HomeOpinionEditorial cartoons“How is the City supposed to run its big, empty buses everywhere?”

“How is the City supposed to run its big, empty buses everywhere?”

April 11, 2024

BY JAKE FULLER

    • May be the city will have to stop running the RTS bus and that would help save the environment and help make up for all the tree burning we are doing to make power. Welcome to “Tree city USA” what a fudging joke these people are.

  • I can see both sides in this argument and I wish we had more and better public transit in Gainesville.

    But I have to admit, I see a lot of buses in my daily commute to and from UF and they are almost always mostly empty – on campus and off. Getting stuck behind them on campus is the worst. They stop constantly and there are few bus lanes for them to pull into.

    But UF is looking at hiring their own fleet of minivans, vans or minibuses (or a combo) and running their own transport services on campus which seems like it will just make things worse. It will, however, allow them to keep state and tuition funds in their own coffers which is ultimately the point of everything Sasse and his friends are doing.

    The more they keep, the more they control and more of it can be funneled to cushy high paid gigs for Sasse’s high school friends and beltway buddies.

    • RTS is charging UF students twice as much as Gen Pop, per the letter released today, and UF is the ones that are the problem in this is your take?

    • Mayor Ward and the Gainesville City Commission got caught gouging UF and UF students by charging them nearly double the normal rate ($2.86 per ride instead of $1.50).

      When you consider that student routes are the only routes where the buses are actually full and therefore the most efficient, the City’s unethical behavior becomes even more apparent.

      Many UF students pay their tuition with student loans, and this tuition is used to pay for the bus service. There’s no telling how much that $2.86 bus ride cost by the time the loans are repaid, if ever. If the loans aren’t repaid, guess who pays? That’s right all of us.

      How much are we paying in the end per student per ride? $5.00? $10.00? Harvey is stealing from us all.

      The City does need to cut routes–the non-student routes. UF should just get out of the transport negotiations and let UF students buy their own bus passes. Let’s see how student voters react to getting charged double the normal fare so that the City can fund their unpopular radical left agendas.

  • Spot On , Jake. The Empty minded RTS Cheerleaders that showed up today for thier orchestrated rally at City Hall, need to empty thier pockets and pay up, not UF. The fleecing of GRU and RTS is over. Do The wokesvillians want to unload RTS , just like the bankrupted GRU. Do you think they have finally realized that the ” other peoples money” days are over?

  • Hahahaha! Why should tax or GRU rate payers (who don’t use the bus system) have to pay for the bus system. I don’t use so why should I have to pay for it. Let the people using it pay for it.

    • Probably for the same reason I pay taxes every year for the failing schools in my neighborhood even though my own kids are grown. Why am I paying school taxes?

    • They’ll get wildspaces public places to pay for the bus like affordable housing

  • I do feel for the few folks that use the bus. Usually on the side of the road with no shelter in the 100 degree weather or pouring rain. But County employees don’t pay if they ride I imagine same for city employees. And of course our homeless neighbors don’t pay so they can get to the better pan handling locations.

  • I work on campus and 90% of the the time the buses will have maybe a couple people or just be empty. Same on city routes except for a few ares.

  • Keep em coming Jake! Show the liberals just how corrupt city hall is.

  • Jake never lets the facts get in the way of a cartoon. The fact is that the UF bus routes are packed with hundreds of thousands of trips yearly.

    • This means on a cost per passenger mile basis the UF routes are cheaper to operate than the rest of the RTS network. The city is indeed asking UF to subsidize its general ridership as well as free rides for kids, elderly and hobos.

    • Your right they make thousands of trips every year but most of the time they are empty

  • I know where that bus can go.
    Probably enough room for more than one by the looks of things.

    How is the City going to get by without another city department purse?

    Thanks Jake! Nice the commoners get to start their weekend by laughing at the idiots in charge.

  • I still think that the empty RTS busses are a great place for the homeless invited here by the commission to spend their days….

  • 29 people showing up to a City Commission meeting is not representative of the population of Gainesville. There are 145K+ people here and while I am glad people want to speak up, just having 29 people show up does not mean everyone is behind you. Sounds to me like UF was simply asking to see some reports and data and instead of providing that information to them, the City took to podium to cry wolf. Now, everyone is asking what they are hiding.

  • They need to have garbage cans at every bus stop! Tired of picking up the trash bus riders toss when they get on & off the bus. Keep GNV clean & green. We need more public garbage cans to pick up fast food trash & vagrants’s beer cans and bio hazzard face masks! Bus stops are good place to place trash cans to help stop litter!

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