About the “better use of money” question, like I said previously, I think reducing pollution and congestion on freeways and city streets is a worthwhile use of federal money.

Surely as worthwhile as a spending $700,000 on a fence around the Florida Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee last year?

I would expect the racks to have heavy use, at least initially, let say to the downtown area or to the UWM and Marquette campuses. But after several days of waiting for several buses and an open rack, many students will just give up due to the hassel of having to wait and revert back to their previous mode of transportation to campus. Since these racks are now only going to serve a very small segment of our population, can we justify the cost of the program.

Like I said, I think initially, some of the routes will have heavy use of the racks. But after frustration sets in due to the delays, people will opt for convenience and not use them. As an example, look at this story from Santa Fe dated in May, 2008:

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/bike-to-work-week-Rider-struggles-with-city-buses

With all the fiscal problems all levels of government are experiencing, can we really justify this as a priority, or could this money have been put to a better use?

1 – Per the MCTS website, each rack can accomodate 2 bikes. There suggestion for when the racks are in use, is to wait for the next bus. Knowing this, how many bike riders will use the racks knowing that they may have to wait for several buses?
2 – How much in additional diesel fuel will the county spend while the buses idle waiting for the bikes to be mounted/dismounted from the racks?
3 – How will the additional time needed for mounting/dismounting bikes affect the non-bike bus riders on the bus? Will those riders with a tight bus schedule need to take an earlier bus because they may miss their transfer bus? Will some of those riders just opt to use their cars rather than spending even more time on a bus or having to leave their homes earlier?
4- How much is the liability insurance for this program going to cost? Undoubtedly, some bikes will be damaged by stones, debris, etc. being kicked up by other traffic.

Where’s your weblog by the way? Or maybe you can back up ‘whopping crap sandwich’ with a real name to start.

Have you actually seen the racks yet? You might change some of your opinions about how much maintenance there will be if you had.

No matter where the money came from, it is tax money and politicians have a responsibility to spend it where it does real good, not to simply waste it on populist crap.

The maintenance figure comes from having to hire a special mechanic, and likely having to perform frequent repairs and replacement of racks that will be damaged by misuse, accidents and constant contact with the weather. As always, liberals overlook and underestimate the operating cost of a program

The folks using the racks will be few in number. The garbage put out by the lefty group that promoted the racks was silly. Very few people will be interested in taking a bicycle on the bus. If you have figures from a major cold-weather metropolitan area that show otherwise, I’d love to see them. I suspect that there will be more empty bike racks even than empty seats on the unused downtown trolley.

But hey, we are a broke liberal city, so if you build it, they will come. If not, make it bigger and invent a new tax to support it. Rinse, repeat.