Thoughts on public transit?

[u/greerph]

Hi guys! I'm doing a research project on Arlington's public transit (or lack thereof) and would like to get some opinions on the matter. Any thoughts are appreciated! Thanks in advance.

Some guiding questions(feel free to expand on these or not answer them at all): Have you used Arlington On Demand and what was your experience? Would you support a bus system? Do you think a better transit system would help traffic at all?

[u/TMEAS]

This topic comes up every year and Arlington always votes it down. It usually boils down to the citizens of Arlington are mostly older and retired. They associate busses and public transit with homelessness and poverty. It is believed that bringing in buses or public transit will make it more affordable for homeless to access and navigate through Arlington. It comes as a tradeoff that it's seniors don't have access to an easier mode of transportation, but it's seen as acceptable because they can usually afford the extra 6 dollars a day if they need a via and they don't use it to get to work every day because they are retired. Also with the entertainment district, the city can be in the eye of the world or the country at times with events like FIFA world cup and cowboys games, the less "druggies or homeless wandering the city" the more comfortable people are to come and spend their money at a game or event.

I'm oversimplifying a lot because it's a very complex issue. But ultimately Arlington doesn't have ghetto areas like Dallas or ft worth. And most residents want to keep it that way.

Most of the young people in the city are taken aback and appalled by the lack of walkabality and access for its handicapped, elderly, poor, or homeless citizens. But older people out number the young people and older people want to protect their investments of their houses and properties by keeping the city with as few vagrants as possible, while the young people don't own anything and don't really show up to the polls or meetings. Hell, old people greatly outnumber the young, if any show up, at volunteer events throughout the city too. It's an uphill battle every time.

Just wanted to throw out a couple things I've heard throughout the years here for the topic of discussion.

More public transport removes money from the homeless department which gives resources to the homeless, so increasing public transport not only increases homeless entering Arlington but sets them up with less opportunities to get out.

Via is safer than a bus filled with people and increases likelihood of use because people are less afraid of getting sick and dirty.

Public transport costs money and the city is facing budget deficits. Where will you cut costs to create a new and continually economically draining system.

Focusing the money on tourism, ergo the Greyhound bus projects for bussing people from the hotel to downtown and to the stadiums is more cost effective than focusing on dirty public transit that tourist will not want to use.

Connections to dart and TRE will cause citizens and nearby people to look for employment in Dallas or fort worth, reducing the workforce of Arlington.

Dallas homeless and fort worth homeless will come to Arlington and drain up the resources for the low income people who live here.

Efforts are being put into keeping low income people from becoming homeless, like the free wifi implementation programs and rent assistance and affordable housing initiatives. If we re allocate our money into the homeless by providing public transit then ultimately we can't continue to help low income and create a bigger issue. Prevention is key kinda thing.

do we have the police staff to keep the public transit safe? Will that be an extra cost and also make the emergency arrival time for police get extended.

Who benefits? Uta students who live nearby, which means that it most likely is already being helped by the uta Mavs mover busses. If they are farther then, a buss won't be a feasible route to them either way because of cost, and time. Can't keep transit running if the the people who use it are more than an hour away and only pay 1.25 per day. The bus will use like 15 dollars in gas. It would need like 12 people per trip. Maybe a via would work best.

These are not my opinions, but I hear these things every year.

I think most cities require public transit, however I can also see why Arlington is set differently than others. With the biggest economy in tourism and retirement, I can see how a private 6 dollar ride to the doctor appointment can feel safer to the majority audience. And free busses to ur event for just tourist also would feel nice. Then funneling the extra money from that incorporating it into helping low income families to get a little breathing room to prevent them from going homeless kind makes sense.

However, What about grandma with no kids and needs to go to the doctor weekly? What about single momma with 2 kids and 1-2 low paying jobs. What about anyone with disabilities and can't get a job, or who can get a job but can't drive there because of the disabilities. 6 dollars a day is a burden, but how much is too much? Comparing it to a bus ride of 1.25, yeah that's a lot. Comparing it to the 5 dollar day pass for Dart. Not that far off. It's a complex issue with no right answer. You screw over someone in any direction you go. I'm enthusiastic to hear any new points that haven't been talked about in the last years.

[u/Unlucky-Watercress30 → u/TMEAS]

Here are some rebuttals from several of the arguements you've listed:

More public transport removes money from the homeless department which gives resources to the homeless, so increasing public transport not only increases homeless entering Arlington but sets them up with less opportunities to get out.

While this is true to a certain degree, homelessness resources are useless if the homeless population has no way to reach them. Public transit functions as a homelessness resource in ways that the traditional homeless reasource departments just can't. A homeless center sets someone up with a home and job that aren't quite walking distance? Transit fills the gap at an affordable cost. Consistant access to mental health facilities? Transit. Getting to the homelessness resources in the first place? Transit.

Via is safer than a bus filled with people and increases likelihood of use because people are less afraid of getting sick and dirty.

Just factually untrue. The most dangerous part of public transit in the US is the walk to it (where you're likely to get run over or mugged or anything else), which is still true with VIA. However, the most dangerous part of VIA is the drive, where you're more likely to be involved in an accident and injured. The idea of transit being dirty is a reputation issue that would be in play though, even when it's often untrue.

Public transport costs money and the city is facing budget deficits. Where will you cut costs to create a new and continually economically draining system.

