The Rice Thresher, Vol. 97, No. 1, Ed. 1 Friday, August 21, 2009 Page: 3 of 24
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1
Op-Ed
Minibus system can aid mass transit
Standing on a street corner near
the Pacific Ocean in Lima, Peru, I
asked someone which bus could
take me downtown. He pointed to a
small 10-seater van pulling up be-
hind us. A few of these minibuses
would pass every minute and cost
about a quarter.
David Splinter
I'd seen them before, but never
in such a system. And after using
them to ride to and fro, I can hon-
estly say that if there were mini-
buses in Houston and I had to wait
less than a minute for one, I would
probably sell my car.
Like most people, I hate wait-
ing for buses. Economists have
quantified this distaste: People
would pay six times as much to re-
duce time spent waiting for a bus
than time spent riding the bus.
This is why subways seem so much
more appealing than regular city
buses; they circulate about every
five minutes.
if
Small businesses run
minibuses in cities
around the \yorld.
They can quickly
adapt their routes in
response to changes
in travel demand.
They can also tailor
their service with
adjustable fares to
go a little off route
to your doorstep.
But here in Houston
you cannot enjoy
these services.
99
Rice University's Transporta-
tion Department currently caters
to students preferring short waits,
running medium-sized inner loop
buses every few minutes, instead of
larger buses less frequently. Imag-
ine expanding this system across a
wider area of Houston and charg-
ing a small amount for rides. This
is what a minibus system could
look like.
Small businesses run minibuses
in cities around the world. They
can quickly adapt their routes in
response to changes in travel de-
mand. They can also tailor their
service with adjustable fares to go a
little off route to your doorstep.
But here in Houston you cannot
enjoy these services. To ride Harris
County METRO you usually need to
walk a healthy distance to the bus
stop, and then it is often 20 min-
utes between buses. So if Lima and
hundreds of other cities around the
woild get to have minibuses, why
not Houston?
While Houston is fortunate to
be one of the few American cities
legally allowing a type of mini-
bus, there are so many restrictions
that none operate, as far as I know.
Specifically, Houston allows jitneys,
a minibus carrying between four
and fourteen passengers. Jitney
was an old colloquialism for five
cents, the fare in the early 1900s for
these vehicles.
However, many restrictions
keep jitneys from actually serving
Houstonians. According to local
regulations, jitneys must operate
without a fixed schedule, meaning
they cannot run effective carpools
between your neighborhood and
downtown. Otherwise, we could
see some minibuses offering ser-
vices like wireless internet.and cof-
fee for morning commuters.
Jitneys also cannot go off route
or adjust rates, meaning they can-
not charge extra to take you to your
doorstep. Probably most ridiculous
is that jitney vehicles cannot be
more than five years old.
All of these restrictions mean
that the Harris County METRO
maintains a monopoly on running
buses with schedules. As you may
expect, this monopoly operates in-
efficiently. METRO was almost 90
percent tax-subsidized in the fiscal
year 2007, with operating expenses
of $436 million and fare collec-
tions of only $53 million. Granted,
METRO may help reduce some
congestion and allow low-income
residents a means of transporta-
tion, but METRO'S funds come
from a regressive 1 percent dedi-
cated sales tax.
Thankfully, entrepreneurs have
found a way around restrictions on
transportation solutions with Zipcar
and Web sites like NuRide and Pick-
upPal, which coordinate carpooling.
PickupPal's potential to help
people get where they wanted to go
led the Ontario Highway Transpor-
tation Board to rule it practically il-
legal to carpool in their city. By al-
lowing ride seekers to pay drivers,
PickupPal violated their Public Ve-
hicles Act, which only allows car-
poolers to pay drivers if they limit
travel to between home and work,
do not cross city boundaries, have
the same driver every day and pay
the driver at most once a week.
This is how legal monopolies,
like most city buses, tend to defend
"their" market share. But even if
these innovative programs cause
some loss of ridership on city bus-
es, they can help fulfill the goal of
mass transit: moving people where
they want to go.
if
How can we start
bringing the
minibus solution
within reach? To
make jitneys
feasible in Houston,
we should allow
them to schedule
service, adjust rates
for going slightly off
route and operate
vehicles older than
five years old.
99
The monthly METRO report es-
timated in May that total ridership
would fall 10 percent in fiscal year
2009 relative to the previous year.
The decrease in gas prices explains
some of this fall, but it shows that
we should allow entrepreneurs
more of a chance to offer Housto-
nians mass transit options.
So how can we start bring-
ing the minibus solution within
reach? To make jitneys feasible in
Houston, we should allow them to
schedule service, adjust rates for
going slightly off route and operate
vehicles older than five years old.
You can see on a daily basis
that minibuses work on campus.
Private minibuses also work in cit-
ies around the world. It is time to
allow minibuses to expand mass
transit options in Houston.
David Splinter is an economics
graduate student.
