The Empty Bus

Whitewater’s Common Council will tonight consider the performance of an often-empty Janesville Transit Bus that mostly benefits one multi-billion-dollar corporation. At the end of this post, readers will find links to prior posts about this failed project. I’ve also embedded the relevant documents from tonight’s meeting – the bus would require 80% more money from Whitewater than last year, and more public money overall. There’s no funding in the proposed budget for this project – anyone advocating continued funding would have to take from another, budgeted item.

Any city funding, in any event, would be better used elsewhere.

Those Whitewater residents who’ve noticed that the bus is empty when driving through Whitewater are right. The short, looping video that I’ve embedded above shows from the inside what the bus looks like from the outside while going through town: mostly empty, mile after mile, wasting fuel.

And yet, and yet, the case against this project does not rest simply on a video clip, but more fully on sound arguments and data. The transit figures, themselves, reveal powerfully what a small clip merely illustrates in part, as I wrote in an earlier post:

‘What do they show (assuming these are even accurately reported passenger trips)?

Generac – flush with a market capitalization of $2.92 billion and a stock price up 72% over the last year – accounts for 30% of all riders, with the Janesville terminal supplying 29%, other Janesville stops 21%, the Milton Piggly Wiggly 10%, Milton other stops 3%, the UW campus only 5%, and non-students, non-Generac workers in Whitewater only 2% of riders.

That’s why the bus seems empty – because when driving through the city, it is empty (or nearly so).‘

To those who have kindly written to me over the last year and a half, with their disappointment in the project (and their detailed arguments against it), I offer my heartfelt thanks. I’ve done my level best to make good use of your suggestions. Whitewater has better uses for this money, surely. But if through guile funding from Whitewater somehow continues, we’ll continue on, too, with point-by-point assessments of public statements about this project, clip by clip, measured against actual performance.

Prior Posts: Whitewater’s 3.20.12 Common Council Meeting, A Local Flavor of Crony Capitalism, A little consistency would be in order, Whitewater Uses Public Money for Big Corporation While Big Corporation Invests in Whitewater Mexico, The City of Whitewater’s 2013 Draft Budget: Crony Capitalism, Ceaseless Press Errors About the So-Called ‘Innovation Express’, The Innovation Express Generac Bus: ‘Public Transit Is Not Expected to Make Money’, and Janesville Transit’s Ghost Bus.