ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 28, 1996 TAG: 9608280034
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
IF THE UNITED States had the kind of transportation system it should have - the equal of the systems of its international competitors - nobody would be talking about starting hourly bus service between Roanoke and Blacksburg.
Nobody would be talking about it because speedy and frequent mass-transit service connecting the Roanoke and New River valleys already would be a given.
It isn't, of course. And in the absence of, say, high-speed rail service, good inter-city bus service between the valleys just might be a way to help fill the vacuum. At least as an interim measure, that is, until 21st-century transit technology is in place. (An automated highway, anyone?)
The idea of Roanoke-Blacksburg service was raised by the New Century Council, and has been the subject of a study by the Fifth Planning District Commission in Roanoke and its New River counterpart. So far, nothing has been found to warrant perishing the thought, though much will depend on a survey of the potential customer base that's still to come.
The core of that potential base consists of daily commuters between the valleys. In 1990, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, they totaled more than 1,000 daily. To them, add the potential for others: Blacksburgers traveling to the Roanoke Regional Airport, for example, or Roanokers to Virginia Tech football games.
The transportation planners are surely correct, though, in noting the importance not only of tailoring the service to customer demands - including convenient stops, for instance, and bicycle racks attached to buses - but also of marketing the service cleverly as "a high-quality alternative to the automobile." Americans are deucedly difficult to woo from their individual cars, even when logic and economics would suggest otherwise.
The following estimates, admittedly rough, help put the problem in perspective. If the two existing public-transit companies in Roanoke and Blacksburg run the service, officials say, operating costs would be about $1,000 a day. To be competitive with the noncapital costs of a private automobile, planners figure, the one-way ticket price could be pegged at no more than $5. To break even operationally, then, the service would have to average 100 round trippers per day - or nearly 10 percent of those counted in 1990 as commuting between the Roanoke and New River valleys.
That's a lot; across the country, only about 4 percent of all work-related trips are made by public transportation. But the trends, both national and local, are nudging the balance toward the "yes" side of the scale.
Nationally, the American fondness for the private auto is not simply the result of geographic, cultural and convenience considerations. It is the result also of public-policy choices, including a variety of government subsidies dating back at least a half-century. As public-sector practices increasingly undergo the kind of cost-accounting scrutiny heretofore a private-sector hallmark, look for added pressure to make autos more nearly pay their own way - which, if it happens, would add to mass transit's customer base.
Locally, the New River and Roanoke valleys are too natural a fit, their economies too integrated, for old university-urban barriers to be safely maintained. We're a region, and we need to start acting like one. The 1990 commuter figures are dated, almost surely too low for 1996. Moreover, fast and frequent Roanoke-Blacksburg bus service would be not just a response but a catalyst to closer ties.
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