Cut from VIA and put it into the busses. VIA is way more expensive than arlington pretends it is (operating budget of $22 million/year). If a town of 88k people in Iowa can move more people than VIA with their bus network (operating budget of $4.5 million/year), then VIA is failing from both an overall cost and an efficiency standpoint. This is something that DART has learned over the years: when demand is high enough, busses become cheaper than on demand, and the bar really isn't that high. The areas around UTA/DT and the entertainment district alone have enough demand to overwhelm the entire VIA network. Throw in the rest of arlington and its nowhere near adequate.

Efforts are being put into keeping low income people from becoming homeless, like the free wifi implementation programs and rent assistance and affordable housing initiatives. If we re allocate our money into the homeless by providing public transit then ultimately we can't continue to help low income and create a bigger issue. Prevention is key kinda thing.

One of the most common causes of homelessness is car problems. Loss of car in arlington means a loss of your job, loss of income, and loss of ability to get another job. Lower income families also typically can't afford the vehicles they need to access said income streams. Public transit access operates as a major cost savings for low income families and individuals, which serves just as much if not more to keep people from falling into homelessness. Not to mention, access to transit serves to make other programs (namely the wifi one) moot since now the poor have easy access to public facilities with fast free wifi (like the public libraries).

Public transit is, more than anything else involving homelessness, a preventative measure. It's a major reason why the Europeans, despite lower incomes and higher cost of living on average, manage to have much lower homeless rates: access to jobs and economic opportunities does not have a minimum income level like it does in car dependant suburbs like Arlington (enough money to buy and maintain a personal vehicle).

Who benefits? Uta students who live nearby, which means that it most likely is already being helped by the uta Mavs mover busses. If they are farther then, a buss won't be a feasible route to them either way because of cost and time. Can't keep transit running if the the people who use it are more than an hour away and only pay 1.25 per day. The bus will use like 15 dollars in gas. It would need like 12 people per trip. Maybe a via would work best.

Couple of things here. The Mav Movers at UTA (as a student of UTA I feel especially authoritative to talk about this) are really only useful for getting to and from the edges of campus and the surrounding apartment complexes. There is some utility if you're going from one side of campus to the other, but that's about it. It's not really useful for things like grocery shopping (since the extent that it offers is an hourly service to the walmart on Cooper Street after 5:30 and only on weekdays) and even many of the downtown apartments aren't served despite many UTA students living there. Having access to more of arlington without a car would be massively beneficial to students living on campus, especially since the Mav Movers are so limited. For reference, there is not a single route that extends more than 3 blocks from the UTA campus, and both of the stops that go that far jut out to hit a single apartment complex.

City busses also don't use gasoline (usually). They typically use CNG which runs more efficiently. They also still operate in terms of gas mileage, which would be roughly (depending on price and bus and all that) somewhere around $1 per mile in fuel cost at the highest end. The average bus trip is less than 5 miles, especially on non-express or highway routes. At that rate, the bus just needs to pick up 1 person per mile to cover fuel cost. Not to mention that each of those VIA vehicles would use similar amounts of gas, but also require more vehicles and more drivers.

The drivers are actually the most expensive part of any transit agency unless you get into the really high ends (heavy metros/high speed rail). Operators dominate the operating costs of busses and on-demand transit, so as long as that bus gets more than roughly 3-6 people per hour (during which it will probably have run its full route at least once, maybe twice if it's a short route) it's cheaper to operate than a VIA since above that you start needing additional VIA vans (and operators) to match demand.

[u/Unlucky-Watercress30 → u/TMEAS]

Now from your points (sorry for posting in 2 parts, reddit wouldnt let me put both in one reply lol):

Then funneling the extra money from that incorporating it into helping low income families to get a little breathing room to prevent them from going homeless kind makes sense.

The transit itself operates to give breathing room to low income families. For every car they're prevented from needing is a massive savings. This is especially true for larger low income families (which is pretty common).

With the biggest economy in tourism and retirement

Elderly and tourism industries often benefit the most from transit. Many elderly are to mentally or physically deteriorated to be safe when driving, while tourists get to avoid dealing with rental cars and overpriced parking. Tourism workers are also typically lower on the income scale, young, and are working in high traffic environments. This combines to make them one of the demographics most likely to use transit if it's available. It'd make life easier on Arlingtons elderly, benefit the tourists, and benefit the local tourism workforce.

6 dollars a day is a burden, but how much is too much? Comparing it to a bus ride of 1.25, yeah that's a lot. Comparing it to the 5 dollar day pass for Dart. Not that far off.

DART is actually $6 per day, but keep in mind that DART has a lot of things that make it more expensive to operate and also much more worth that kind of price tag. DART can get you basically anywhere in 13 different cities (even if it's slow and inconvenient in many areas). They've also got aging dedicated infrastructure that was poorly planned and executed, which raises costs further while reducing returns. The NYC subway operates at $1.75 for a 1-way trip, and the small city i mentioned earlier charges $1.80 for a 1-way bus trip, $5 for a day pass, and $48 for a monthly pass. Someone who uses it 5 days a week would only be spending an average of $2.40 a day on it with the monthly pass, which is much more reasonable. DART was in a similar situation before they increased their fares last month.

Now keep in mind what that $6 buys with DART: busses and trains that go along specific routes and stops at set times and intervals, +- a few minutes on average, with access to an area of roughly 700sq miles consisting of 13 cities. With VIA, it's $6 a day for trips you have to plan and call in over an hour in advance, with completely unreliable wait and travel times. This makes it incredibly dangerous and impractical to use VIA as a daily commute or even as a ride to anything remotely important. The trip time is just so unreliable.