8/3/2023 0 Comments Ubar taxi![]() That’s a great bargain for riders but should be a deal-breaker for taxpayers. Taxpayers subsidize every ride: fares are $2.75 (Metromover is free).īut GO Connect at $99.90 taxpayer cost per ride has been off the charts, and the fare is only $2.25 (Cutler Bay rides free). And $1 million a month to move 300 people to and from other transit that will then take them to work just isn’t smart.Ĭounty transit’s operating cost per rider keeps rising, partly due to inflation but mostly because the trains and buses carry fewer riders each year. That’s a necessary function of government.īut we have to be smart in subsidizing mobility. We collectively subsidize the way people get around, just as we subsidize people by building roads. To be fair, all mass transit in the US loses money. We could lease a very good car for each of them for a quarter of that cost. There’s no way Miami-Dade County should be paying $1 million a month to make sure that 300 people get to and from a job. If only half of those who ever rode are steady riders, we’d be paying more than $10,000 a year for each of them – surely much more apiece, because March’s total record 11,983 rides equals just 300 people who commute to and from work daily using GO Connect. Take that further: if all 2,300 people who ever rode the minivans still use them every day, taxpayers will be paying $421 a rider per month, or $5,032 per year, to bring them GO Connect. The report from Mayor Daniella Levine Cava says that throughout its existence serving the four zones, only 2,300 total individuals in 31 months ever boarded GO Connect. If it also doubled the best month’s use – a big assumption, since transit gains use slowly – a round trip from home to other transit and then back then would cost taxpayers $80.82.įurther, the contract of almost $1 million a month for 18 months begins with a tiny user group. The new contract would double GO Connect zones, which now are Cutler Bay, Dadeland/South Miami, West Kendall and Civic Center. If GO Connect carries as many riders in the future as it did in March, which was its best month, the new contract would still cost $80.82 per ride – that’s $161.64 per day for a ride to and from transit going to a job. But the mayor’s numbers sent to commissioners are a good yardstick – good as a basis for judgment, but frightening in what they reveal.īy Miami Today’s calculations of the mayor’s data, if GO Connect gets as much total use in the next 18 months as it got in all of the past 31 months combined, in the new contract each ride will still cost taxpayers $99.90 – that’s one way, not round trip, which would total $199.80.īear in mind that GO Connect’s 19 on-demand minivans simply go from riders’ homes to the public transit that in turn gets them to work at an added public cost. With understatement, Commissioner Raquel Regalado promised Miami-Dade’s transportation committee that the cost per user for the first-mile last-mile service would be “very eye-opening.”Ĭommittee members said they couldn’t get per-rider costs for the trips, which are branded GO Connect. But what they didn’t do is probe the taxpayers’ cost per rider. They cut contract length in half to 18 months and its total to under $18 million. Commissioners tried hard last week to dissect a no-bid contract renewal for on-demand van rides from home to rail or bus.
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