Today from 11-1 and 5-7, TARC is holding public meetings to discuss the proposed service reductions, scheduled to be put to a vote by the company next Monday. I went to the first meeting and asked some questions, and found out it is an emergency response to the discovery that they will be receiving much less ($200 million, to be exact) than they had projected. They attributed this shortfall primarily to rising unemployment in Louisville-- TARC gets about 60% of its budget from local occupational taxes (it only gets about 12% of its income from rider fares). Another factor is that Louisville does not automatically increase its transportation budget to keep up with inflation each year, as do most cities.
A lesser known fact is that TARC has a long, and ongoing history of spending funds needlessly. In the early 1990s, TARC had a trust fund worth $38 million, $20 million of which was squandered in 5 years due to mismanagement, overspending, and fringe benifits for administrators.
Sound familiar?
Incidentally, "the planner," as he/she was consistently referred to, called in sick today, so no one could really go into much detail about anything at the meeting.
The chart above is a list of all routes currently in service in Louisville. About 2/3 of the routes will be affected. 10 routes will be completely eliminated, and 22 others will see service reductions and route changes. Meetings will also be held on Wednesday, Dec 9 in New Albanay from 11am-1pm and in Fern Creek from 5pm-7pm, and on Thurday, Dec 10 at Iroquois High from 5pm-7pm and St. Matthew's City Hall from 11am-1pm. You can also visit their website at www.ridetarc.com to contact them with comments via e-mail.
This is a piece by Christy Rupp, whose work touches themes of economics and globalization. She deliberately made her glasses "objectlike" to point to consumers' obsession with pretty things.
Seems oddly similar to this 1968 piece by Giovanni Anselmo...
