Don't try to ride if you don't live here

Apple Valley MN - A battle over parking spaces at an overcrowded park and ride lot has prompted the the City Council of Apple Valley to implement a rather odd plan. The plan is to ban anyone except Apple Valley residents from using a publicly funded Minnesota Valley Transit Authority (MVTA) park and ride lot.

Police are already licking their chops at the prospect of being able to write more tickets. A $29 ticket will be issued to anyone outside of Apple Valley that parks in the publicly funded MVTA park and ride lot.

The debate over this stems from the fact that 59% of the parkers at the park and ride lot come from outside of the Apple Valley special transit tax district. Therefore the claim is made that the residents of nearby Lakeville and Farmington don't have the right to park there.

Naturally the residents of Lakeville and Farmington, areas not served by the MVTA hence why they are not in the special tax district, claim that existing property tax and motor vehicle taxes they pay already go to helping the MVTA.

The Democratic-Farmer-Labor party (DFL) politicians, Minnesota's version of an Ultra-Liberal Democrat, tried to take advantage of the conflict to raise taxes by expanding the special transit tax district to a 7 county area. The measure was defeated primarily by the counties that have no transit service because the MVTA doesn't serve there and has no plans to in the future.

Similar situations are occurring all over the country. It's just the banning of riders that is a new twist on an old theme.

The simple premise of barring certain people over political boundaries will do nothing to encourage transit usage. To the contrary, it will force people back into their cars. Considering that the MVTA receives State and Federal funding which is paid by the Lakeville and Farmington residents, the residents are paying. Just because Apple Valley residents voluntarily voted to approve an additional tax on themselves doesn't give them the ability to ban others.

Here's a solution. If Lakeville and Farmington join in the special transit tax district, the MVTA gets off their duff and starts providing service to those areas along with a park and ride lot all their own. It is obvious that the demand is there. The main reason these communities haven't joined the tax district is that the MVTA has absolutely no plans to serve those areas.

If Apple Valley goes through with its plan, look for this to be dragged into court. In the mean time, look for Apple Valley residents and politicians to continue to complain when the banned riders are forced to another lot further up the line where they can board first. Complaints of parking will be replaced with complaints about overcrowding of the buses before they reach Apple Valley.

Apple Valley's City Council received a Lance for the attempt to ban transit riders simply due to political boundaries. The MVTA also earns a Lance for not serving areas that obviously generate quite a lot of its ridership. The MVTA could easily get the outlaying areas into its special tax district if they would only serve it as well as genuinely increasing its ridership numbers.

Minnesota is setting an unwise precedent

St Paul MN - The most recent report out of St. Paul indicates that the politicians are about to set an unwise precedent in the transit industry. The Minnesota House of Representatives approved an amendment that would force the Metro Council to reverse the awarding of a bid to Gillig Corporation and award it to New Flyer Industries (NFI) who, by the way, couldn't bother itself to follow the bidding procedure and are whining about it.

By politically forcing the reversal, it will set a precedent that in Minnesota, all buses will be NFI since NFI can now low ball every bid in the state, not meet the bidding criteria and then invoke the new state law to get awarded the contract. As I mentioned in an earlier Laurels and Lances article, "Warranty? What warranty? There's no stinkin' warranty".

The approved bill, submitted by Representative Loren Solberg (D) must be reconciled to a similar bill in the State Senate that was introduced by Senator Tarryl Clark (D) before being signed into law by the governor.

The main issue is the warranty. A warranty on a transit bus is no trivial matter as they all have problems when new. I have not seen a bus order since the days of the GM New look that didn't have tons of warranty related problems and even they weren't immune to problems.

Gillig, who followed the bidding procedure, will provide a 2 year warranty as per the bid terms. NFI's grand plan is to offer a 1 year warranty and then only if a problem effects 30% or more of the order based on their assessment of the problem. That's like buying a car that is known to have problems and having the warranty only going into effect if 30% of the cars sold at that particular dealership have the same problem. No sane person would take a car they know will have problems with that type of warranty.

The cost to the transit system under NFI's offer will ultimately cost the transit system millions of dollars more over the 2 year period that the bid required since the transit system will be left to pick up the tab. Even though the initial outlay is more if the contract went to Gillig, the long term costs are less.

In my personal opinion, NFI's warranty offer is done in such a way that they won't have to provide warranty service. What a way to do business. It's the proverbial non-warranty warranty. You get a piece of paper saying your covered but when there's a problem, don't bother them with it.

Both Representative Loren Solberg and Senator Tarryl Clark earn the Lance for failing to understand what they are about to do but then, Democrat politicians only understand knee jerk reactions while never understanding the long term implications of their actions. Transit in Minnesota will suffer in the long term over the politician's desire hand NFI a free pass to get the business without meeting the bidding criteria.

