Is the Rogers Road Community Worth $53,000?

Being in government has its advantages.

Concerned citizens trying to get a good baseline on the cost of adding a bus route through the Rogers Road community didn’t net a response in 2005 (I know, I took a stab at it 2 years ago when I ran for Town Council).

Ahh, but if you’re a Carrboro Board of Alderman member, like Dan Coleman, running for office – presto, cost estimates nice and tidy.

From today’s emails, this interesting analysis from our Transportation department’s Steve Spade:

We have looked at the 2 options to serve Rogers Road via the HS Route that we discussed.

Option 1 – Extend existing bus

If we continue to run 1 bus but extend it north on Rogers Road 15 minutes travel time would be added to the route. Service frequency would drop to 45 minutes. Daily platform hours would be 5.9 hours daily. There would be no change in the current operating cost.

Option 2 – Add a second bus

When a second bus is added and the route is extended to Rogers Road the service frequency improves to 20 minutes. Platform hours would increase to 9.3 hours daily. The additional 3.4 hours would cost $202 daily or $52,800 annually.

Further analysis here [XLS: FIXED LINK, thanks Terri].

In 2005 I wanted to see service not only passing through the Rogers Road community but work as an element of a greater plan, sans annexation, to integrate the northern reaches of our greater community into Chapel Hill/Carrboro’s economic, social and educational life.

Since then, we’ve spent $949,025 of Federal monies on the digital notification NextBus system (which is reported to expand this Fall at a cost of ???).

Wouldn’t $53,000 , if that’s an accurate estimate, spent servicing Rogers Road and adjoining areas be a better investment in our wider community’s future?