It's time for Charlotte to get over its habit of always wanting to be, as a friend puts it, "The City That Strives To Be Tidy." CATS wants to raise fares for local bus and rail service in order to make up for a shortfall from the half-cent sales tax that pays for transit. The Metropolitan Transit Commission (MTC) says CATS planned 25-cent fare hike is too steep and would lead to further losses because people would use public transit less if its costs more. The MTCs reasoning is so obvious, youd think no one could argue with it. But, of course, CATS replies that if they dont get their 25-cent increase, theyll have to shut down some routes and buses.
Here is whats hard to believe: there is resistance to the idea of selling ad space on the side of the citys buses. You know, like they do in most other cities? New CATS CEO Carolyn Flowers says shes open to the idea, so lets get on with it. Former CATS honcho Ron Tober was against using bus ads because he felt it cluttered buses and would be bad for public transits image. Hopefully, the MTC will get aboard the bus-ads bandwagon, but it will take going against a longheld Charlotte tendency of trying to make everything neat and tidy. That tendency was last seen in the ill-advised effort to take down homemade ads from city telephone poles. Sure, it looks tidier, but a certain creative funkiness is denied in the process. After all, are we a city or a ladies powder room?
CATS and the MTC should get over the citys historical puritanical squeamishness, and realize that keeping a full schedule and a full fleet of vehicles is a much better definition of public service than worrying about offending someones esthetic sensibilities about visual clutter.
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