Unmet or Unseen?

At the Amador County Transportation Commission’s annual Unmet Transit Needs hearing on 12/17/15, I said the following: “I would like to tie some elements of the Unmet Transit Needs document together and make a modest proposal. Under 'Long Term' is increased service to Sacramento. This key link has good daily commute ridership and is partly subsidized by SacDot. They appear very pleased with the service, and I understand that they are buying us a new bus.

Increased service to Sacramento can benefit the overall system in several ways. People transferring to and from this service could lead to incremental system wide ridership growth. It provides a needed service to Calaveras County residents and should serve as an impetus for Calaveras Transit to extend its current route to our transit center. This interchange not only provides greater travel opportunities, but also and again, should lead to incremental system wide ridership growth.

The short term need of greater service to Ione could be met by routing an additional and non commute hour trip through Ione. Seat turnover, like table turnover in a restaurant, is one of the few ways to increase revenue without increasing cost. The question is not always providing for the need of going from A to B, but how many times can you sell that seat between A and B.

Added Sacramento service will also provide an incentive for the Casino bus and the suggested “Grapevine” service, both other recommendations, to operate from the transit center. Once again, this should lead to incremental ridership growth.

I have decided to speak on this particular need and the benefits of doing it because, and unlike other parts of the system, there is a significant and untapped ridership market for the Sacramento service. Senior citizens from Sacramento would enjoy a day in county for an affordable price. They would also fill the empty return trip seats.

Publicizing this travel potential could be done by the Amador Council of Tourism and other organizations within their existing funding. For that reason and all those that I have stated, I ask this body to support this idea and to inform the existing tourist and related organizations of that decision by whatever means seems appropriate.  Thank you.”

My suggestion was well received and discussed afterward. While I have no idea if this created enough forward momentum to bring this into reality, it seemed like a good start.  Also a plus for this proposal is the recent addition of full time staff at the transit center to assist tourists, and, of course, the money they would spend here. As noted above, SacDot (Sacramento County Department of Transportation) has purchased us a new bus because they are pleased with the service and the local service between Rancho Murrieta and Sacramento it provides. They subsidize part of this service, another plus for Amador County.

My statement was an expansion of the ideas I expressed in “Grant Dependent, or Under Our Control: Amador’s Transit Future” (8/11/14). If transit is seen as a business (public sector yes, but still a business) and less as a social service, it would require less subsidy. I also witnessed an irony at the ACTC meeting. Prior to the Unmet Transit Needs hearing, the board discussed raising the sales tax for road maintenance. If this meeting was a 100 years ago, they were probably discussing new taxes on the streetcar companies for road maintenance. Those programs of taxation were one of many factors in their demise.