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Old 09-19-2011, 08:30 AM
 
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Even with most of the students not being in town, there were 100,000 Mountain Line riders in August. 25% if bus runs operating at full capacity.

With the approximately 1 million PRT yearly ridership, Morgantown is in line for more than 2 million mass transit passengers this year.

Article - City bus rides hit record
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Old 09-19-2011, 09:35 AM
 
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The amazing thing is morgantown accomplishes this with virtually no help from charleston. We pay for cities like huntington and charleston to have public transportation which no one uses, and get nothing. This was made possible by the federal government, who despite their incompetence, make the people in charleston look like retarded apes.

It would be nice if they updated the prt and built new stations. In the long run charleston would make money off this, but they are too stupid to see anything other than immediate gains to south central wv.
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Old 09-19-2011, 12:30 PM
 
Location: Huntington, WV
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cry_havoc View Post
We pay for cities like huntington and charleston to have public transportation which no one uses, and get nothing.
Care to show how YOU pay for mass transit in Huntington when the majority of funding comes from a county-wide transportation levy along with federal funding? And with nearly 850,000 community members (and growing) paying for rides (rather than free), I think it is safe to say that TTA is well used by the community.

TTA reports almost 4 percent ridership increase in 2010-11 - The Herald Dispatch

Look at the budget numbers from the article CT listed. Not even 20% of their yearly budget comes from the city and county together. Seeing as how 70%+ of Mountain Line's passengers are WVU students that ride free and Mountain Line is compensated by WVU via state tax payer dollars, I think it's safe to say that Mountain Line has the highest percentage of state tax payer funds of any transit system in WV. That also means that you have about 400,000 community members actually paying to use the service with no transportation levy paid for by county residents. Mountain Line has done well to inflate its numbers with their contract with WVU.

If you just wouldn't put such negative and unneccessary comments in your replies and drag Huntington and Charleston into posts like his, you'd be received much better on this forum.
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Old 09-19-2011, 01:11 PM
 
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Very little of Mountain Line's money comes from any state tax dollars. Subsidies from WVU are overwhelmingly paid for with tuition dollars. For that matter, I do agree with Bailey that the state pays little for Huntington's transit either except for the shuttle they run to Charleston every day, which is heavily subsidized by the state. The State of West Virginia provides next to nothing for mass transit anywhere in the state.

Part of the reason, in my opinion, is we don't have any towns of significant size. The only reason it is taking off in Morgantown to such a great extent is the major congestion we have here. Infrastructure limitations make it very necessary. If we get the infrastructure improvements we desperately need, use will probably decline somewhat but still be high due to student use.
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Old 09-19-2011, 01:12 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tbailey1138 View Post
Care to show how YOU pay for mass transit in Huntington when the majority of funding comes from a county-wide transportation levy along with federal funding? And with nearly 850,000 community members (and growing) paying for rides (rather than free), I think it is safe to say that TTA is well used by the community.

TTA reports almost 4 percent ridership increase in 2010-11 - The Herald Dispatch

Look at the budget numbers from the article CT listed. Not even 20% of their yearly budget comes from the city and county together. Seeing as how 70%+ of Mountain Line's passengers are WVU students that ride free and Mountain Line is compensated by WVU via state tax payer dollars, I think it's safe to say that Mountain Line has the highest percentage of state tax payer funds of any transit system in WV. That also means that you have about 400,000 community members actually paying to use the service with no transportation levy paid for by county residents. Mountain Line has done well to inflate its numbers with their contract with WVU.

If you just wouldn't put such negative and unneccessary comments in your replies and drag Huntington and Charleston into posts like his, you'd be received much better on this forum.
The public transportation here is so underfunded by the state that the university has to use its own funding to help support it. This money could be better spent on academics but wvu cares about the community so uses its own funding to help morgantown. If charleston coughed up some money this would not be necessary .

Also no one dragged charleston and huntington into this discussion. I was criticizing thr government of wv for being wasteful. This was not a shot at the cities themselves.

However you do bring up a good point and that is denial of what is going on by people in your area. NCWV is ignored by the state government. It is an injustice to the whole state. Stop burying your head in the sand because it benefits your city. It is wrong.
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Old 09-19-2011, 01:26 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cry_havoc View Post
The public transportation here is so underfunded by the state that the university has to use its own funding to help support it. This money could be better spent on academics but wvu cares about the community so uses its own funding to help morgantown. If charleston coughed up some money this would not be necessary .

Also no one dragged charleston and huntington into this discussion. I was criticizing thr government of wv for being wasteful. This was not a shot at the cities themselves.

However you do bring up a good point and that is denial of what is going on by people in your area. NCWV is ignored by the state government. It is an injustice to the whole state. Stop burying your head in the sand because it benefits your city. It is wrong.
He is correct that Huntington gets little from the state for mass transit. He is wrong that Morgantown gets significant state funding. His logic there is the 19% state funding for The University's operating budget, but that amounts to a very small part of Mountain Line's funding. I'm taking a wild guess when I say maybe 5%. Huntington gets a similar small shot in the arm with their Charleston shuttle. Morgantown's shuttles (the Clarksburg to Pittsburgh run) receive no state subsidies. Uniontown operates regular bus service to Morgantown too but that has no connection to any local funding here. Similarly, Fairmont Transit's regular Morgantown run is not funded from Morgantown.

