Your estimation that the average full time rider rides a bus 250 days a year reveals that Route 60 from Century to Pensacola has thirty two (32) actual persons who ride the bus daily to and from Pensacola. That figure compares closely to the statistics reported in the zip code breakdown of number of riders.

The 145,883 “riders” who ride the busiest bus in the county on Fairfield Drive account for only 584 actual persons riding that bus.

What a joke, four of the commissioners want us to pony up an additional 3 cents a gallon so that 32 person can ride a bus to and from Century and so 584 person can ride the Fairfield Drive route.

White may be only one vote, but hopefully he can sway two more votes to kill this issue.

More ECAT smoke screen. ECAT is famous for making the numbers say what they want them to say. If their proposed 3cent a gallon increase will only cost the average driver $15, then the average driver who drives an average 20,000 miles a year must be getting 40 mpg and only uses 500 gals. of gas a year.

I drive 20,000 miles a year and around town average 12mpg and use 1,666 gals. of gas. The proposed 3 cent a gallon increase will cost me an additional $50 a year.

Same amount for my wife’s car.
This doesn’t include what I use in my boat, lawn tractor, weed eater and chain saw.

Those who have small businesses and who have to use an automobile or trucks in their business will be hit the hardest.

Robertson’s suggested that property taxes be reduced the same amount as the proposed gas tax increase. Is he going to reduce my property taxes by $50 a year or suggest that I’d have to buy a new $40,000 car that gets 40mpg to equalize the gas tax increase?

Besides how many time have we ever seen politicians cut taxes until they were forced to like we made them by passing proposition 1.

Let’s hope White sticks to his guns and keeps on opposing this proposal.

These numbers were in a story we ran here:

http://www.northescambia.com/?p=5800

One rider=one person riding one day. One single person that rides the bus 250 days a year would could as 250 riders.

I have the numbers on each bus route in the county that I pulled the above numbers from for the story on the Century/Molino bus. I’ll try to locate and total them for you sometime over the weekend.

William
Admin

The statistics at:
http://www.city-data.com/county/Escambia_County-FL.html reports in 2000 that only 1,379 PERSONS rode a bus.

For a zip code breakdown of the riders for a particular zip code area go to the following:
http://www.city-data.com/zips/32501.html

The zip breakdown shows that there are only 81 riders who use the bus in the zip codes making up Cantonment, Century, Walnut Hill, NW Escambia County and Molino which is Whites district.

There are only a few hundred riders in Robinsons, Robertsons and Valentino’s district.

To see each zip code demographics for all zips in Escambia County one by one, change the 32501 to the zip code to be searched for: 32503, 32504, Etc.

Recently ECAT spokesperson, Nancy Lohr was quoted in the Pensacola News Journal reporting that in order to raise the 3.1 million dollars needed to fund ECAT the present number of riders can’t afford to pay the bill. She says that to raise the 3.1 mill. each person who rides would have to spend $40 a week. According to her statment, using basic math, it computes that there are 1,550 persons who use the buses assuming they ride 50 weeks a year.

The total cost to fund ECAT from all sources including Federal and State Grants of over 8 million dollars, much less the 3.1 million asked for from Escambia Taxpayers is not something that the 325,000 citizens who do not use the system should have to pay for The 1,550 persons who do use them should foot the bill.

I’m from Missouri, so show me the exact numbers of ECAT rider ship. With those numbers, let the public decide if we want to spend more for bus service. However, the BOCC won’t publish the numbers because it’ll cause uproar with the voters. They know the numbers are low, really low. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know because one can see empty busses running all over town. Not too long ago the term “significant increase” in rider ship was being tossed around in an effort to get more money. Well, just what does that mean? If the Century/Molino route increased from one rider to three, is that a two hundred percent increase? Sort of, but three passengers doesn’t justify the cost of operating the big bus and driver.

Say NO to a gas tax increase; raise the passenger fare instead! For what it’s worth, riders could ride all over town for a donated can of beans back a month or so ago. What a deal!