningham, a blogger for the Republican-centric Red County blog, also would like to see OCTA's bus system privatized :

Jitneys are essentially automobile-based transit. Airport shuttles are a kind of jitney, albeit a very limited species of it. Jitneys can services a fixed-route, or operate like a hi-capacity taxi and ferry passengers directly to their destination.

In contradistinction to government-operated bus lines, jitneys provide transit-dependent residents with flexible transportation options in an environment in which private operators are competing for the business. Competition produces results in efficiencies, lower prices and more choices. That, after all, should be the goal of public transit policy -- not figuring out how to keep government in the bus business. An added benefit is jitney services provide small business opportunities for enterprising individuals.

I'm not proposing jitneys as a replacement for the bus system, but as a way to expand transit options.

While we're at it, OCTA should also investigate the feasibility of privatizing the bus system. Most people have forgotten that mass transit was primarily a private enterprise until a few decades ago, when government began moving into that arena. I realize a private entity may not be able to profitably operate a bus system due to labor and environmental costs, but it is worth looking into.

Unfortunately, Cunningham ignores the fact that private enterprise — much like our failing current private-based health care system — collapsed earlier this century and left citizens to fend for themselves, leaving government to fix the mess left behind. For example, Los Angeles's government-run Metro and its precursor, the RTD, arose from the ashes of the commercial Pacific Electric Railway and other private businesses who let transit service deteriorate.

Art Pedroza, a blogger for the Orange Juice Blog, believes that the blind drive to cut public transportation is a poor idea :

It is true that the state has cut funding and that ridership is down 20%, but that just means that the OCTA needs to be run as lean as possible.  Hiring a new CEO for $250,000 was questionable if indeed running lean is a goal.

It is also true that bus fares only fund 20% of public transit costs.  The County picks up the tab for the rest.  The state does not allow the OCTA to charge more for rates.

But studies show that poor residents really need bus transportation to get to and from work.  And if we want to get folks out of cars then buses are a great way to go.

At this point, I'm not sure if all this talk about cutting 100% of OCTA's bus service is a ploy to distract bus riders from the real 30% of bus service cuts. The likelihood that OCTA will cut buses is slim to none because (1) no government official desiring re-election wants to take on the risk of an experimental transportation system (such as 100% jitney-based transit, essentially mimicking the expensive-to-run ACCESS), and (2) OCTA would stand to lose much of its funding for its notoriously-wide freeways.