Quote:
Originally Posted by electricron
That's approximately half the MSA total, therefore ridership is doubled in transit agency member cities. That 1.56% is over 3% now, which is higher than the less than 3% indicated for all other Texas cities.
When only half the population is subsidizing public transit with taxes within regions, only half the population is serviced by them - whether that service is good or poor. But even poor service is better than none.
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I am still not understanding why those keep suggesting Dallas is some how unique in this. Using only areas for Dallas that is served while measuring all the other cities by including those not served. I don't know Houston or SA's transit all that well, but I am sure there is plenty of parts of Houston and SA not served by their transit agency. In the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro area Capitol Metro only serves Austin. Not Round Rock, not San Marcos, not Pflugerville, not Ceder Park, not Bastrop, not Kyle and Buda, or Westlake, or Tyler. Just Austin, Jonestown, Manor and Leander.
By your math of only doing city limits of the towns served, that would be:
Austin: 790.000
Leander: 7.600
Manor: 5.500
Jonestown: 1.700
For 804.800 in a metro area of 1,7 million as 47%
So for simplicity sake we will say half. That would put Austin at 5,22% and back above your 3%.
However by doing that we are ignoring and not showing the huge problem that is such a large portion of the population is not being served. That is significant when discussing public transit. That half of the population has no service, why would y'all want to completely disregard that? Why is that not significant to this discussion? It should be IMO.
It just seems to me like by trying to pull out all of the numbers for the people who have no service y'all are trying to just make Dallas' number look better than they are in reality. And by using Dallas' numbers with out those with no public transit access while comparing to the other cities while still including the full population numbers only reinforces that feeling that is what y'all are trying to accomplish here rather than any real discussion on the issue.
If this was not a ranking. If we were not comparing cities here. If it were not some silly competition (my city is best! or worst!) Would you still be trying to remove the people with no access to transit from your numbers? And if so I don't understand why. How is the fact we aren't providing transit options to half the population not significant?
Lets be honest here. We are all Texans and living in Texas. People in Texas want to rely on themselves. Not spend money and pay taxes to rely on someone else to provide transportation for them when they can provide their own transportation. IMO there is no excuse at all for a city of 100,000 like Round Rock to not be a part of Cap Metro. Or for someone like me who lives a couple miles from DT Austin to not have access to even a bus. The reason I don't have access to a bus, and why north Austin doesn't either is because they don't want to pay the taxes. They would rather pay more to be able to rely on themselves than to pay taxes to rely on others to provide them transit. That is the problem with Texas IMO. Not just Austin, though we are probably the worst.