Continuing ill-advised privatization of government threatens M’s fans
If you’re one of the many, many people who use the highly-successful Metro shuttles to or from M’s games, you should be aware that your federal government is about to screw you.
People who normally use Metro Transit’s special service to get to ball games, community festivals, and other special events should be aware that new Federal Transit Administration (FTA) rules could significantly restrict Metro’s ability to provide this service.
The rule change does not affect regular Metro bus service. The intent of the new federal regulations is to open up special event service to private charter companies.
Okay, well, theoretically, that doesn’t sound so bad. How would it work?
If Metro service for an event falls under the new definition of charter service, the agency must first contact private charter firms registered with the FTA to see if any are interested in providing the service. If any firms indicate they are interested, Metro will be precluded from providing the service and the private operators will be given the opportunity to negotiate with the event sponsor for the transportation service.
Holy crap that’s awful. So if you somehow manage to get registered with the FTA (and you know that’s going to be rigorous) all you have to do is say “yeah, I’m interested” and Metro’s shuttles are sunk. It’s you, your school bus purchased at auction, and the M’s.
Heckuva job there, James Simpson, though I’m sure you’ve been assigned some kind of denigrating nickname.
What can you do? More than you can about the team’s fortunes, probably:
Get after a national elected representative
Write your Respresentative
Write your senator
Or try our state legislature.
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24 Responses to “Continuing ill-advised privatization of government threatens M’s fans”
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Ugh, this is exactly the kind of thing that gets me heated up. What business does the FEDERAL Transit Administration have telling LOCAL transit how to operate. I think the special Mariners routes are utilized a lot less than they could be, but this will absolutely destroy Husky football shuttles.
I feel weird about this one.
On one hand, I completely distrust every part of our federal government at the moment.
I also despise free markets, and privatization.
Also, I love public transportation.
But if this ultimate rests on the “the agency” (which is the Public Facilities District, not the Mariners in this case, but who knows how power is allocated there) to agree to terms with a provider within a time-frame, theory states this will result in lower public costs (in the “no free lunch” model in that whatever isn’t paid in tolls is paid somewhere).
Then again, it will most likely mean no special charter buses whatsoever. This could also result in public gaming of the system whereby it’s no longer the “Safeco Field Shuttle”, it’s a “Pioneer Square Shuttle” or whatever.
What an utterly bizarre thing to do. I’m trying to figure out what the benefit is for the citizens and city of Seattle. Next I’m trying to figure out what the benefit is for the State of Washington. Next I’m trying to figure out what the benefit is for the Federal Transit Administration.
I’m not coming up with a lot. I can come up with ultra golden flowery scenarios and nightmare scenarios on both sides, but since those outliers rarely happen, I’m trying to figure out what the middle ground effect is going to be. I got nothing.
Anybody got any examples of this kind of thing being done in other cities?
#1: Ugh, this is exactly the kind of thing that gets me heated up. What business does the FEDERAL Transit Administration have telling LOCAL transit how to operate. I think the special Mariners routes are utilized a lot less than they could be, but this will absolutely destroy Husky football shuttles.
The Federal Government is involved because the local transit agency uses federal funds to operate. That means that what the local agency does becomes the federal governments business.
I suspect you would do the same thing. If you were giving money to a son or daughter to attend school, would you say to them, “Go ahead. Spend the money however you like. It’s none of my business how you spend your money.” Or do you think you would think it is your business that the son or daughter whom you are subsidizing is being responsible.
One of the reasons there are rules such as this is because in many areas government agencies enter into sweetheart deals with vendors. Sometimes it’s payback for campaign contributions. Sometimes it’s doing a favor for a friend. Sometimes it’s the result of a special interest group exerting pressure to skew a local decision. Wearing my hat as a federal taxpayer, I do want my federal government to have concerns about the fiscal behavior of the entities to whom they are doling out money. Money does come with strigns attached, as it should.
