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My city swapped free bus passes for a bike rebate and the numbers aren't close
Two years ago my city council had to pick between funding free bus passes for students or a $200 rebate for e-bikes, and they went with the rebate. I thought they had lost their minds. Turns out the rebate got 4,800 people onto bikes and it cost about $960k total, while the bus pilot it replaced had 900 regular riders and burned $1.4 million on extra routes. A bike keeps working after the check clears. The bus route dies the second the grant runs out. I'm not against transit at all, I ride it myself, but for a mid-size city with bad sprawl the rebate moved way more people per dollar. Anyone here seen a free transit program actually pull those numbers back up, or is this just how it goes?
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gracelane1d ago
The frustrating part is watching a grant-funded bus route get treated as a win just because the ribbon cutting made the news. I sat through two rounds of public meetings here where the transit folks showed slides of ridership goals and then quietly stopped reporting once the grant period ended. Meanwhile a neighbor of mine bought a used e-bike with that rebate and now rides it to work five days a week, rain or shine, two years later. Nobody's filming that for the evening news, but it keeps happening every single morning.
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gracelane1d ago
My e-bike is currently a very expensive coat rack in the garage so your neighbor is doing way better than me lol. But yeah, the bus route thing drives me nuts, they throw a party and then nobody ever checks if anyone's actually on the thing a year later. The quiet stuff that works never gets a ribbon.
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