Sunday, February 20, 2005
 
Subsidy Sense Tingling

It starts with an anecdote:
    Lou Emery used to sell donuts and bus rides out of town until a company man came by this month to tell her the Greyhound had made its last stop here.

    He broke the news gently to Emery and the rest of the crew at Daylight Donuts on Interstate 44, about 65 miles southwest of St. Louis. The man gathered up Greyhound's equipment and apologized for shutting down the service. He left the slightly rusted bus sign in the parking lot.

    Now the bus doesn't stop anywhere around Sullivan for miles. And most residents didn't even hear about it.

    "It was never in the local paper or anything that we had lost it," Emery said.
The whole story has the tone of a prelude. These people can no longer get transportation! Greyhound is losing $140 million a year! States have tax money or the ability to get tax money! Certainly, states should support this piece of Americana that allows dozens of people to travel every day!

Stories like this, and the inevitable calls for tax money to help a relatively few people make relatively few trips, confuse an offered service with a duty. If private business won't lose money providing something, the government should. That's asinine, and perhaps it's even a straw man, but isn't that the sense you get?

You know what the government can do to improve Greyhound's business? Stop propping up airlines. When airline ticket prices go up, Greyhound will once again become the idolized piece of Americana because it will compete with train service for people who cannot afford to pay as much for a airline ticket as it actually costs to ferry the person there.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:45 PM
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