My point in this post is the amazing situation we see here with mass transit use continually rising. Except for the large cities (Washington, Pittsburgh, NYC, etc.) it is rare to see that. It has nothing to do with funding sources for any town. There is no question that The University plays a major role in that regard, and since we have the only
state sponsored institution that is not primarily a commuter oriented school I believe it is representative of the fact that many of our students do not bring cars with them when they come here and they rely on public transit out of necessity. Just a hunch.
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Old 09-19-2011, 04:31 PM
 
Location: Seattle, WA
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When I lived in the dorm last year I had a car here, but I usually only used it on the weekends (going to the mall, UTC, home, etc.) It's worlds easier to take the PRT or the bus downtown if you live near public transit. Now, being that I live so far off-campus, I drive into Evansdale and park (for free) and then take the bus or PRT from Towers. I gave up on parking downtown a long time ago. The university lots are all $1.00/hr. now (the Mountainlair is $1.25) and the city lots are $0.75 if you can find one. This is another reason why I need to find an apartment downtown next year. Driving and parking in this town is a big headache.
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Old 09-19-2011, 05:32 PM
 
Location: Huntington, WV
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Originally Posted by CTMountaineer View Post
Very little of Mountain Line's money comes from any state tax dollars. Subsidies from WVU are overwhelmingly paid for with tuition dollars.
If WVU pays the going rate of $.75 per rider, 800,000 riders would cost $600,000 or about 14% of the budget. Not surprisingly, these numbers do not appear to be on the web. Since WVU does not generate enough revenue to cover yearly expenses and transportation beyond the PRT does not appear to be covered in tuition and fees, that money would likely come from the state supplement given to WVU.

Quote:
Originally Posted by CTMountaineer View Post
For that matter, I do agree with Bailey that the state pays little for Huntington's transit either except for the shuttle they run to Charleston every day, which is heavily subsidized by the state. The State of West Virginia provides next to nothing for mass transit anywhere in the state.
The state actually doesn't subsidize the Huntington to Charleston route at all. It is paid for entirely by a federal grant which is actually about to run out so they will have to look else where for funding if that route is to continue.

Cities' bus route has uncertain future* - News - Charleston Daily Mail - West Virginia News and Sports -

Last edited by tbailey1138; 09-19-2011 at 06:00 PM..
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Old 09-19-2011, 06:09 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tbailey1138 View Post
If WVU pays the going rate of $.75 per rider, 800,000 riders would cost $600,000 or about 14% of the budget. Not surprisingly, these numbers do not appear to be on the web. Since WVU does not generate enough revenue to cover yearly expenses and transportation beyond the PRT does not appear to be covered in tuition and fees, that money would likely come from the state supplement given to WVU.



The state actually doesn't subsidize the Huntington to Charleston route at all. It is paid for entirely by a federal grant which is actually about to run out so they will have to look else where for funding if that route is to continue.

Cities' bus route has uncertain future* - News - Charleston Daily Mail - West Virginia News and Sports -

Tim, the state subsidy is put into the general operating budget. So is tuition money. There is no differentiation on where the money comes from when the bills are paid. About 19% of the operating budget comes from state subsidies. That means 19% of any funds paid to Mountain Line would be indirectly coming from that source too. A school can basically choose to spend its general fund monies in any manner they choose. WVU just happens to pay for public transport with a portion of theirs. My hunch is it is cost effective to do so rather than increase use of University busses. Everyone... the school, the town, the county, and the bus company seems happy with the arrangement.

Where are you getting the figures you are quoting, or are they your own guestimates? I have not seen those anywhere. I'd be surprised if WVU pays the going rate. My hunch is there is some kind of contract in place. I'm sure The University pays on a flat basis because it costs about the same amount of money to operate a bus run whether the bus is full or not. Some of the private student housing companies contract with Mountain Line too, and some of them operate their own free bus services for residents but they are not counted in the mass transit figures since nobody knows how much ridership is involved, and since they are not available to everyone.

Taking a closer look at the Mountain Line article, we see that the city and county both provide substantial transit subsidies to the bus line, which has a $4.2 million annual budget. Student usage is up substantially, and amounted to about 70% of total ridership.

I knew the Charleston run received subsidies, but had forgotten they were federal funds. I know at least a couple dozen folks use it daily, but with $200,000 in subsidies involved to provide transport for that many folks it amounts to around $10,000 per person to fund round trip transportation for them. That might be difficult to justify, especially in these hard economic times.

Last edited by CTMountaineer; 09-19-2011 at 06:29 PM..
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Old 09-19-2011, 06:53 PM
 
Location: Huntington, WV
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The $.75 fee for a ride comes from Mountain Line info. If they had 1.2 million riders and WVU students account for 70% of that, it would actually be 840,000 riders via WVU and 360,000 paying riders. I don't know the rate that WVU pays for sure as it doesn't seem to be on the web anywhere. There was once an article that said that WVU only paid them in blocks of 25,000 students at a time so I would guess that to help make up funding gaps between increases, that they would pay at or near full price per rider.

I'm not saying it isn't a more efficient way and I'm not even complaining about the usage of taxpayer dollars. I'm just pointing out that havoc's allegations were all backwards when he claimed that TTA and KRT received state tax dollars but the Mountain Line did not. Yet he has not complained about the usage of state tax dollars for the Mountain Line, rather justifying it. You know if there's one thing I can't stand when people complain, it's when they have adouble standard.
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