Mass Transit for Florence Oregon

It's hard to think of anything more foolish than bringing "mass transit" to Florence, but we already have it in the form of the "Rhody Express" (Florence is famous for rhododendrons) and the idea of tying us to Eugene via Lane Transit is being bruited. I can only explain this as a knee-jerk reaction to the notion of mass transit.

Mass transit requires a mass. Florence has a population under 10,000, which doesn't cut it. The Rhody Express runs for a few hours a day, shuttling a handful of people between a handful of locations in a loop. I don't know if they bother to collect fares and it wouldn't make a material difference. If the grants on which it operates dry up, it will vanish without a trace.

Disregarding this experience, people in Eugene and Florence are making noises about including us in LTD and running buses on the roughly 130 mile round trip between somewhere in Florence and downtown Eugene. If we paid the substantial payroll tax that funds LTD, about 1/150 of earnings, it might earn us four trips daily, five at most. This isn't enough for anyone to use regularly. Gaps would be about three hours and there wouldn't be evening services.

A few dozen people would benefit from a tax of more than a half million dollars a year, imposed on thousands of workers. Why? You have to ask what the social contract is. We all need roads, fire protection and police, so we all pay. But intercity buses? It doesn't reduce pollution, it doesn't reduce congestion, and it doesn't make it possible to live in Florence without personal transportation. Why should a worker making $40,000 a year pay $250 for a service that is of no personal benefit?

The only thing I can think is that progressives feel a need to support any program that is labelled "mass transit," even if it isn't. The Register-Guard supports it because the RG favors all increases in taxes and government activity. Fortunately, there won't be enough others and this will die a quiet death.