To be blunt, public transportation has become our nation’s worst industry. Worst than Big Pharma. Worst than Big Energy. Worse even than the U.S. Healthcare industry – although these bastions of corruption, incompetence, waste and reckless disregard share many characteristics in common with public transportation. The tragedy is that it was not always this way. Even in “The Car Country,” public transportation had plenty of great moments and great thoughts. Regrettably, most of these occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. More tragically, many of these ideas are even more feasible – and far-more-needed — now. On the positive side, internal
As installments #1 through 3 of this series illustrated, contractors are often blamed for incidents where all or most of the negligence was committed by the parties which hired them. Where government subsidies support all or most transportation costs — like those for schoolbus, transit, paratransit, non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) or other non-emergency services — these funds can only flow to (or through) a public agency — usually referred to as the “lead agency.” That agency has three choices for providing the service: It can provide the service itself. It can engage a private contractor (or multiple contractors) to provide
