Posted on 04/09/2018 9:22:34 PM PDT by BBell
A city government that would drag everyone down to its level.
Its like the old saying of city government goes: if at first you dont succeed, tax something that is succeeding.
Members of the Washington, D.C. government have suggested a way to prop up its failing Metro system while hamstringing its competitor. Mayor Muriel Bowser recently proposed a nearly 400 percent tax increase on ridesharing services, increasing the fee that users pay from 1 percent to 4.75 percent. This would increase the tax on a $10 trip from ten cents to forty-seven cents.
Local officials are proposing to use this tax increase to prop up the D.C. Metro system, run by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). According to D.C. Council Member Jack Evans, Uber and Lyft are part of the transit system here, and so they should help pay to fix Metro because theyre benefiting from Metros demise.
Make no mistake: Metro is a disaster. Residents of the D.C. area have developed a sense of camaraderie around being subjected to the same delays, single-tracking, and fare increases for years. Chronicling WMATAs failures has become a city tradition, with the most dedicated hashtag being known, fittingly, as Unsuck DC Metro. There is even a website dedicated to informing visitors whether or not the Metro is on fire too often, visitors are met with a morose Im afraid so or unfortunately.
The statistics bear out D.C. residents anti-Metro sentiment. In 2016, just 70 percent of rail trips arrived on time. After nearly two years of SafeTrack, WMATAs effort to catch up on badly needed track maintenance through fare increases and track section shutdowns, D.C. residents are still waiting for improvement.
A review of a 16-day shutdown of a critical juncture where three lines meet in 2016 found that the stretch still fell
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Have used Metro on visits to DC in the past and it has not been bad? What the article should say is Uber & Lyft is superior to DC Taxis (or is it taxies?), the taxi service in DC is awful!
Raising the tax from ten cents to 47 cents will just give Uber and Lyft some free publicity, and more business. Thanks BBell.
“Meanwhile (in Boston) Charleys wife makes a sammich...”
She should give him a roll of nickels.
I rode it a lot during a visit about, hmm, 20 years ago, really enjoyed it (y'know, for mass transit it was clean and went where I wannted to go), at that time they were planning more expansion of the lines down into Virginia and so on.
It is no longer clean, efficient or on time. It also has a lot of crime. A lot has changed in 25 years! :)
I have been reading the many insightful comments.
Buddy said everything started going downhill in the 90’s.
The problem may be too many workers jammed into a small town. Everything is stressed, especially housing stock
To relieve the pressure, we need to drain the swamp and send 75% of the Federal workers down to the States, or to Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Iowa, Nebraska, and the mountains of Idaho.
Or, those workers could always quit and find something else to do with their valuable skillz and experience.
I drive for both Uber and Lyft in my home town, and I feel I am performing a valuable service. In my case, I prefer to drive at night because my eyes are sensitive to bright lights, so a lot of my customers are drunk, and I am getting them home safely. The passengers also appreciate how I get to them quicker than a taxi, I’m more affordable, and not required to have an attitude.
just another corrupt chocolate city...what did you expect?
The jobs are decentralizing, at least in terms of the metro area. A lot of the job growth is in the growing suburban job hubs. Tyson's is the biggest, but there are smaller versions all over the area. From a strategic standpoint -- given that DC itself is already fully built out -- the biggest transportation issue is whether the large suburban jurisdictions will plan for mixed use development with multi-modal transit options, or repeat the folly of basing all planning on the assumption that everyone will drive everywhere. Going forward, it's important that the outer ring suburbs not repeat the mistakes DC made 50 years ago. Right now, it's a mix.
As to the schools: DCPS revenues per student are just under $30,000 per year. That is the highest figure in the country. That's not quite Sidwell tuition, but it's higher than the cost for most of the private schools, including all but a couple of the Catholic schools. Voucher the system, and high quality private schooling would be affordable for every middle class family. Yes, it would take time to build the additional capacity, so the sooner we start, the better.
What really needs to be decentralized are the big concentrations of poor people. How to do that is the hard question.
Perish the thought, but I think I'm suggesting that letting the District revert back to Congressional control might be the least dysfunctional thing that we could do.
I have thought that at least VA would be better off if it gave its share of the District back . . .It would weaken the Va. Democrat Party, as least . . .
Government’s view of the economy is the same as that of parasitic worms and flukes.
DC needs to be autoclaved.
Me too, c.1995. It was great. Just the fact it spread out in all directions to be convenient was good. And getting farecards was easy - now there are only those stupid “credit” cards. Why can’t they still have the simple paper cards paid by cash even? And they still have the old turnstiles - YET do not use that wonderful in-one-end out-the-other AS you walk through - instead of now, where everyone has to stop and wait for card to pop back up in same spot! Stupid!
Other than that, I don’t have much experience lately. Just some tourist stuff. It’s OK but don’t know what it’s like on a daily basis as a commuter.
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