Play with the palms, to chat, to ignore traffic. What public transportation offers them is an attractive, comfortable, viable alternative. Many people are consumers of RTA’s special services and don’t realize they are bus riders. The transit system has seen impressive results with many programs. The “Free-B” summer program in which children 18 and under rode gratis, netted a ridership count of 300,000 in the month of July a figure not including trolley totals. Holiday and specialty services like “Dime Days” for Saturday riders, the Beach-B form downtown hotels to the county park on Padre Island via the malls, draw riders --- some with surfboards and picnic baskets in tow. Because of these and other services like the Bayfest B, many people in …show more content…
And as a result, we are not in a reactive mode. We have the unique situation of being able to work with the other public agencies, working with the private sector, working with people to find ways to develop our transportation services.” This fact – RTA’s purpose for being has caused problems in perception. Eisenhauer recognizes that it will take time “to get people to see public transportation for all it can be and what it touches.” The RTA is a long-term investment in the future. Some people have difficulty accepting long-term needs for new services, whether a convention center investment zone or a transit system. Niskala says, “In every community—not just Corpus Christi – people who don’t directly receive benefits from the service have a difficult time understanding why the service is necessary.” Because of this difficulty, RTA strives to get its message out through public information and public …show more content…
Eisenhauer says, “We’ve got to spend some money on TV, radio, in the media can we get the message out without spending any money? No because we are supported by sales tax and we’re a government agency should (we) not market? No. that is ridiculous every bus system that is doing a good job spends money on marketing.” 90% of RTA’s income is form the ½ cent sales tax. The decline in sales tax revenue caused by the stagnant economy has hurt all public agencies, RTA included. Their service plan was drawn up in 1985 and based on revenues projected before the economic slump although the budget is tight, the situation is not critical. RTA has had to play catch-up to develop the system, since it was a no-growth here for a 20-years period so we have to begin to change people’s habits slowly.” The catch-up included building ridership in areas that previously had no service or in areas where potential riders did not depend on the service, assigning designated bus stops, paying the city for its buses and inventory, buying new, smaller buses. Most of these costs are behind RTA now, and both Niskala and Eisenhauer credit the city as being “super” to work