Too Many Buses, Not Enough Riders

FRESH START--One of Midlandia's newest cities has a lot of things going for it, and city leaders willing to experiment, but one of those experiments has led to an unexpected traffic difficulty: too many buses, mostly empty, clogging city streets.

"What can I say, the mayor took a good idea a little too far," Fresh Start City Manager Mona Hydroxy said.

Mayor Nechisti Sabak, after a tour of other Midlandia cities with inadequate public transportation, noted that one of the difficulties those cities faced was in correcting a lack of early investment in transport infrastructure. As a result, Midlandia transport expert Rachel Prosker said, Sabak fell victim to one of the more common mistakes of new mayors--spending too much on buses too soon.

"It's a forgiveable mistake, and a very easy trap to fall into," Prosker said. "You place one stop, then two, you've got plenty of money in the treasury, and you decide the whole city needs access to bus stops. But before you know it, you've got an armada of buses rolling around the city with nobody riding. That makes people angry fast," Prosker said.

The Roundabout Stop is a ride to nowhere

"The unfortunate result of this effect, besides the disappointment of the waste, is the encouragement to those opposed to public transit as an example of why they think public transit doesn't work," Prosker said. "I see it all the time. Those folks don't need any more ammo."

And Fresh Start has a small but vocal contingent of such persons, led by resident "Hy" Limbus. Limbus successfully lobbied the city council to tear out one bus stop, and he's aiming his sights at eliminating the whole system.

"Fresh Start doesn't even have 5,000 residents," Limbus said. "And, at the present moment, you could likely fit ALL the residents of Fresh Start in the new bus fleet. It's crazy."

"Besides, most people in town have cars. What would the car dealers do if everybody in Fresh Start abandoned driving? Why would we even need roads in the city? We have great roads in this city. Why do we need buses on them, when people can just enjoy the scenery from their 2017 Lilypad Convertibles?"

Sabak, though acknowledging her mistake, continues to disagree with that view.

"Anybody who has been to Industry Haven, or Eldorado Hills, knows what a mess it is to drive around there. And if somebody early on in those cities had said, let's responsibly develop a sane public transit system for the future, they wouldn't have half the problems they have today. I don't expect Fresh Start will ever be nearly as big as those cities, but we can be as messy as them if we're not cautious. We've successfully invested in wind power and light water to keep our city fresh and clean, and public transit will be a major component of that in the future, too."

"Any good mayor will tell you it's critical to have a balanced transportation policy. Well, we got a little unbalanced, I'll admit it. But tearing out all the bus stops would unbalance it the other way. We're learning, and it's better to err on the side of progress."

Fresh Start, June 2017