After years of ignoring New Haven’s pleas for fixing its broken bus system, the state now plans to jack up fares. How should New Haven react?
Babz Rawls-Ivy invoked the 1955 protests in Montgomery, Alabama, that launched the modern civil-rights movement.
“Boycott!” Rawls-Ivy, the managing editor of the Inner City News and a WNHH FM radio program host, said on the weekly news-in-review “Friday Pundits” program.
“Get the Beemers out. Ride with your friends to work. We need a modern-day boycott.”
“Poor people are the ones who are going to suffer” from the proposed fare increase, noted fellow “Pundits” panelist and fellow radio program host Joe Ugly.
The pundits spoke the morning after the state Department of Transportation held a public hearing in New Haven about its plan to raise one-way CT Transit bus fares from $1.50 to $1.75. That 17 percent increases compares to a 5 percent fare increase the department is proposing for Metro-North train rides. Click here to read a full account of the hearing and both sides of the issue.
And click on or download the above audio file to hear the full episode of WNHH radio’s “Friday Pundits,” which also touched on the return of bar cars to Metro-North trains, the recent ruling in a state education-funding lawsuit, NLRB hearings on an effort to unionize graduate student teachers, and the tenth anniversary of the Hill branch library.
The brief discussion during today's episode of whether New Haven has the population density to support a robust bus system speaks to the balance between ridership and coverage that CTTransit has yet to strike. As is explored elsewhere (http://blog.tstc.org/2016/09/16/fare-hikes-opportunity-rethink-connecticut-funds-operates-transit/), ConnDOT's resources are such that covering the entire city and most of the region with routes means precious little service for any one potential rider. Consolidation of some routes to create high-frequency services with bus rapid transit features in a small number of key corridors like Whalley or Dixwell (something like CTfastrak but using bus-only lanes, signal priority, and smartcard-based fare collection instead of a dedicated roadway and ticket machines) could do wonders for ridership. Chances are that a good number of area residents would be willing to walk an extra five or ten minutes for frequent, reliable, and all-around pleasant service. CTTransit certainly can't serve everyone and everywhere with such routes, but they sure could serve more riders than they have now. In fact, the Hartford area has already demonstrated this, with the CTfastrak routes already the most used in the area despite most runs only covering a single nine-mile stretch.