Lexington Privatizing Forces Higher Costs on Public Service; Quality About to Plummet
You're a minimum-wage worker in Lexington - that's $14,500 per year IF you get full-time hours - and you need public transportation to work because you can't afford a car on minimum wage.
Until now, you could get that ride from Lextran for $1 - about $500 per year. A hit, but a workable one.
Now you have to take a cab, and it's going to cost you $15. That's $7,500 per year. More than half your income. Way more than half of your take-home pay after taxes.
Congratulations, Mayor Fuck-the-Poor Gray. Can't get much more conservatard than that. In fact, you should run for the repug nomination for president.That's the kind of Gilded-Age thinking that the base is slavering for.
Karla Ward at the Herald:
Bluegrass Cab has taken over and is expanding a Lextran program shuttling Lexingtonians to and from work, but the cost is going up.Privatization always means higher costs and poor service. Worse, it always means the working poor pay more and the rich get the benefit. Always.
Beginning Monday, the cab company will provide rides to and from work within the metro area of Lexington through its Ride to Work program.
For the past few years, Bluegrass Cab has been operating a service that picks employees up at their workplaces and gives them a ride home and vice versa, but, as when Lextran operated it, the service has been limited in hours and in the geographic area it covered. Many of the participants are lower-wage earners working third-shift jobs.
Lextran had subsidized the program out of its operating budget, so riders paid only $1 per trip.
Lextran is now going to stop subsidizing the program, said Lextran spokeswoman Jill Barnett.
Bluegrass Cab will charge between $4 and $15 per person per ride, depending on how many passengers are being picked up, said Don Daugherty, general manager at Bluegrass Cab.
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