The Bus Route Hearing
Metro Transit must cut 6% of its $8 million operating budget, or $480,000. Staff propose eliminating Route 12, which carries about 400 riders per weekday and serves a shopping plaza, and adding trips to Route 7, which carries about 2,100 riders per weekday and links two residential neighborhoods to the hospital district. At a Tuesday evening public hearing, 40 residents speak, and 32 of them oppose eliminating Route 12. One council member says, "Eighty percent of the public opposes this plan, so we should keep Route 12." Another replies, "Route 7 has five times the ridership, so the change is obviously fair."
1. Evaluate the "eighty percent of the public" claim. What does that number actually describe?
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It describes 32 of 40 people who chose to speak at one hearing, not the public.
Problems with treating it as public opinion:
- Self-selection. People attend hearings when a specific route affects them. Supporters of Route 7's added trips, who may be far more numerous, had no reason to spend a Tuesday evening defending a benefit they expect to receive.
- Timing and access. A Tuesday evening meeting excludes people working evening shifts, people without transportation to the meeting, and people with caregiving duties -- precisely the riders most dependent on transit.
- Small, unmeasured base. 40 speakers from a service area of tens of thousands is not a sample; no margin of error can be attached to it.
Correct statement: "32 of the 40 people who spoke opposed the change." That is a fact about the hearing. It is evidence that Route 12 riders are organized and concerned, which is worth weighing -- but it is not a measure of public support.
2. What data would you ask staff to produce before deciding whether eliminating Route 12 is equitable? Name at least four kinds and say what each would show.
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- Ridership by time of day and day of week. A route with 400 weekday riders may carry them at 5 a.m. and 10 p.m., when no alternative exists; Route 7's 2,100 may be concentrated in commuter hours with frequent alternatives. Average daily totals hide this.
- Share of riders who are transit-dependent (no household vehicle, or unable to drive). This is the core equity question: losing a route matters far more to a rider with no substitute than to a choice rider.
- Trip purpose and destinations. If Route 12 is the only service to a clinic, grocery, or the shopping plaza for a specific neighborhood, the cost of the cut falls on essential trips, not discretionary ones.
- Cost per rider and the size of the saving from each option. Eliminating a 400-rider route may save less than trimming frequency on a 2,100-rider route. The $480,000 could plausibly be found without eliminating any route.
- Who actually rides, by neighborhood income and by whether those areas are served by other routes -- a map of alternatives within a reasonable walk.
Add: ridership before and after comparable past cuts, to estimate where displaced riders go (many simply stop riding).
3. The second council member says five times the ridership makes the change "obviously fair." What is right and what is missing in that argument?
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What is right: ridership is a legitimate criterion, and it is relevant that one route serves five times as many people. Public money generally should follow use, and Metro Transit is not obligated to protect every route regardless of demand.
What is missing:
- Ridership measures volume, not need. Four hundred riders with no alternative may represent more essential trips than 2,100 riders who could drive. "Fair" and "efficient" are different tests, and ridership alone answers only the second.
- The comparison is not the only option. The choice is framed as "Route 12 or Route 7," but the actual menu includes reducing frequency on Route 12, raising fares, cutting weekend service, or trimming administration. Treating elimination as the only alternative is a false dilemma.
- Cost per rider is absent. If Route 12 costs far less per rider than Route 7, the ridership ratio does not translate into a savings ratio.
- Effects are not symmetrical. Adding trips to Route 7 creates a modest improvement; eliminating Route 12 removes service entirely. Those losses are not equivalent even if the totals balance.
Defensible conclusion: the ridership figure is a reason to look closely at Route 12, not a reason the decision is settled.