[tom paine 2]

Most of the busses up here in Green Bay are running around empty or near empty. They are just pumpiong diesel smoke into the air for no good reason.

[justrepublican]

Union members kept barrels burning all night to stay warm and managers sent out coffee and hot chocolate to several garages.

Those darn bus drivers just can't go a day with out putting out a bad smell.

[Aeronaut]

Transit for Liveable Communities, a community advocacy group...,

Sound the foghorn. (All you GLers will get it.)

[realpatriot71]

IMhO public transit is not a bad idea in and of itself - paying Union workers outrageously high wages for the same job most people are doing for half is just bad business. I hope they break the Union in Minn./St.P just like the grocery stores did to the Union here is So. Cal.

[Timm]

John Stossel discusses private van companies in NYC in his new book. Apparently, some enterprising new immigrants bought vans and would give rides to people, as an alternative to the bus. The price was either the same or less than the bus-- I forget which, and I don't want to go open the book-- and the van would take people *exactly* where they wanted to go.

Of course, the vans were highly popular, luring many people away from the busses.

You can guess the ending. When union bus drivers learned of the van service, the city came down hard on these drivers. It wasn't "safe" for these non-union drivers to haul passengers around-- though, of course, the van drivers' licenses were indication the state thought it was safe enough for them to drive the vans around with non-paying passengers. These drivers "leeched" passengers away from the busses, etc.

So, of course, the van drivers were bullied out of existence and out of a demanded job, the customers were herded back on to the slower, and less convenient busses. And now NYC is a haven again for union bus drivers-- Democrat social progress in action.

Hooray.

[Cboldt]

"This whole strike is about our ability to mobilize our work force in a time of crisis, not about the value and effectiveness of transit," said Teresa Wernecke, director of the Downtown Minneapolis Traffic Management Organization ...

That is quite the admission; not about the value and effectiveness of transit indeed. Heck, that should always be on the table.