King County’s (Seattle) Metro transit budget was $1.4B in 2015-2016. Yeah, that’s a “B.” ABQ Ride’s is around $40M in a given year (both including all services). What do you get for $1.36 Billion more? Well, for one thing you get pretty graphs of things like on-time performance: True, even for $1.4B you evidently don’t get consistent… Read More Seattle Transit: Where Not Just the Grass is Greener (Money, Taxes, Taxes, Service)

Continuing BB’s intermittent meander on bus ridership and transit in Burque, let’s get back to “farebox recovery” and last year’s ordinance that ABQ Ride achieve a 25% farebox recovery ratio (or .25, if you prefer) by June 30, 2022. Farebox recovery is basically how much a bus system takes in via fares versus its operating… Read More Can ABQ Ride Make Its Mandated Farebox Recovery Ratio Goal?

We at BetterBurque  (used, finally, as a true first person plural and not a “Royal We”) mentioned last week that the debate over Albuquerque Rapid Transit (ART) is just about universally conducted by those who have never and will never regularly ride an Albuquerque bus. Because of this, much of the focus has centered on car-centric issues, such… Read More Exploring Albuquerque Rapid Transit: Those 1.3 Million New Riders

The intense scrutiny and controversy over Albuquerque Rapid Transit (ART) has had something of an argumentative disconnect in terms of ART’s role within the overall ABQ Ride transit system. A big reason for this is that approximately zero of the politically powerful players arguing, on either side, actually ride the bus. And one gets the strong… Read More Exploring What ART is Supposed to Be About, The Bus: Part I