MTA board members listen to testimony on the tech buses
By Tim Redmond
At the beginning of the Municipal Transportation Agency meeting on the “Google bus” plan, Ed Reiskin, the MTA director, issued a warning that would define how he and his board see the issue.
“We recognize there’s a lot of concern around housing and the cost of living, and these buses have fallen into these discussions,” he said. “But what we’re proposing is very narrowly tailored to address the transportation issues.”
And just like that, the MTA attempted to sever the impacts on San Franciscans of what can only be called a privatized transit system from anything but the question of when and how (not if) the private luxury buses can use Muni stops, and how much they should pay for the privilege.
It’s no surprise that, after more than an hour of often impassioned testimony, the panel approved the pilot project with very little debate.
The deal, as outlined by MTA planner Carli Paine, calls for the city to allow the buses to use select Muni stops – at locations still to be determined – for a fee of $1 a stop. That, Paine noted, means that a company running a shuttle that uses 20 stops, ten times a day, would pay $200 a day, or more than $50,000 a year. Major users could be forking over $100,000.
That, of course, is chump change to the companies that contract for the shuttles. (more after the jump)