Collapse of print journalism
not completely irreversible
i saw the implosion from the in-
side out. The collapse of journal-
ism, the creaking and crumbling
and crashing of an industry that
keeps politicians to task and ath-
letes in the glare. I saw the faces be-
hind it, the dinosaurs who were too
slow or too unaware to update the
business model when they could.
Casey Michel
I was in the middle of it this
summer, in the New York magazine
district, gleaning the lessons learnt
from the movers of the publishing
world. They admitted their failings.
They told me what to expect in the
immediate future. They made sure
that my job prospects were ground-
ed in reality, stuck in the mud of the
recession and the layoffs.
I sat with them, face-to-face, mi-
crophone-to-audience, and heard
them lay out their plans for rejig-
gering journalism's foundations.
And I didn't see worry. I didn't
see the sallow, empty drones I was
promised. I didn't see the hapless
executives rustling the leaves for
the Mad Max leftovers.
I saw reason to hope.
Not Obama-style hope, the kind
the fills you up and lifts you out —
but a prescient, calm hope, one that
doesn't translate into puffed-up
speeches and inevitable compro-
mise. It was the kind of hope that
gets you thinking, the kind of hope
that reminds you why you chose to
work in an industry that everyone is
already eulogizing.
They only barely talked of the
present. Sure, they touched on the
downsizing, how people with dozens
of years of experience, not to men-
tion entire magazines, had found
themselves in the Manhattan soup
lines. They sugar-coated nothing.
Instead, they focused on the crux of
the issue, and the reason why misan-
thropes are too short-sighted to see
the way things are going.
The issue at hand, for those un-
der the rocks, is the inevitable tran-
sition of paper to digital. The Great
Recession hurt, but that was out
of the industry's hands. It was the
omnipresence of the Internet, a
would-be partner turned death-knell
enemy, that turned newspapers into
the coal locomotive, a useful but heav-
ily-outdated — and environmentally
unfriendly — means of transport.
To wit: Is there inherent value to
a newspaper or a magazine? To the
physicality of the ink and the paper?
Perhaps, for historical reasons. The
creation of digital information is a
foreign concept to much of Ameri-
ca, whereas the block-and-palette
technology is obvious to anyone
who took third-grade art class.
Online media is no longer the
digital elephant in the room; it's
as real as Brett Favre's idiocy. (For
proof, check out ricethresher.org for
up-to-the-minute updates on perti-
nent news and sports stories). The
giants of the magazines know this,
and they know it well, which is why
their ideas, wide and varied and rad-
ical, are more than enough to quell
my nerves. Granted, to avoid getting
blackballed, the details can't be
hashed out in this column. But you
know the Kindle? Yeah, get used to
it, but don't blanche when you meet
its new and improved cousin.
The plans are laid out, leading
out of this mire and into a dichoto-
mous print and digital future. A
future in which journalists may not
be looking over their backs as the
axe of unemployment comes down
on their heads. While that axe is
still out there, swinging with its
Bunyan-like force, it will soon tir^.
See, there will always be both
the need and the desire for journal-
ism. No one's disputing this claim.
Just look at you, right now, stroll-
ing the Inner Loop or lounging at
Brochstein or peddling down Kirby
(please be careful). This, the dead
tree edition of a 93-year-old paper,
is what Rice students were reading
under Woodrow Wilson, when the
Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn and
when the Berlin Wall disintegrated.
You're looking at the product of de-
cades of work, hundreds of thou-
sands of man-hours dedicated to
bringing you all the news between
the hedges.
And it will change soon, too, with
newer-better-faster online content
coming to you in waves over the
next few years.
So don't give up yet. Not on the
industry, and certainly not on us.
Because while the implosion's hap-
pening, the reconstruction is taking
place, even as we speak, from the
inside out.
Casey Michel is a Brown College
senior and Thresher editor in chief.
CAMPUS REACTION
"What does the addition of Duncan and McMurtry Colleges mean to Rice?'
"I hope that it's a lot of acceptance,
and that it's not a "Martel is not a
college" situation. I don't think it will
be because of the way they're set up
and I think all of the new students
are really going to be welcomed."
Kate Coley
Hanszen College junior
"I think that both colleges are doing
a really good job this year of incor-
porating the new colleges well into
the college system, making them
feel that they're already so impor-
tant to the community."
Michaela Reynolds
Lovett College sophomore
"Right now they're increasing the
class sizes without increasing
professors [or] class space. Sched-
ules are going to be even more
crammed, so personally ... I don't
really favor the new additions.
Daniel Mollengarden
Brown College senior
"We're going to have to hire more
faculty, make more classes, expand
all our programming, but beyond
that I think it's done a lot to equal-
ize the gap between north and
south colleges."
Matt Amdahl
jones College junior
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Michel, Casey. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 97, No. 1, Ed. 1 Friday, August 21, 2009, newspaper, August 21, 2009; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth443184/m1/3/: accessed May 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.