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Google it and you'll see every US light rail system is run similarly. All are in varying degrees of insolvency,disrepair, and outright dangerous. The common denominator? They are govt. run.
St Louis' is run by a non-governmental quasi-public agency (a private company with tax authority), and has similar problems. As I said above, the problem is that the profit motive is not in passengers but in buying and selling equipment, land, rental space, etc. associated with the lines.
The system is expensive, slow, in poor repair and often downright dangerous - from both infrastructure and crime. There are something like 13000 employees and 650 managers so it is a big area employer.
A public Agency (or more rightly utility) should not have a union which is nothing but a barrier to hiring and firing but people should be held accountable for it's current poor state.
Change starts at the top and Metro seem to have a doer in the top job now (Paul Wiedefeld) but it is going to get worse before it gets better. There is going to be slow-downs and single tracking for more than a year while they try to fix their crumbling structure. Hopefully they do get better but they need the right people.
Last edited by Vacanegro; 05-09-2016 at 08:02 AM..
Google it and you'll see every US light rail system is run similarly. All are in varying degrees of insolvency,disrepair, and outright dangerous. The common denominator? They are govt. run.
And they all lose money which is made up by the taxpayers. Very few cities have the population density to financially support rail.
St Louis' is run by a non-governmental quasi-public agency (a private company with tax authority), and has similar problems. As I said above, the problem is that the profit motive is not in passengers but in buying and selling equipment, land, rental space, etc. associated with the lines.
I don't think it is non-governmental at all nor is it run by a private company. It's a government agency.
The Bi-State Development Agency is an interstate compact formed by Missouri and Illinois in 1949. Since February 2003 the agency has been doing business as Metro.[2] It operates with a budget of $160 million[citation needed], which is funded by sales taxes from the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County, the St. Clair County Illinois Transit District, federal and state grants and subsidies, and through fare paying passengers.[3
I don't think it is non-governmental at all nor is it run by a private company. It's a government agency.
The Bi-State Development Agency is an interstate compact formed by Missouri and Illinois in 1949. Since February 2003 the agency has been doing business as Metro.[2] It operates with a budget of $160 million[citation needed], which is funded by sales taxes from the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County, the St. Clair County Illinois Transit District, federal and state grants and subsidies, and through fare paying passengers.[3
Except no part of Metro is elected in any way. The original compact consolidated 20+ private companies to form Bi-State (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcars_in_St._Louis) and the part about the St Louis Public Service Company), and the private companies became stakeholders who had final authority on how to run the company. The company existed for 25 years without a cent of public money, and then was public-subsidized, but still private, from 1974 on.
The president is hired by a board of investors (made up of both public and private entities) then approved by a 10-member public commission (who has no authority to remove the president). The president is ultimately responsible for all hiring. In practice, the public commission always approves the board of investors' choice for president. Employees of the agency are not considered public employees and they are not subject to open meetings laws (in 2004, the state passed a special law making them subject to some sunshine laws, but not all).
The actual 10-member commission is a public agency (and technically they are the Bi-State Development Agency, why the company is Bi-State Transit dba Metro), but none of them are employees of Metro.
Last edited by marigolds6; 05-09-2016 at 05:41 PM..
The bus drivers in my area have overworked themselves, have to give credit where credit is due. In PA they use lottery funds to give senior citizens a ride on the bus, they religiously hit that button on the fare counter... So much so that when an investigation started the percentage of senior fares plummeted high double digit numbers.
"I am far more concerned about keeping a skilled person out of a job because of discrimination than I am about keeping an incompetent in place because of discrimination.'
One of the reason for this failure is the getting rid of COMPETENT people and replacing them with incompetent people ONLY because of discrimination AGAINST whites.
What are you talking about? The system is old and the proper maintenance has never been done. They have just been putting bandaids on a system that needs major work done. Federal workers from Va and Md depend on metro because driving is just not an option. So the lines were never shut down completely for the necessary repairs. Finally, there is a new general manager who already has a schedule of shut downs for repairs....some for weeks. Sorry, nothing to do with discrimination.
I visited there a few times and it was pretty amazing how much a block or two could make a difference. It was like two different worlds.
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