Gainesville (FL) RTS will not be running its Gator Aider that takes Florida fans from malls and new urban developments to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on home football game days this fall (2010).  A private charter operator Fabulous Coach Lines answered RTS’s charter notice and is going to operate a new service renamed the Navigator (one hopes it will be printed as NaviGator).  It will cost $10 (over the $8 charged by RTS) but will be a premium service using over-the-road buses with bathrooms and TVs showing clips of great moments in Florida football.  

The post and transit have more in common than just stamps like this one commemorating the history of Soviet transport.

The owner, Ray Land, has even bigger plans including operating service to away games ranging in price from $59 for near games like Georgia-Florida in Jacksonville to package deals of a few hundred dollars, including hotel and tailgating, for the farther reaches of the Southeastern Conference.  Even though the company is an hour drive from Gainesville, they say they can make a profit because they are charging more, but also because they don’t have the overtime RTS does. 

Maybe this is familiar to you; RTS isn’t the first to stop operating what felt like a special and important community service (IndyGo is a good example; The Free Enterprise System, Inc. now provides service to the Indianapolis 500).  At the 2008 APTA University Communities and Transit Conference the attendees were abuzz with concerns about the new charter regulation just then released.  There was a breakout session to discuss strategies to address this onerous document imposed by Washington.  Clearly transit properties wanted to hang on to their game day services. 

When my colleague Doug Robinson first told me RTS might “lose” its Gator Aider service, which has been a community service since the 1970s, I too felt a tinge of regret; my transit agency runs a similar service and I could empathize.  But when I read an article in the Gainesville Sun describing the service my first thought was that Fabulous was proposing a very good service and maybe they should do it, tradition notwithstanding.  My second thought was to wonder why the first felt like such heresy. 

Game day signs like this one in College Station (PA) could be getting rarer, but are they something to miss? Courtesy CATA.

I doubt game day shuttles anywhere drive ridership on fixed-route service.  Attending sporting events is very expensive and especially with college games a great number of attendees are going to be from out-of-town; the well healed are probably the least likely to plant shoe leather at a bus stop.  And gameday shuttles are not like fixed-route: they will usually have very high frequencies, homogeneous passengers, stop only at the final destination (the stadium), and provide lots of hand-holding.  Game day services have as much in common with public transit as shuttles from long-term parking to the airport.  So why do people in transit value game day services so highly?  How about because of the United States Postal Service? 

I feel a certain kinship for the postal service. For less than 50 cents a stamp they will take a letter completely across the country—and back again if the address doesn’t work out.  They bring your mail right to your door and collect any outgoing letters or packages while they are at it.  The USPS handled 176 billion pieces of mail in 2009 but with a 3.8 billion operating loss.  FedEx and UPS can balance their books, the critics say, so why can’t the USPS turn a profit? 

Comparisons between transit and the mail are not outrageous.  Transit carries millions of people to work and entertainment for an affordable price.  Transit agencies do not turn a profit or break even doing so.  Transit and the postal service are not private and thus there are political considerations; on July 28, 2010 a senate subcommittee voted to block the USPS effort to cut one day of delivery service in an effort to reduce the operating loss.  Underperforming transit routes have a way of avoiding the chopping block because of the opposition of local politicians. 

If transit agencies focused only on providing express services to high-volume corridors, which do not require complimentary paratransit service (Sec. 37.121 (c) Requirements for complementary paratransit do not apply to commuter bus, commuter rail, or intercity rail systems), or serving special events like football games, transit agencies would be profitable, but they would be charters companies not transit properties.  Similarly if the USPS carried only packages and chucked Christmas cards, credit card ads, and catalogues, it too would be flush.  But transit’s role is to serve all corners of a community during most hours of the day and if letter carriers didn’t carry letters, they would be FedEx.    

I think the prospect of not operating game day services is so upsetting, at least in part, because we are losing our FedEx moment.  Stadium parking lots cannot accommodate all the cars bringing fans to the game; transit’s daily contribution is always essential to a community but never more blatantly obvious than on those game days when the parking system alone is inadequate.  We charge the full cost for our services, maybe even making a few dollars, we fill buses, we engage citizens we might not normally see on the rubber mats of a transit bus.  On these days, transit feels like a winner.  Who wouldn’t want that? 

Post Script:  All these concerns about charters may be a moot point anyway.  Cap Metro discontinued its service to University of Texas games in 2009 when Executive Coach wanted to offer it.  Executive wound up not delivering enough buses and the service was spotty, so Cap Metro cancelled the contract and ended game day service for the rest of the season.  This year (2010) Cap Metro is back on as the provider.  We may see more of this as these services require large fleets and experienced operators that only transit properties can provide.