+++++
The above is merely to counter your assertion that the federal government doesn’t have any business vetting the behavior of local districts. Note that the following items are separate issues:
1. whether these are an appropriate set of rules related to that interest.
2. why the government is involving itself in local transit activities at all (i.e., why should the federal government be funding operations of local government agencies)? If the service isn’t important enough to the recipients of that service to fully fund it themselves, why should the federal government be funding it?
why the government is involving itself in local transit activities at all (i.e., why should the federal government be funding operations of local government agencies)?
The same reason the federal government has shelled out billions in funding to build the Interstate Highway system — it’s in the interest of national commerce.
Every time I hear someone whine about how mass transit requires federal subsidy I think how no one ever mentions that anyone who drives a car built by one of the Big Three is receiving the benefits of the subsidies the Feds have dished out to them over the years.
If the service isn’t important enough to the recipients of that service to fully fund it themselves, why should the federal government be funding it?
Yeah, why do we have these ridiculous farm subsidies in a time when grain prices are approaching all-time highs? Oh, wait, you’re still talking about mass transit.
Thing is, those event buses are profitable for Metro. But, apparently, the government has decided instead of letting Metro be profitable they must remove them from competition from RayBob’s Carbonado Express because dangit, if RayBob can’t charge $10 each way on his one rickety school bus from Carbonado, the market must have failed.
I love free markets. I love privaitsation. But that’s not what’s happening here. The problem here isn’t the privatisation of government services. The problem here is this new federal regulatory body looking for things to do. If the market were free, then people would be permitted to compete with the government service. Under this new plan private providers can manipulate the market by jumping through regulatory hoops. That’s not a free market.
If you create a government department to deal with a problem, you guarantee the problem will never go away. The purpose of bureaucracy is to grow.
Seattle and Washington should be permitted to govern themselves as they see fit. I don’t see why the federal government should have any say in this at all.
See, this is why I think Lincoln was a bad President. He created the strong central government. Why is the fedeal governmnt funding local transit, anyway? Why not just have the federal government not collect those taxes and leave them available for states and municipalities to use?
I reject the notion that privitization is worse than government control, local or not. However, FORCED privitization is like a bizzaro world attempt to increase competition. I am sure there are standards for the shuttle service, Derek, not the least of which will be event sponsor satisfaction clauses present in the private negotiations. I don’t think Otto could pull up in a rented party wagon and get selected or retain the ability to provide services.
However, I am a big believer in subsidiarity – the principle the the smallest unit of society capable of handling a particular function should be left to handle it. Ideally, the event sponsors would help set this thing up themselves with private companies. You can also have local government provide a companion service. It’s ridiculous, however, for the Federal Government to say how that process should look. I am extremely distrustful of the Federal Government telling me what is best for me – be it in how to secure my retirement with forced payments into a flawed safety net system, or in how I can most effectively get to my local baseball team’s games. We can argue about whether the Federal government is more effective in Democrat or Republican hands (and through history it’s interesting to note that both sides have blamed the other for growing government at points, and both sides have complained about the national debt when the other was in power), but I hope we can all agree that, except for the largest scale activities, the centralized government is rarely more efficient or in-touch than a more local unit of government or private enterprise capable of performing the same function.
I agree with your last comment almost 100% Evan. Lots of people decry free markets based on what they see in action today. We have an overregulated manipulated market system, that is tending more toward planned systems than free markets right now.
Incidentally, I wrote one of my undergraduate theses on Lincoln. I don’t think it’s fair to write him off as a “bad” president, but I do think that he used extreme circumstances to justify unconstitutional activity. In that his actions helped pave the way for future presidents like FDR to drastically expand federal power in times of crisis, it presents a black mark on a remarkable presidency. He really believed the Union was perpetual, and, using this as a first principle, justified his actions designed to uphold it. His first principle driving his actions is bad in the casees of suspension of Habeas Corpus or the questionable creation of West Virginia, for example, but it would have made Reconstruction a more mild and less turbulent time had he not been assassinated.
