When I started riding back in 2000, fare was $1 and diesel $1.35. Now the fare is $1.75 and diesel is $3.87. It doesn’t take rocket scientists to see that fares have not kept up with fuel costs, which have tripled since 2000. The fare needs to be at least $3.

Some of the routes, like 57, are ridiculous with an hour and 40 minute run between repeated stops. Buses serving main transit corridors during the week need to run every 30 minutes or they won’t be used. 57 goes right by my house mostly empty, but I walk 6 blocks to catch 55 because, even at an hour run, it’s better coordinated with the 30 minute routes to transfer down the line.

The county is paying for the bus drivers, using the management company as a go between. The costs were included in the contract.

Bus ridership in Escambia County is up over 10% a year in the last two years.

I have lived in this county since 1986 and have never had a child in an Escambia County school; yet as a homeowner, I have paid property taxes supporting schools I’ll never used for decades. I don’t gripe about it because the county need schools.

You don’t get rid of public transportation; you fix what’s wrong, make it more conducive to ridership and make it more cost supportive.

The county needs to resume direct ownership of the transit system, get rid of the union, raise the fares, and balance the routes. It’s a hell of a lot easier than running a jail.

Lowery and his union drivers didn’t like Veolia — so they pitched a fit and constantly wanted to strike until the county agreed to throw them a bone and go with a different management company. The old saying, “be careful what you ask for” is certainly illustrated here. They got a new management company — First Transit. Not a year went by before Lowery and his union started griping about them too.

Trust me, Lowery wants the County to take back the drivers — but it wouldn’t involve the union going away. He would still be there — as a “shop foreman” — making the lives of county employees and department heads miserable with continued demands and threats to strike.

Lowery wont be satisfied until the bus drivers are county employees — and the highest paid employees in the county. All for what? To drive virtually empty buses around the county roads?? Let’s do an experiment — shut down the bus service for a month, furlough the drivers — and see how many “riders” actually miss the service. Once the drivers realize how fortunate they are to actually have jobs – maybe they will realize working without a “contract” isn’t so bad,

Unions have outlived their purpose and have fallen out of favor nation-wide. It’s time to do away with Lowery and Amalgamated Tranist Workers….

I say its time to get rid of ecat AND the idiots that tax us to support it.

Enough is enough.