The public transit lobby appears to be suffering from a bad case of forgetfulness. Or, is it amnesia, or possibly dementia? Or, it is something less benign?
How else to explain one of the principal arguments transit advocates have been making to Congress in support of efforts to weaken the federal charter service rules.
The transit lobby has been whispering in the ears of congressmen and women that the rules need to be liberalized because there's a vast amount of unmet needs for charter bus service by government, civic, charitable and other community groups with limited resources. Of course, the transit agencies say they should be allowed to fulfill those unmet needs because private operators either can't do it or will charge too much.
Well, guess what? Nothing could be further from the truth. And one needs to look no further than the Federal Transit Administration to prove them wrong. Dead wrong.
A dozen years ago, when Congress passed the first Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, which came be known as ISTEA, it inserted language directing the FTA to set up a Charter Service Demonstration Program that would allow transit operators in four states to provide charter bus service to meet the needs of government agencies, civic and charitable groups, and other community organizations that otherwise would not be served in a cost-effective and efficient manner.
The FTA selected transit operators in California, Oklahoma, Missouri and Michigan, including large and medium-size cities, as well as rural areas.
The experiment was to last a year. But once the program got up and running the transits began grumping that a year wasn't long enough to implement a charter policy and evaluate the impact. So, the FTA extended the program for another 14 months. The demonstration finally ended Oct. 31, 1995, more than 26 months after it began.
The results of the experiment came as no surprise -- to the motorcoach industry.
In the words of the FTA: "The data gathered as a result of the charter demonstration program did not support the public operators' claims of unmet needs for the groups for which the demonstration was primarily intended: government, civic, charitable and other community activities."
"Based on these results, the demonstration did not indicate the need for FTA to significantly alter its current (charter) service regulations," the agency added.
The findings, issued in June 1997, were signed by Gordon J. Linton, FTA administrator and no friend of the private bus industry.
Included in the 1997 findings were a handful of proposed rules that would have made "minor" changes to the charter rules. Generally, the changes would have made it easier for public transit agencies to utilize the exceptions to the prohibitions against providing charter service if a private operator is willing and able to do so.
Four years after proposing its "minor" rules changes, the FTA conceded there was no need for the modifications and it withdrew its proposed rule-making. Signing that document in 2001 was Jennifer L. Dorn, the current FTA administrator.
So, there you have it. The 10-year effort by the FTA to ferret out unmet charter service needs and to justify charter rules changes came up with nothing. Zilch. How quickly some in the transit sector forget.