SMART fare increase - December regional passes won't be enough
SMART just raised their fares today from 1.50 to 2.00 for a regular ride. The price to transfer rose from 25 cents to 50 cents
This was expected, as well as the fact you need to add 25 cents on to your DDOT transfer until DDOT rose their fares as well... expected in January.
But it was my understanding, as well as a great many others, that *the regional passes would remain the same price*
So try getting on a SMART bus with your newly purchaced $49.50 regional bus pass and you'll be greeted by the bus driver with a demand of 50 cents... every time you ride SMART.
What is so regional about that? The manager on the phone when I called made it seem like it was DDOT, "we dont know what they're doing, thats them."
SMART is treating the regional pass as if its a transfer from DDOT... give us 50 cents. Is this what we really need in a time of economic and ecological crisis--to make it harder, and make it more expensive to take public transit? Won't this encourage people to drive more and buss less? What we are faced with is increasing cost and decreasing sevices. We've seen massive rider increases, and this is what they do in response, they cut sevice and raise fares. Those cars aint lookin so bad now after all??
Although there is regional politics at play [[ and a regional authority and DDOT and SMART merging will end confusions like this in the future), this is not just a regional issue, it is a national a global issue. Economic and cultural and ecological.
We ought to be making it easier to take transit... less cost for rider and vastly improved services, including rail. Transit is a critical pillar of our economy as well as a solution to climate change.
Detroit can keep being the 20th century motor city, or start being the 21st century tansportation city, and the sustainable city, an international, global city. It is Detroit can and will be a leader to the world on the way forward. Let's start by building a 21st centry transportation system as the first pillar in a green economy that will rebuild Detroit.
