For those of you who are numbers people, you might be interested in this.  As you can see in the table below, go!pass use is the highest it has been in the last 7 years.  The table below shows the number of people showing their go!pass on the buses each month.  As you can see, about 6,000 more people used their go!pass this March compared to last March.

At the same time, the AATA itself just hit a record for the number of riders they have per service hour.  So it’s clear that people are changing their behavior.  And I bet high gas prices have something to do with it.

This is what frustrates me about McCain’s idea of cutting the gas tax.

It’s a bad idea for so many reasons, and I actually found an article from Fox News no less, detailing 10 reasons why suspending the federal gas tax would be bad for the economy and poor public policy.

One of the reasons this article mentions:

It would eliminate almost $9 billion that would be invested in road, bridge and public transit investments that benefit the public and American businesses–$7 billion in highway improvements; $2 billion in transit investments. This would trigger a series of negative economic consequences.

Did you read that?  $2 BILLION dollars in transit investments.  Hello?  Isn’t this the time to increase transit because gas prices are so high?  Not to mention global warming, congestion, etc.

At the same time, as you can see by the go!pass stats, people are changing their behavior.  This is good for our environment, good for individual and community health, and good for people’s pocketbooks.  It makes no sense to mess with that at this point.

While it is true that commuters who live too far away to walk,  bike or bus are the most affected, this shouldn’t be reason to cut back on taxes.  If anything, we should find ways to increase access to transit so these folks can get to work without driving.  And of course, carpooling is also an option.

And perhaps that will mean that people’s schedules need to be more consistent so they can carpool.  Or maybe that means more teleworking.  Whatever we do, I think this is a great opportunity to push some initiatives forward.  Let’s keep moving forward and give SE Michigan the transit system it deserves.