More Wrongheaded Thinking, This Time at the Top
of the RIOC Board

In the RIOC Board meeting two weeks ago, a question was raised about Red Bus service. Now that extending the route to the Octagon Apartments and Coler Hospital has made it impossible for buses to meet the Tram schedule, asked a resident in one of the Board’s too-rare forums for residents, why not add another bus?

At first, someone denied there’s a problem – only to be contradicted, quickly, by a Board member who knows, because he’s a resident. David Kraut made it clear – there is most definitely a problem. RIOC officials even kid themselves that drivers are obeying stop signs but, on Monday, a driver was observed speeding up going through the stop sign at the north end of the subway station. No wonder The burden falls on the drivers to find a way to conform to the schedule.

Since RIOC now knows, presumably, that traffic laws are being violated and schedules are impossible to meet, why not conduct some intelligent resident-guided experiments with the bus service? Good suggestions abound:

• In the compressed morning rush, let only one of the buses handle meager northbound traffic, and run the rest express to start their southbound trip on schedule.

• To make sure places are available for Northtown residents, let some of the buses reverse course at Motorgate and head toward the Tram – especially in winter weather when it comes. (As things stand, Northtown residents often wait too long, only to find buses arrive without space available to board.)

• During rush periods, how about banning construction vehicles and cracking down on double-parked delivery trucks?

The afternoon-evening rush, spread over a longer time, isn’t as critical. Even so, there are good ideas out there for making the northbound rush run better, as well.

But RIOC Board Chair Judy Calogero responded to the suggestion that a bus be added to handle the lengthened route in a most curious way. Instead of asking staff to move decisively to solve the problem or find possible solutions, she asked the resident to cost out addition of a bus and driver, and raised this question: Would residents be willing to pay more for bus service so that an additional rush-hour bus might be added?

Let’s see. If we understood Calogero correctly, here’s how she sees this:

RIOC leases land for construction of new apartments at Octagon Park, presumably charging a reasonable ground rent. Then RIOC extends the bus route to handle the extra traffic and, in consequence, buses cannot meet the schedule. And when a resident suggests the problem should be solved, RIOC wants to make it a residents’ problem – a resident should "cost out" addition of a bus, and residents should pay more for bus service.

Huh?

It stands to reason, The WIRE believes, that if RIOC leases ground for apartments, it should be prepared to deal with the consequences of that action without resorting to charging residents more for the same service they’ve had all along – and for which they once paid nothing.

In fact, we have to ask this question: Why do we pay for Red Bus service at all? True, the 25-cent charge (10 cents for seniors/disabled) serves to discourage casual riding by those for whom walking is an easy alternative. But there’s no reason why the budget for surface transportation on the Island should not be integrated into the Tramway budget, just as the cost of the Staten Island Ferry is integrated into the MTA’s overall budget. And if the counterargument is that the Tram loses money, let it be understood that all mass transit loses money and get State and Federal subsidies to support such conveniences operated in the public interest. For the last dozen years, RIOC has seemed incapable of asking for appropriate subsidies, let alone securing them.

Bottom line: RIOC needs to start getting its mission right. The mission is not to make money charging residents increased fees for increased services caused by shortsighted RIOC actions. The mission is to serve the public – us – and a RIOC that doesn’t appreciate that mission has its values badly distorted.

Judy Calogero was asking the wrong question in suggesting that the inquiring resident "cost out" the cost of added bus service.

The right questions are:

• Why didn’t RIOC anticipate this in leasing land for construction at Octagon?

• And why can’t RIOC take responsibility for failing to do so, bite the bullet, and bear the cost?

Let’s start making sense.

DL