This is a rarity...

St Cloud MN - An article in the St. Cloud Times which was penned by the executive director, David Trip, for the St. Cloud Metropolitan Transit Commission (MTC) is a rarity. Not so much for it's content but for actually being published as it goes against popular opinion and newspapers tend to ignore such stories as this one.

Basically the article tells why the MTC doesn't run smaller cutaway style buses and actually goes into a few details to explain it.

Too often, reporters are busy echoing the public misconception of smaller is better when it comes to motor vehicles. This misconception comes directly from the environmental movement who has, for decades, tried to persuade the public that bigger vehicles are bad for the environment while smaller vehicles are better and will save the environment. *cough* Toyota Prius *cough*

While Mr. Tripp is right on the money, I wish he would have made a bit clearer the information on operating cost. As I have also tried explaining this to many brain dead Liberals that were screaming for smaller buses on various routes where I live, I am well aware that they have no concept of what operating costs mean.

Operating costs means fuel, maintenance, insurance, operator and mechanic wages as well as a few other obscure costs all rolled into one convenient term. What needs to be brought to the forefront however is fuel use. Just saying the operating cost is no different between a large and small bus doesn't really break down the idea properly.

For example, the general public truly believes that a smaller bus uses less fuel than a larger bus but they do understand that the costs of wages remain the same.

The truth of the matter is that there is virtually no difference in fuel use between a small cutaway van and a heavy duty 40 foot bus. The only real difference is if the transit system went from 60 foot articulated coached to a 25 foot cutaway. Then and only then would you notice an overall fuel savings. That's hardly a practical solution to public transit however as if your running articulated coaches, you more than likely have the ridership for it and cutaways couldn't handle the load.

Also, too many people don't quite understand the concept that transit systems need to be set up for peak hour service and can't have an off-peak fleet and a peak fleet. That would drive the cost of providing service out of the range of most everyone that depends on the service.

One thing mentioned in the article is something even I never gave much though to and that is safety. Going with the smaller cutaway vans that many people call for because they think larger buses are a waste of money and use more fuel, your putting the riders at greater risk during an accident.

The article is a great read and chock full of useful facts to help better understand why transit systems run big buses on low ridership routes. While focusing on the St. Cloud MTC, it is easily adaptable to any transit system. I encourage you to read David Tripp's column.

Low bidder needs to meet the bid requirements

St. Paul MN - A battle is brewing in Minneapolis - St. Paul over a bus order that was awarded to Gillig Corporation rather than New Flyer Industries (NFI) who was the low bidder for the order. How this is being dealt with by the politicians shows a problem that can effect every transit system.

Minnesota State Senator Tarryl Clark (D) has introduced a bill that would force the Metropolitan Council to award the bid to the low bidder, NFI.

Sounds good right? Awarding the bid to the manufacturer that can supply the buses at the lowest cost is how it should be done *but*, there's a hitch. NFI didn't meet the bid specifications.

The bid specs clearly stated that there was to be a 2 year warranty. NFI refuses to honor a 2 year warranty and would only offer a 1 year warranty with conditions. This really doesn't surprise me as NFI has had issues in the past with other transit systems that required a performance bond be posted, something NFI refuses to do and why my local transit system doesn't have any NFI buses running around.

Another issue in the request for bid was training. While this issue is cloudy as the bid asked for 3,000 hours and NFI stated a dollar amount of training it would provide. They could net out but the warranty issue is extremely critical.

While the low bidder should get the contract, the simple fact that NFI didn't meet the criteria, especially on the warranty, should disqualify them. In most cases, it would however NFI has a plant in Minnesota and the NFI union and politicians are howling over this and trying to force the system to award the bid to NFI.

The big problem here is that political muscle is going to be used to award a contract to a bidder that did not meet the bid requirements. This could spell problems down the road for Minnesota transit systems where NFI could low ball the bid without meeting any of the requirements. "Warranty? What warranty? There's no stinkin' warranty".

This is almost an exact opposite of a similar issue in Broward County, FL. There, NABI was low bidder and met the requirements but transit officials kept trying to award the bid to NFI. Here, NFI was the low bidder but failed to meet the bid requirements. If NFI met the bid criteria or was off by a trivial issue, I would be on the Metropolitan Council's case for awarding the bid to Gillig but a warranty is hardly a trivial issue.

Government needs to watch themselves when they push bills such as what Senator Tarryl Clark is putting forth. These types of knee jerk reaction bills tend to back fire badly in the long term and in this case, it'll be all of the transit systems in Minnesota that suffer when it does back fire.