Another lesson in who gets elected really matters

Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan (left) talks to Ronald Epps of Reservoir Hill on the No. 13 bus during a three-hour tour that let passengers tell him what they thought of the overhaul. (Sun photo by Amy Davis) Feb 2, 2006• From "Bus shifts are day's fare."

After their disastrous introduction of changes to bus routing in the greater Baltimore region, why is the Maryland Department of Transportation trying to extract an agreement for no public hearings for their next round of changes, in return for restoring service here and there? See today's Baltimore Sun article, "Flanagan tries to discourage bus hearings," for more discussion about this.

Clearly, they ought to be learning about the value of public engagement, or at the very least that only talking amongst themselves doesn't help them yield the best possible results.

At Artscape, maybe the MTA should have upper level staffers person the booths, not just clerks, and use the opportunity to listen to and engage with the public.

Public hearings for such changes are standard practice across the country. And it's not like the high quality of the decisionmaking at MTA has earned them the privilege of acting without oversight.

Speaking of delays, and the anti-transit bias of the State of Maryland executive branch, the new newsfeed at BeyondDC has alerted us to this article from the Gazette newspapers, about how the Corridor Cities Transitway, a proposal to link upper Montgomery County to Frederick has to go through a new environmental impact statement process because of the amount of time that has elapsed since the EIS was created. See "Transitway allies seek support: Leaders press for money to move the long-awaited transit line past the planning stage."

Index Keywords: transit