Good/bad news about city’s pilot public transportation program

As expected, there hasn’t been an overwhelming, or even a whelming, demand for the City’s pilot mass transportation program during its inaugural four weeks of operation. Kyle/Buda Taxi, which is providing the service, is averaging only 1.75 riders per day.

The good news is that service has not been the terrible drain on the City’s financial resources that CARTs was, because, as Chief of Staff Jerry Hendrix said today in announcing the ridership numbers "The advantage we have with the pilot program is that the hourly rate that the city reimburses the service provider is tied directly to the amount of time spent providing the service to Kyle residents." And so far that hasn’t seemed to be a lot because all the trips provided by the taxi service to date have been local. There have been no requests for service to either Austin or San Marcos, the two other destinations served by Kyle/Buda Taxi in its agreement with the City.

However, not only does this sparse ridership guarantee the City will not be looking into any more sophisticated mass transit plans within, at least, the next decade, it may also mean the City Council could revisit whether even this plan is worthy of taxpayer subsidies because the purpose of the hourly rate was the hope that the service could be providing transportation to several riders simultaneously.

One positive trend to note: Last week, six riders used the service which is only one less than the ridership of the first three weeks combined.

Here is the daily breakdown on the number of passengers using the city’s transportation services:

• Tuesday, March 15 1 rider
• Thursday, March 17: 1 rider
• Tuesday, March 22: 2 riders
• Thursday, March 24: 1 rider
• Tuesday, March 29, 0 rider
• Thursday, March 31: 2 riders
• Tuesday, April 5: 3 riders
• Thursday, April 7: 3 riders