Those New Buses Won't Get Here A Moment Too Soon

Yesterday afternoon, just in time for the beginning of rush hour, a Milwaukee County Bus caught on fire on the freeway.  Fortunately, no one got hurt.

WTMJ-TV has the story, with a really good video of the fire.

This story is not surprising.  We knew for a long time that the transit fleet was barely being held together.  My friend and fellow MCF board member, Jason Haas shared a story three months ago about the deplorable condition the buses are in.

Thank goodness that the County Board had the foresight to disregard and run over Scott Walker’s political grandstanding and was able to get some stimulus dollars to replace part of this aging and decrepit fleet.  It’s just too bad that this foresight did not last long enough to keep Walker from squandering the $36 million (that he nearly lost to Mayor Barrett) on something as pointless as an express bus to nowhere.

But at least they did pursue the stimulus dollars.  If left to his own ways, our buses would probably look like this:

or like this:

And in other transit related news, it was also reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that in place of the live transit call center that people wanted and used, the County will now double the things that people don’t want and many can’t use:

The Milwaukee County Transit System will double the number of telephone lines for recorded rider information after its live telephone operators’ jobs are cut next month, a bus system spokeswoman said Thursday.

County officials eliminated the call center staff in the 2010 budget, saving about $900,000 and slicing 16 jobs. Information about routes and schedules is still available on the transit system’s Web site, www.ridemcts.com, but transit officials estimate as many as half the county’s bus riders lack access to computers, transit system spokeswoman Jacqueline Janz said.

More than 100 riders have called to protest the call center shutdown, she said.

To serve riders without computer access, the transit system is posting notices on its buses about where to find printed schedules and how to use the automated phone system, Janz said. The number of phone lines for the automated system will increase from 23 to 46 on Jan. 1, the first day after the call center is out of business, she said.

Some of the customer service telephone operators will be able to transfer to bus driver jobs instead of being laid off, Janz said.

Now that’s some real good planning there.

Needless to say, a lot of this aggravation in inanity could be avoided if the state legislature would only get around to doing their jobs and passing the dedicated sales tax we called for fourteen months ago.