Saturday, September 25, 2010

Elliott Sclar and Buz Paaswell on dollar vans

My colleagues Elliott Sclar and Buz Paaswell have an editorial in today's NY Times about the problems with group ride vans* replacing eliminated MTA bus routes. There are many issues involved, but this shift amounts to privatizing public transit.

I'm working on a project evaluating how these vans are serving their service areas, and the early indications are that almost no one is riding them. The program has only been operating a couple of weeks, however.

*The official term for the vans is Group Ride Vans, but there are lots of informal operators known as dollar vans.

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