What’s actually going to happen is this: local transportation companies (of whom there several, many already contracting Metro work) are going to bid for this. I’ve been through this bid process; it’s insanely complicated. You have to specify to the penny how much you’ll spend on everything from driver salaries to pencils at each of several dozen predicted ridership levels.
It’s not going to be you and an old school bus. Chances are riders won’t even notice the difference (the buses will still say “Metro” on them.
I’m not defending it, just defusing a mischaracterization.
Why? Why would you believe this? There are more examples than I can even count in the last eight years of the feds putting through bids and bid process with absolutely no standards for satisfaction, quality of bidders, or anything of the sort.
local transportation companies (of whom there several, many already contracting Metro work)
Interesting. I’m curious which companies are doing so, and how they’re doing so. Please elaborate.
(Not challenging your statement: it wasn’t apparent to the naked eye that this was done. I’d like to learn more)
Derek’s right. Trusting regulators to act in a way that makes any sense at all is pure folly.
Regulators will tend to act in a way that expands the scope of their regulation over time. Beyond that, their behaviour appears random.
So, a lot of really good discussion came out above that I would have followed up with. This is a case where privatization helps nobody except people who operate transit companies. Its stupid to help build a transit system and then not let it be used to help alleviate specific burdens.
I understand the “give you son money” argument, and I think it needs to be addressed in the constitution, actually. De facto laws, such as national speed limit, national drinking age etc are against the spirit of separation of federal and state rights. It is morally wrong to take a state’s residences tax money and not give it back to them unless you do exactly what the government wants.
I am more or less against any form of federal subsidy- especially on bridges and public transit- think of $252 MILLION bridges to nowhere in Alaska. How is that helping “the common good” or “interstate commerce”? It isn’t; its the purest form of pork. They need to be spending the money on something ALL citizens can take advantage of.
Yeah, like public transit, which reduces carbon emissions and improves air quality for all!
Okay all you free marketers. The public paid for the infrastructure used by the Metro buses including the parking lots. Now we are expected to subsidize parking for private firms to provide shuttles to games? I do not think so. If you want to take fans to games go right ahead. Some companies do that and have special amenities that make the trip worthwhile. But putting a gun to the head of the local mass transit agency and telling them that they are no longer allowed to add buses to games is just political gamesmanship trying to buy votes. Pathetic!
Not to mention the stadiums themselves (which I am GLAD are here, BTW — so I won’t get on that tangent). But I don’t know if it’s so much “trying to buy votes” or just some agency higher up trying to muscle their way around on state and local agencies just because they can…and, as we know, there’s been enough of that going on the last eight years as well.
Amen!
Blame it on Ronald Reagan and his 7 dwarves who came up with deregulation in the 1980s, which started the airlines on their long painful road to c-r-a-p service, ditto for your telephone and cable services. All c-r-a-p, all more expensive than the services offered are worth (since they c-r-a-p out on such a regular basis).
It’s just a new way for vested interests to take more money out of your pocket, since you’ll be forced to go back to driving the gashog through rush hour traffic into Seattle now to get to a game, find the cheapest parking lot that’s about 2 miles away, and take a taxi to get you to the ballpark without getting exhausted/drenched in sweat. Unless you take the day off and find a close in parking space that you’re paying your entire day’s wages for.
Just another reason I’m glad I moved 200+ miles away, saving myself the agony of choosing my poison.
The thing is, this isn’t a “free market.” Under the law of Supply and Demand there are roughly 22 assumptions. Two key ones are perfect competition and perfect mobility (entry and exit from market). There are definite areas where these assumptions occur and it is prudent and neccesary for a free market to emerge. There are other areas where most assumptions occur allowing second-best to be achieved. Then there are areas where the core and base assumptions do not apply- public infrastructure for instance. What they are doing isn’t opening it to the free market nor to second-best because they are violating the core assumptions. Instead they are opening it up to an oligopoly.
