Taxpayers Spend Millions on River Boats
Last week KWTV had an interesting expose on the federal subsidies going to the Oklahoma River cruisers:
http://www.news9.com/Global/story.asp?S=11394981
In previous reports I had posted that the operator of the boats, Hornblower Marine, gets $15,000 to just show up and run the boats. Labor, fuel, marketing and operations are all paid by various city entities, including a couple hundred grand paid by the Oklahoma City Riverfront Redevelopment Authority and MetroTransit for marketing. All together, at least during the first year, various public entities were paying about a half million or more for the operation.
On the flip side of all this, the Bricktown Canal boats have netted a profit for taxpayers all but one of its 10 years of operations and have yet to require any subsidies.
I never got around to posting some updated information on river boat ridership I requested and received from MetroTransit back in June:
(FROM MICHAEL SCROGGINS, METROTRANSIT PIO)
So far this season, we have carried 2,152 scheduled service riders. We have already had 23 charters this season (carrying about 670 riders). For a month-to-month comparison, I’ve included May comparison data below.
2008 2009 Month of Scheduled Service May May Days of Service 23 23 Total Trips 234 150 Total Hours of Service 351 225 Total Passengers 2380 1563 Passengers per Day 103.48 67.96 Passengers per Trip 10.17 10.42 Passengers per Service Hour 6.78 6.95
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Comments
I don’t really understand this at all. Who even thought we needed river boats? Is this federal money we wouldn’t be getting if it weren’t for the boats?
It may be, as Core to Shore develops, that there will actually be something to take a boat to, but currently, I can ride my bike up and down the river in far less time and see the same scenery.
Same was true for the Canal when it opened, it was a boat ride to nowhere…once you turned at the ballpark it was desolate… dead/dying landscaping, mounds of Oklahoma red dirt etc etc. Yet my fellow Okies were dressed in their Sunday finest (wool suits on a blistering July 4th weekend) lined up to get to take a ride.
The above wasn’t a slam at the Canal. Can only imagine the river boats haven’t received the same exposure/press that the Canal did
It was a HUGE mistake to ever put the riverboats under MetroTransit and try to characterize them as public transportation. This should have been water taxi’s thing all along with the same type of deal given them as before. As a business, Water taxi has an incentive for the service to be profitable, whereas as a public entity, MetroTransit could care less if the River Cruises ever make money. Their pathetic p.r. with the river boats demonstrates this. There is ZERO cooperation or tie-in between Water Taxi and River Cruises, which also hurts.
My understanding was that Water Taxi was going to be the operator of this until some last minute politicing shut them out. Now we have boats but no real plan as to how they will generate revenue. It looks like the plan was to just keep tapping gov. money under the guise of public transportation.
My prediction is within 5 years the whole river transit operation will be sold to Water Taxi anyway. Those boats will look nice in Green and Yellow.
Does.not.compute.
Not logically anyway.