A week after the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HART) board members voted (narrowly) alongside their Pinellas County counterparts to study going ahead with a formal partnership, several HART board members stepped back from that vote. Throughout the holiday season there were withering pieces in the Tampa Bay Times op-ed section, asking what part of saving as much as $2.4 million per year — an alleged outcome of a merge — did HART not get?
HART's board chair, Fran Davin, followed up with a full-throated response that was published in the paper on New Year's Day:
HART's core mission is to provide transit service to the people of Hillsborough County. The consultant study concluded a merger would not (our emphasis) reduce the majority of costs associated with vehicle operations and maintenance. The consultant estimated a potential savings in personnel costs of $2.4 million per year, but estimated about $1.5 million in transition costs and an additional cost of about $10 million to establish a new governing entity. This puts no new buses on the street. We need capital to expand service and operating money to run that service. Simply changing the governance of two transit agencies gives us neither.
This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2013.
