a city-owned system is not strictly an authority. House Hearings, Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, 1956, page 178. 8. While the city or corporation might hire a private operator, it should not be so restricted, as the subway system now is (PL 89-173). This provision was obviously inserted at the instance of the private companies, although the Unions get blamed for it. All the Unions asked for was job-protection provisions. Hearings, Senate District Committee, Rail Rapid Transit, July, 1965, pages 86, 87. One would be naive to believe that the companies had nothing to do with this near provision to provide work for "private enterprise." We urge that the Council leave out such requirement for its own operation and seek to have removed from the subway legislation, since the city operation is affected by restrictions on the Authority. 9. After the subway is in operation, there will be considerable revenue to the bus system from split fares. The March 1 Metro Report estimates $23,378,000 to the private bus companies. Present D.C. Transit passenger revenues, the largest area operation, are $34 million. We should feel more comfortable if the allocation for the city bus system were funneled to a public body to avoid endless disputes on the fare splits. Also, any allowance to a private company for its feeder service constitutes a hidden subsidy by the Authority. 10. It is evident from the public witnesses at the last fare hearing that the proposed fares are unacceptable and that a subsidy beyond the school-fare payment is needed. It is not feasible to attempt this with a private company, particularly when the subsidy is sought to produce earnings from which dividends will be paid. Citizens groups in the District of Columbia long ago recognized that private bus companies would not all survive and that the ultimate system must recognize the need for subsidy. Hearings, Joint Committee on Washington Metropolitan Problems, November, 1959, pages 870, 871, Item 7. 11. We accordingly request that the City Council take steps to cancel the D.C. Transit System franchise and form a corporation or authority to acquire the D.C. Transit System, Inc. TRANSIT FARES 12. With inflation and yearly increases in operating expenses, it would be unreasonable and unrealistic to expect a private company or a city authority, if it acquires the Company, to indefinitely maintain a given fare level. There is no magic in public operation except in its power to spread the cost of efficient mass transit among the general public which also benefits from relieving the burden on the streets and alleviating traffic congestion. Aside from the court-ordered reserve of approximately $1.4 million, which may take some time to be resolved, taking the estimated D.C. Transit performance for the future period as guide, at present fares the Company would lose $1,150,000. Deducting the anticipated school-fare payment by the City of $1,071,833, the operating loss would be $78,767. (The school-fare payment would be greater if the adult fare is increased as it would widen the school-fare differential.) Adding interest expense of $1,352,500, we have a loss after interest and taxes of $1,431,267. In order to maintain present fares, therefore, an additional subsidy of about $1.5 million would be required. We feel that this is about as far the City could afford or should be expected to go in subsidizing bus operations. It would be worth while, however, to keep passengers using transit instead of private cars so far as possible. Mr. TRASK. Mr. Chairman, we believe that the franchise of the D.C. Transit System should be repealed and a city corporation or other authority established. The Congress could almost use a carbon copy of Public Law 389, 84th Congress, substituting "D.C. Transit System, Inc." for Capital Transit Company. In the Senate-passed bill in 1956 for a Wasington Metropolitan Transit Authority, that name might well have been used for the regional authority instead of putting the unnecessary word "area" in there. On page 4, we suggested the name, "Washington Transit Authority," and an alternative name for the proposed operation could be "Capital Transit System," a nostalgic recollection of the streetcar system that was destroyed at a stroke of a pen in 1956 at the recommendation of the District Commissioners. It is superfluous to add that the time for consideration of this resolution is running out. We are riding buses today because the transit union postponed a strike vote for 90 days. Fortunately, both the city government and the Congress are seriously concerned. We believe there is even greater grounds for canceling the franchise than existed in 1955 in the case of the Capital Transit Company. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the privilege of appearing before the committee. Senator EAGLETON. Thank you, Mr. Trask. We appreciate your being with us. I know you have been here all day. We appreciate your patience. Senator EAGLETON. Miss Dorothy Camer. STATEMENT OF MISS DOROTHY CAMER Senator EAGLETON. Do we have your name correctly? Miss CAMER. Yes. I wasn't expecting to testify, but there are some points which I think should be made. I think everyone has emphasized how inefficiently this company has operated, but I think that I can perhaps point out a little more clearly how inefficiently they have been operating. This year, according to the testimony of the company at the fare raise hearings that I attended last year, they have been operating at an average of 3.5 passengers per mile, in buses that hold 50 to 60 passengers seated. The maximum capacity of the bus, as authorized by the commission, is 76. Now, they have approximately 200,000 riders, passengers, per day. This is only about one-fourth of the population of the District of Columbia and only about a tenth of the population of the Greater Washington area. At 4,000 rides a day, there are approximately 400 per passenger per bus per day, which means that one bus only has to make about eight runs a day to carry that number of passengers. One driver would only have to make half the fee, since there are approximately two drivers per bus. They have argued, and people have argued that the reason they have to have such an enormous passenger capacity is because of the rush-hour demand, and yet, according to an advisory report of the WMATC, in June of 1964, there are approximately 48,000 commuters by bus coming during the rush-hour period in the District of Columbia. This means that only one-fourth of the riders of the D.C. Transit are commuters, and yet they aim their whole system at commuter traffic. Even at the peak of the rush hour, there is only an average of approximately 43.8 riders per bus, which is not a full bus. These are all averages, of course. I quote these figures to emphasize how inefficiently they have been operating. Now, one of the points that Commissioner Avery has constantly been pointing out to me when I argue these points to him is that he must grant a fare increase to the company, but what I feel is lousy is that the Commission cannot guarantee a profit to the company. They can raise the fare, as they have, three times in the past year, but the company is still making a loss, so to say that the subsidy would act basically the same as the fare increase is a mistake. If they keep raising the fare, it does not mean they will make more revenue. It may even mean they will lose money, as they have been doing. I am personally for public ownership, because I think that public ownership would be more subject to public pressure, and as far as any emergency subsidy is concerned, I feel that it should also be immediately accompanied with some form of new management. I think that unless somehow there is some organization for a management more attentive to the needs of the public, some kind of management more attentive to the needs of the public takes over soon, it doesn't really matter who owns the company. It is going to continue to go from bad to worse. Thank you for your patience and for permitting me to testify. You have given us a lot of study and thought, and we appreciate having your comments. Did Dr. Booker arrive? Reverend JACKSON. I had gotten in touch with your office, and they said they were going to give me a chance. Senator EAGLETON. Come forward, sir. Come right ahead. STATEMENT OF REV. WILLIAM D. JACKSON Senator EAGLETON. You may proceed, Reverend Jackson. Reverend JACKSON. Mr. Chairman, because of hearing so much testimony before, I have been a little intrigued by some of the things that I have heard, and I would like to start, if I may, by amending who I am. Senator EAGLETON. All right, sir. Reverend JACKSON. If there is any such thing. My name is Rev. William D. Jackson, and because of the many people who have been here from the community and stating who they represent, I would like to give you a brief résumé of the organization of which I am a part. I am the president of the elementary PTA who has 74 percent of its body as public assistance recipients. I am parliamentarian for a council that has 13 civil organizations as its membership. I am State chairman on Smoking and Health, Parents' Congress, and I could name other organizations of which I am a member all day, and I represent not one of these organizations. In the future, I do mean to get to them this same information that I have heard here, but currently I am in the employment of D.C. Transit System as a bus operator. Until recently, I was employed by the D.C. Transit System in community relations; therefore, as being an active part of the efforts put forth to satisfy the patronage of D.C. Transit, it alarms me to hear the negative and very little of the positive remarks made by the accusers, who allegedly are the peers to the users of public transportation. I am not professing to have the ability to make a mathematical evaluation of this giant operation-D.C. Transit System. I do have the faith in our form of government, however, they have been placed in office to respect their findings on administrative procedures. Further, it could be said that the function in protection given by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Commission has either been distorted or unheralded; the Commission, surely has seized each of the many opportunities afforded them to evaluate D.C. Transit, in both human and mathematical terms. The Commission has made public its opinion on the need for financial help to the D.C. Transit System. It is very hard to understand why a transportation system, which is D.C. Transit, is paying a penalty for (1) With a fare among the lowest-prorated with all factors involved of cities 500,000 and