During this past fiscal year ending June 30, a total of 59,222 passengers rode Dial-A-Ride vehicles. Taxpayers subsidize each passenger's ride by about $10.
Councilman Victor Gomez at a meeting last week told Hollister Taxi's owner he has more to worry about than a second cab company dispatching vehicles in Hollister. The city official suggested his biggest competitor in the taxi business is the local government and a transit agency offering an inexpensive pickup service called Dial-A-Ride that transports users to almost anywhere in the bus-service area.
In his first year as a councilman, Gomez also sits on the Council of San Benito County Governments, which administers the County Express transit service locally. At the meeting last Monday, Gomez told the business owner the transit authority is his "biggest competitor."
"If there was a Government Pizzas out there," said Gomez, who owns Papa Murphy's here, "I'd have a problem."
If Government Pizzas charged $2 per pie - the price of a Dial-A-Ride for adults - Gomez could find himself out of business, too.
It's not pizza, and a transit agency official contended it also isn't a taxi service, but County Express and its Dial-A-Ride program does offer a much cheaper alternative to flagging down a cab.
There are, for instance, a few major differences between the taxpayer-subsidized program and traditional taxi service. For one, eligible adults must be at least three-quarters of a mile away from the fixed bus route, said Transportation Planner Betty LiOwen, who oversees Dial-A-Ride.
The County Express vehicles also are converted trucks with bus shells over them that seat 12 to 14 people. Dial-A-Ride, meanwhile, doesn't guarantee same-day pick-up, she noted, while its hours are limited to the daytime.
The service area includes Hollister, Tres Pinos and San Juan Bautista, but riders cannot go as far as Gilroy, LiOwen said.
Telling by the numbers, thousands of local residents are taking advantage of it each month, by far more than any other service offered by local transit.
And taxpayers are subsidizing each passenger - though County Express does include paratransit figures into the Dial-A-Ride equation - to the tune of about $10 per ride, according to figures from the last quarter of the 2008-09 fiscal year. The number, meanwhile, does not take into account administrative overhead, LiOwen said.
In the most recently reported month, July, there were 4,411 passengers taking part in Dial-A-Ride service, according to County Express. That was more than half of all users in the entire county transit system and more than triple the number of residents - 1,378 - on fixed routes during a traditionally slow month for bus ridership.
During this past fiscal year ending June 30, a total of 59,222 passengers rode Dial-A-Ride vehicles. It still easily eclipsed the number of riders on fixed-route buses, which totaled 48,026 for the 2008-09 fiscal year, according to the data.
For the full story, see the Free Lance on Tuesday.
Kollin Kosmicki Kollin Kosmicki is editor of the Free Lance and Pinnacle. Reach him at 831-637-5566 ext. 337 or editor@freelancenews.com.
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