The injustice of the local transit agency’s Dial-A-Ride program
stretches beyond its direct and ill-principled competition with
private taxi businesses. It reaches into the pockets of San Benito
County taxpayers and pulls out more than $10 every time another
resident calls for a ride, at the bargain price of $2 for adults
and $1.25 for seniors and kids.
The injustice of the local transit agency’s Dial-A-Ride program stretches beyond its direct and ill-principled competition with private taxi businesses. It reaches into the pockets of San Benito County taxpayers and pulls out more than $10 every time another resident calls for a ride, at the bargain price of $2 for adults and $1.25 for seniors and kids.
The Council of San Benito County Governments, under the County Express moniker, runs the program offering citizens a pick-up and ride to anywhere in the bus-service area except Gilroy. It does restrict eligibility to riders who are at least three-quarters of a mile outside the fixed bus route, while Dial-A-Ride doesn’t guarantee same-day pick-up and its hours are limited to daytime.
Despite those restrictions, there is no question Dial-A-Ride competes directly with Hollister Taxi and that it will do the same once Yellow Cab Co. starts dispatching cabs here, too. For that reason alone, COG directors who are comprised of locally elected officials should adjust the pricing to lower demand and gradually narrow eligibility to one group and one group alone, disabled residents.
But there is another, equally irresponsible consequence of Dial-A-Ride, which has been around since the 1970s. It not only offers the same essential service as a taxi business – picking people up at arbitrary locations and dropping them off somewhere else of their choice – but it also did so this past year with an astounding, direct subsidy from taxpayers of somewhere between $700,000 and $800,000 when overhead and depreciation are factored in. There’s a reason 60,000 passengers, most of them likely repeat riders, choose this service. It’s much cheaper than the private-sector alternative.
A taxi business has no way of competing because a taxi business doesn’t get a $10 subsidy from taxpayers, not including overhead costs, every time someone gets in a cab. A local taxi outfit’s successes and failures, therefore, are at the mercy of the government – how much service it decides to offer, at what level and at what price.
County Express has no business offering anything beyond what this community defines as essential, especially when it functions with such gross fiscal inefficiency. It has no business competing with the private sector.
Transportation leaders should phase out most of Dial-A-Ride over a set time frame, such as 12 months. They should narrow eligibility to the most disadvantaged locals only. They should increase prices for remaining users to a level that is more reasonable for taxpayers. A 50 percent subsidy would be appropriate.
They should let the private sector serve its function and stop abusing taxpayer dollars.