more; (2) Addressing itself to problems in every respect of the area of which it renders service; (3) Maintaining the most modern fleet of air-conditioned. buses in the world. If this is wrong, someone should inform me; (4) Operating services under all types of traffic and highway adversities, and this does not include vandalism and many other factors that really impede the progress of a transportation system, to me, which I have compared with many other cities by visiting; and (5) Its operators are rated as being paid approximately the second or third highest in the Nation. I am one of the operators. Mr. Chairman, under the above-mentioned conditions and achieving that kind of progress, I would ask that an analysis should be made on the cities who charge as much as 35 cents and 5 cents for a transfer to determine how to furnish less service, pay lower salaries, and get the highest rate of fares. Once again, I say to you that from the intriguing factors of the mathematical evaluations that have been made here today, I do not find myself anywhere close to professing to understand any parts of it. But the simplicity which is here, and which has been brought to the attention of so many people so many times, makes me wonder how they haven't asked D.C. Transit how did they accomplish so much in 14 years with the lowest fares, and paying some of the highest incomes and, in our belief, rendering the best service. I have been in the railroad service for 23 years, where I have visited other cities, and this is why I am saying I believe the comparison is based on other cities. In my limited knowledge of people and their reactions, one can always get oppositions by asking people do they want to pay a higher price for consumer items and/or bus fares. The same group of people, if and when all the information is made available to justify the need for the growth and solidity of a concern rendering a needed serviceparticularly in the field of transportation-would be willing to pay their part, with both dignity and price; thereby helping in the growth of the city and transportation. 29-234 069- -14 Mr. Chairman, I am left with less than a reasonable assurance that some of the peers from our communities, have adequately weighed all factors involved in the situation about which they so lucidly prate. In every case of which I am knowledgeable, the management of D.C. Transit has welcomed the participation and suggestions of the community it serves, and as a result, has made many innovations in fare and routing arrangements, amendable to all. I am the witness to that from the very time the redistricting came to the attention of the District of Columbia. We were the first ones to go to the school system to ask, "what is this going to do to transportation?" They have been the recipients of putting thousands of houses in one place, and we the people find out about it, that is, we the people are coming down there to catch buses. The highways are so horrible, in some cases, that it is impossible for the driver to get to the other end of the line to provide the transportation. I would ask of those people, whose testimonies here indicates their interest in the bus riders and the transportation, which was at a standstill in 1956, if they have edified to persons whom they represent, the need for management to determine by whom an effective operation and analysis depends? A management which is not blind to the transportation needs and financial burdens of its patrons, and a management who must deal, at the other end of the spectrum, with strike-inspired increases in the costs of iron, steel, and other bus construction components, as well as union demands of higher wages for transit employees, and with all the ramifications of operating an extensive transportation system to the physical satisfaction of the majority. Mr. Chairman, I would say to you that I hope this is nothing personal here. I have perceived all kinds of connotations that these are personal aspects, that they are picking on one man by name. I don't know a thing about Mr. Chalk. He did not give me permission to come over here. I took the time off to come over here to say exactly what I saw, not later than last night at 12, until 9 a.m. this morning, and these are the things to me that are of much greater concern to the people whom they so readily refer to as poor, and that is that they have a chance to feel that the transportation is substantial. They want to get to work. The operators want to know that they have a job to go to, and it is in reason that I am here addressing myself to a matter which, to me, can cause one of the greatest areas of turmoil, and I for one, if it should be publicly owned, would see that if it is at a level where the total picture of integration would be faster, I would hope that I would never come down here before a committee not to have any more people represented in the interest of transportation, namely Negro, than I have seen here today, and these are the problems which the future is going to bring. These are the problems which we had better answer, and I do believe that, if given an adequate amount of money to operate a system which I do know has made progress, you wouldn't need to change management, and I do possibly share this opinion alone, according to the connotations that I have heard here. Thank you very much. |