The CATA Thread
CATA seems to come up quite a bit in other threads, but I thought it was about time that it got it's very own.
Two notable items:
1. The November Millage: the agency predicts a rather doomsday-esque scenario if voters fail to approve a 0.787 mill increase for operations for the next five years (2008-12). From their site: "For a $100,000 home, that equals $39.35 per year, or less than most people pay for a tank of gasoline. All the money raised would be used to operate the CATA system."
More info here: http://cata.org/news/releases/november_millage.html
Meanwhile, #2: Record Ridership -- over 0.5 million rides just for the month of July.
Given the failed library millage, I'm concerned about CATA's chances for success. That, and I really haven't seen much PR on it, aside from direct marketing on the bus. What does everyone else think about it's chances? I'd love to see them shore up operating money so that we can start bugging them more about their five to ten year vision.
Two notable items:
1. The November Millage: the agency predicts a rather doomsday-esque scenario if voters fail to approve a 0.787 mill increase for operations for the next five years (2008-12). From their site: "For a $100,000 home, that equals $39.35 per year, or less than most people pay for a tank of gasoline. All the money raised would be used to operate the CATA system."
More info here: http://cata.org/news/releases/november_millage.html
Meanwhile, #2: Record Ridership -- over 0.5 million rides just for the month of July.
Given the failed library millage, I'm concerned about CATA's chances for success. That, and I really haven't seen much PR on it, aside from direct marketing on the bus. What does everyone else think about it's chances? I'd love to see them shore up operating money so that we can start bugging them more about their five to ten year vision.
Comments
What I've heard from people around Lansing, seems to support what LMich said, that operating millages are as big of a sell, it's the large expansion millages that are trickier. And hopefully the increased ridership means there will be more people who will vote Yes because they are using it; and unlike the library, for those who use CATA on a regular basis it is more of an essential function and thus most of them would vote Yes. And if I had to guess, I would say the actual number of regular CATA customers is a much larger group than library users, in addition to the number of regular CATA customers being a much larger number than regular library users. I pick the library as a comparison only because it's a memerable and recent millage failure, although that millage was an expansion on top of being a very large expansion amount.
In conclusion, I'm probably just trying to rationalize why CATA will pass for selfish reasons, but even if I'm in denial, I think these are pretty legit pieces of evidence.
For comparison, if I remember correctly, the "L" in Chicago is $2.5/ride? I know for sure that it was in the $2 range, so CATA is still a good price. And when I read the article LMich mentioned, it reaked of trying to scare people in voting for the millage in my mind. However, I can't say that I wasn't at least a little scared by it thinking that maybe there's a small chance it could happen.
I don't fully expect it to fail, but I do have to admit it doesn't look good.
There is currently some legislation floating around in state government to open up more potential sources of funding, such as local option sales taxes. We need to give transit agencies more options and improve the resources the state offers -- relying just on property taxes and farebox revenues isn't working. For example, do we know if a CATA fare increase to $2.00 would even guarantee no service cuts? I can't do the math at the moment.