by P.D. Lesko

THE PRESIDENT OF Washtenaw Community College recently endorsed AAATA’s proposed $22 million tax hike. In a statement, WCC President Rose B. Bellanca said, “The AAATA is a valuable resource for our community and for Washtenaw Community College’s students, faculty and staff. AAATA continues to provide an efficient, quality and sustainable means of transportation for the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti area, and expanding their services will increase access and accessibility for the thousands of people served by the college across our region.”

What the WCC president neglected to mention was that in 2009 the college struck a $100,000 deal with AATA to sell $10 bus passes to the school’s approximately 15,000 faculty, staff and students. Months later, the student newspaper ran a story titled “$10 bus pass running on fumes.” Only about 1,300 of the $10 bus passes were sold.

The college had planned to negotiate a semester-long contract with AATA for a maximum of $100,000, but when the Board of Trustees began to discuss the budget’s approval at its Dec. 8, 2009 meeting, President Larry Whitworth recommended that the board pull it off the agenda. He said that Vice President of Instruction Roger Palay evaluated whether the bus pass program had improved the lack of parking and found that it was not very successful.

“We saw that AATA was charging us for a lot of runs that were not in fact directed to or from the college,” Whitworth was reported to have said at the Board of Trustees meeting.

According to a piece published in the Washtenaw Voice, the student newspaper, “Students and employees, about 1,300 of whom purchased the pass, swiped the $10 WCC buss pass about 33,560 times in Fall 2009, and only 15,807 of those rides were on the routes that go to WCC.”

“We have people who are buying bus passes and never take the bus to campus,” said Associate Vice President of Student Services Linda Blakey in December 2009. “They’re taking the bus all over the place, but not to campus. And that’s not really saving us any parking spaces. “The reason we were subsidizing bus passes was to provide an alternative method to get to campus, to free up some parking spaces.”

How did AATA sum up the failed $10 bus pass project? PR staffer Mary Stasiak told the student newspaper that the WCC bus pass “has been a pretty successful program, with a large increase in ridership coming from WCC from where we started.” Under the auspices of a new program, WCC riders pay AAATA for rides to WCC and get free rides from WCC on routes 3 and 7 which run every 30 to 60 minutes, depending on the time of day.

AAATA tried a similar program at Eastern Michigan University. In 2012, Eastern introduced a new bus pass for students, faculty and staff to utilize other routes. Only 500 of the passes, which offer 30-day unlimited-use, were sold during the Fall semester. The passes cost $40, a 30-percent discount off the standard $58 price. That semester, the service provided 32,000 rides. EMU enrolled 23,000 students in 2012. EMU also ponied up $280,000 for a free shuttle service between the main campus and its Rynearson stadium park-and-ride lot. According to the Eastern Echo, that service attracted about 1,000 users per day.

The bottom line is that AAATA bus passes are not hot sellers on any of the surrounding college campuses. Neither faculty, staff nor students snapped up the discounted passes, and WCC officials spilled the beans that $10 bus pass holders were using the passes to go everywhere except to the WCC campus. AAATA ridership numbers that include use of the discounted ridership programs offered to WCC, U-M and EMU faculty staff and students illustrate the fact that AAATA has had to give away its services over the past five years in order to rustle up growth in ridership numbers.

Giving away the milk, the cow the barn and the farm is not a sustainable business model, but you won’t be surprised to hear that rich people love giveaways just like everyone else.

Dr. Mary Sue Coleman said, “I formally personally endorse the May 6 transit millage,” Coleman said. “I value the transportation system and all it does for our community. I am happy to join with other major employers, institutions, and leaders in supporting this effort to expand transit options in the Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Ypsilanti Township communities, as I believe this effort will help reduce traffic congestion and improve the environment.”

“The AAATA helps Eastern Michigan University’s students, faculty and staff travel to class, work, job interviews, and local businesses around our campus and throughout the Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor area,” said EMU President Susan Martin. “…I am pleased to support the proposed expansion of services.”

If I were the president of WCC, EMU or U-M and AAATA were providing bus service as a blue light special to my faculty, staff and students, I would gladly endorse a proposed millage enhancement, as well. Not only will county taxpayers pay WCC operating costs through property tax assessments, taxpayers will pony up for WCC’s, U-M and EMU’s AAATA deeply discounted bus service through their transit taxes, as well.

The three university presidents threw their enthusiastic personal endorsements behind the equivalent of taxpayer swag provided their institutions in the form of discounted bus service even as their respective faculty, staff and student interest in purchasing discounted bus passes was judged a failure at WCC in 2009.

AAATA has devolved into an amorphous subsidy for several of the richest non-profits in the county and for private business owners. AAATA is a purveyor of a wide variety of high-fixed-cost, blue light transit specials financed by property taxes, federal and state funding and proudly endorsed by the very people whose employers stand to continue to gain the most financially.