Food for Thought

The city of New Albany has a poor public transit system. Most less-than-major cities in the United States have poor transit systems. All scientists, save disreputable shills, believe we must do something about the degradation of the atmosphere in order to pull back from the brink.

A viable public transit system allows people to move about their communities for work, commerce, involvement in those communities.

The Indiana Supreme Court has shown, perhaps inadvertently, how smallish cities can have viable public transit systems.

The New Albany Floyd County School System spends over $5 million annually to bus students to school. Urban schools are closed, while distantly located schools make walking to school a near impossibility. Such an arrangement undermines dense, sustainable neighborhoods; neighborhoods which would benefit from a viable public transit system, and which are the hallmark of a walkable, livable city.

Why not have an arrangement between the school system and TARC which uses TARC buses rather than school buses to transport students to and from school? The children would be transported to their schools, and back home; the cost of unitary-use buses, drivers and equipment, could be deducted from the school budget; the costs could be shifted to subsidized transit fare tickets. In place of the unitary-use, yellow buses, the community would have a viable, well-patronized system the whole community could use to become less auto-centric. The students riding the buses would gain a familiarity with the bus system, giving them greater mobility within the community, as the community builds a more sustainable future.