Evan: completely agree with you on government and Lincoln. One of my favorite Jefferson’s quote is, “It is the natural course of things for government to increase and freedom decrease.” I fear in the short future, things will get drastically worse then they are now (which is much worse than years ago).
At the risk of turning this into a political debate, most privatization programs are little more than businesses making profits by externalizing their costs to the government. The concept of public good by reducing emissions and congestion is completely lost on a disproportionally large portion of the current government.
Amen to that as well, Karen — as that was the beginning of the current downward spiral. 🙁
[those who disagree with you are not morons]
OK everyone, enough with the free market/political discussions. Hit that donate button up above and let’s make sure that school bus has ussmariner.com on the side and Derek in the driver’s seat!
Why? Why would you believe this? There are more examples than I can even count in the last eight years of the feds putting through bids and bid process with absolutely no standards for satisfaction, quality of bidders, or anything of the sort.
Well, primarily because this is a rule change and not a complete re-do of the initiating legislation that took effect in 1973. I won’t take the bait to discuss whether bid processes have had no standards whatsoever in the last year, or whether the standards may be what we’d expect from most government regulation of the history of our country.
(I’ll say in advance I am glossing over some subsequent legislation and distinctions a bit, but they are not important to the point). The Federal Highway Act of 1973 was itself designed to prevent federal funding to public transportation entities where they would be in direct competition with private charter services in the cases where the public transport was trying to offer the service outside the area of its regularly scheduled service. That’s been going on for 35 years and through the presidencies of both parties. Key regulations relating to the implementation of this were put in place in ’76 and ’87. The former requiring the public operators to account for both direct and indirect costs, as well as show revenue above costs in providing service.
The latter changed the game a bit, and prohibitted a recipient from performing any charter bus operations to the extent that there was a private charter operator willing and able to provide such charter service in the area. It also included exceptions that allowed a public transportation agency to provide charter service in the event there were no willing and able private charter operators, if private charter operators did not have capacity, if private charter operators were unable to provide accessible equipment, for non-urbanized areas, or if the private charter operator providing the service would create a hardship for the customer.
In 1988, Congress permitted a greater level of bidding by public transportation authorities in cases where non-profit social service agencies had a clear need.
2005’s Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), amended part of the statutory framework relating to charter service by changing a “may” to a “shall” in the remedies section. Among other things, now federal funds must be withheld when there are patterns of violation of the charter provisions, where before that was discretionary, and largely unenforced. A rulemaking effort followed and the changes that are in effect now are the result of this effort (they are significant).
The relevant amended CFR can be found here:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/49cfr604_03.html
While there is minimal information required to get registered as a charter provider (though size of fleet and other issues are part of that), there are extensive procedures for being removed from the list for issues such as bad faith, fraud, lapse of insurance or other documentation, filing of complaints. Remedies include withholding of funds, suspension and debarring. Interested parties, which includes the Mariners in this case, can also file complaints.
Gov’t discretion is also still available to allow public transportation to provide charter service in appropriate circumstances.
Look, I’m not defending this scheme – I don’t think the legislation should ever have been passed in the first place back in 1973. I also think that event sponsors should be free to contract however they wish. I am also a huge supporter of public transportation and use it every day. But you are engaging in hyperbole to claim there are no standards in place if Otto manages to get on the charter list. Will they be government enforced, red-tape driven and ineffective ultimately? Probably, but I don’t think we disagree there. Point is that if the M’s think Otto sucks there are ways for them to get him kicked off.
“Blame it on Ronald Reagan and his 7 dwarves who came up with deregulation in the 1980s
Amen to that as well, Karen — as that was the beginning of the current downward spiral. ”
Wrong. The airline industry was deregulated in 1978 under Carter.