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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > March > 21
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Editorial: Free bus rides not the city’s best strategy
Give Gary Leitzell, Dayton’s new mayor, credit for suggesting a big, bold idea when he proposed that the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority consider dropping fares and making bus rides free or very cheap.
Dayton certainly needs creative ideas, even if they’re long shots. The suggestion was part of Mayor Leitzell’s push for the city to take concrete steps to become a more inviting and accessible place.
But because nobody wants to discourage Mayor Leitzell, or squelch his brainstorming, he’s not getting the feedback he needs.
The mayor has the right goal, but there are better ideas out there — ideas that already have been vetted and are connected to a wider, coordinated strategy.
His busing suggestion is not crazy. Mayor Leitzell is right to focus on transportation, which is a key issue for downtown. RTA Executive Director Mark Donaghy is taking the suggestion seriously, promising to research costs and complications and report back.
RTA gets more than 80 percent of its revenue from a local sales tax. It’s supplemented with state and federal aid. About 17 percent of its operating money, or $9.5 million, comes from fares, which is a big sum that would have to be replaced to avoid drastic service cuts if that money went away.
The ideas Mayor Leitzell has suggested to replace fare revenue are unrealistic. He says $2 million more could be raised annually by making more advertising space available on buses. Currently, RTA counts on about $200,000 from advertisers each year. Even an aggressive effort to sell more space isn’t likely to exceed $500,000.
Other ideas include getting local universities to charge all their students a bus fee or even asking the county to institute a small annual tax — say $10 — on everyone who works here to support RTA.
Those charges won’t go over big, and it’s hard to see how those ideas could cover RTA’s losses.
But the biggest issue isn’t even whether free busing could be done. It’s whether free rides would help the city achieve its goal of attracting more people to downtown, especially suburbanites and young adults in their 20s and 30s. Those groups aren’t now riding local buses very often, partly because it’s so easy and quick to drive in the region.
Making it easier for people to navigate the city must be part of any downtown plan. In fact, how to do that has been under study through the Greater Downtown Dayton plan, led by the Downtown Dayton Partnership. Read its draft recommendations at www.downtowndayton.org. Final recommendations are expected in May.
The Greater Downtown Dayton plan does not recommend free busing countywide, but proposes a smart mix of strategies that include improving parking, easing pedestrian and bicycle travel and building connections among destination spots like the Brown Street Marketplace, the Oregon District, Fifth Third Field, the central business district, Sinclair Community College and the planned passenger train station.
Among the intriguing ideas in the Greater Downtown Dayton plan are establishing small stations around the city where bicycles can be borrowed and returned for free and building a small urban streetcar system.
The streetcar, modeled after systems in other cities that are attracting strong ridership, would connect those destination spots in a five-mile rail loop. Start-up costs are high, an estimated $55 million. Operating the system would cost about $2 million annually, though fares would be low. That’s still significantly cheaper than the cost of “free” busing.
The bike system would run about $2 million in start-up costs and it, too, would require ongoing operating money. In short, the money required to allow for free or cheap bus fares could be better spent in other ways.
At a meeting with his leadership advisory panel Wednesday, Mayor Leitzell stressed that Dayton should choose a handful of priority projects and push hard to complete them within two years — to show that change for the better is coming to downtown.
That’s a good instinct. But his energy would be better spent by pushing hard on the most achievable proposals from the Greater Downtown Dayton plan.
Permalink | Comments (38) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Editorials, Scott Elliott
Ellen Belcher: In disaster lore, Dayton wasn’t where all went wrong
(A postcard of a suspected looter being stopped by the National Guard patrol in the aftermath of the 1913 flood. )
Today we argue with The New York Times.
In a recent story about looting in Chile, there was this:
“By midweek, with thousands of troops deployed, the pictures began shifting: young men spread-eagled on the ground with gun muzzles pressed behind their ears.
“All in all, it sounded a lot like Haiti. Or like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Or like Dayton, Ohio, after the 1913 flood. Or like Rome in 410.”
Say what? Dayton compared with Haiti, New Orleans and Rome after one of its many sackings?
Of all the flood stories I had heard, looting wasn’t high on the list of problems. And the suggestion that mayhem reigned contrasts with the narrative that Daytonians were models of efficiency and decency in how they reacted to the historic disaster.
Those who know Dayton’s history are mystified, too.
“From what I’ve read, I don’t think it (looting) was a severe problem,” said Mary Oliver, director of collections at Dayton History. “My understanding is that the community very quickly picked themselves up, started cleaning up and getting back to business.”
Nancy Horlacher, the local history specialist at Dayton Metro Library, said that there was looting, and she supplied the post card at the top of this post as evidence.
But she adds: “I’ve never read anything where they center on looting as a big, huge problem. Gov. (James M.) Cox’s declaration of martial law was very strong … If such things happened, they were very brief.”
Gareth Davies, a lecturer at the University of Oxford, came to Dayton last year to research the flood. Asked about his findings, he wrote in an e-mail:
“It would be remarkable had there not been some looting in 1913, especially given the complete collapse of the city government. … That said, I do not recall having encountered even one specific reference to such activities in the newspaper coverage, or in subsequent historical writing. That suggests to me that any looting must have been on a comparatively small scale.”
Curt Dalton, in his self-published book “Through Flood, Through Fire,” includes excerpts from a report given by the National Guard to the governor, detailing what happened after Cox declared martial law:
“By nightfall, Thursday (March 27, 1913), the water had receded to the southern line of Third Street, but every inch of fall meant additional guard duty as every store and bank door had been forced open by the elements and their contents lay open to any marauder….
“The amount of valuable property of all kind covered by our guards that night was very great. At the jewelry store of A. Newsalt, I should estimate that from $10,000 to $15,000 worth of jewelry and valuable merchandise was scattered on the sidewalk and in the gutter.
“I take great pride in saying for the National Guard of Ohio that not a single case of looting was reported as the result of this night’s work, although the opportunities were limitless.”
Regarding the strict 6 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. curfew, the report said:
“It is to be said, to the credit of the citizens of Dayton, that this stringent regulation was received in the spirit in which it was ordered and from the very first evening but little trouble was encountered in enforcing it.”
Dalton, who works part-time at Dayton History, said that newspapers around the state and outside Ohio pronounced at the time that Dayton was awash in looting and dead bodies. Morticians hoping to pick up quick business flocked to town.
They left disappointed, he said. No bodies were allowed to be removed from the area, and there were far fewer who died than had initially been reported.
Dalton said he has read about a rumor that a looter had been shot by police and found to be carrying in his pocket a hand that had apparently been cut off for the rings still on its fingers. But Dalton said he never has been able to verify that story.
Donald G. McNeil Jr., the author of The Times story, pointed to several newspaper articles from his newspaper, one with the headline “Militia are shooting Dayton looters.”
A Times story published a few days later, written in the language of the era, said, “If apparently well-authenticated reports are to be believed, nine negroes and one white man were added yesterday to the seven suspected looters shot and killed since martial law was proclaimed three days ago.”
That story was decidedly less breathless than the first report.
Well, so there you have it — the story of how Daytonians of old got lumped in to demonstrably far more chaotic disasters. And now this take on history will be out there forever on the Web.
Ahem. At least tell your children that the real drama of this piece of Dayton’s history wasn’t about the looters.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Ellen Belcher, Local History
