The Unintended Impact of Saving Money on School-buses

An interesting topic came up at the last PCIC meeting on January 12. The new Police Chief, James Shappard stopped and talked to the group. In the discussion that followed DeWain Feller asked a question about a recent news article that mentioned the new chief was talking to the downtown merchants and he asked if that would lead to more downtown police coverage at the expense of the neighborhood coverage.

Chief Sheppard discussed the importance of solving downtown problems to the Rochester as a whole. That led to the topic to the problem with youths gathering downtown and its negative impact on the downtown merchants. Chief Sheppard pointed out that the downward spiral of the downtown vitality corresponds to the decision about twenty years ago to save $6 million a years in City School District expenses by having the high school students use the RTS buses instead of school-buses. This concentrated all the students downtown who needed to transfer from one bus to the another to get to or from their school. The disruption that this caused to businesses, including Midtown Plaza, contributed significantly to exodus of customers and businesses from the downtown and to the death of Midtown Plaza.

The RTS could and would have changed some of it routes to avoid the downtown congestion and the negative impact it was having on the downtown business, but lawsuits brought by the school-bus companies led to a Federal Court ruling that using vouchers and the RTS buses was allowable for the School District if the RTS did not have to change their routes to accommodate the busing of students.

I don't recall this having been well discussed as plans go forward with the current effort for the revitalization of downtown and the bus terminal.

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Permalink Reply by Drew Langdon on April 13, 2011 at 12:57pm

I have to say that blaming our youth, particularly those of color, for the decline of downtown is completely ridiculous. Perhaps its that we had a bunch of ageist, racist suburbanites sustaining downtown business. Just a thought. Boosting RTS ridership is vital for the welfare of the City and I would call on the expansion of such ideas. Add a few routes that don't cut through downtown, provide routes more often, convince the University to contract with RTS for its bus service. All of these would cut down on this problem, and would perhaps provide more traffic to potential business downtown.

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Permalink Reply by Margy Meath on April 13, 2011 at 2:51pm

I don't know that Chief Sheppard was completely blaming youth for the decline of downtown but was offering one perspective about downtown problems. That said, a few weeks ago I happened to be traveling through downtown during the time when the RTS - aka - School buses let a lot of kids off at the corner of St. Paul and Main. Traffic was held up for more than 5 minutes because the kids getting off of the buses created a great deal of chaos and one bus completely blocked an intersection. While watching/waiting to be able to turn onto Main I observed 2 different small groups of kids fighting and another group running east on Main - I didn't catch all that was said, but some of what I heard sounded as though they were moving to another location to watch a fight! I don't know if what I observed is a regular occurrence downtown, but if it is then it is certainly a significant issue and something that would detract from my wanting to be downtown on a regular basis - does that make me an ageist or racist? I hope not. I live in the city so I can't be called a 'suburbanite' but I do have family and other loved ones who live in the suburbs and I am growing very tired of people who live in the city making sweeping comments about those who choose to live elsewhere. It doesn't solve anything to lay blame on an entire group of people and it is exactly the type of comment that we (city dwellers) find offensive when people bash the entire city based on the behavior of some.

I think that downtown (and all city businesses) will thrive when there are businesses that attract people and when people feel relatively safe to go to those businesses.

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Permalink Reply by Tony Karakashian on April 14, 2011 at 2:39pm

I agree, Margy, I didn't take any kind of blame of the students from what I read...I took it more as an example of how what seems like a good idea at one time can lead to disastrous results in the long run. The chief's point as excellent. As great as this site is, we cannot be concerned exclusively with our own backyards when it comes to solving problems as it can have negative results on others in the city who deserve to have their problems solved as well.

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Permalink Reply by Edward Cramp, Jr. on April 14, 2011 at 5:10pm

I believe he is blaming the students, at least in part. He didn’t say that the disruption was caused by a mentality that has shifted away from highly trafficked urban commercial centers, but by those who are the make it so highly trafficked, the students and indirectly those who made the decision to have them take the public buses.

This presupposes that the mentality of the everyday individual cannot be to blame. However, may I suggest that it is this very mentality that has driven the urban sprawl that left our transportation authority with too few people over too large of an area to permit the kind of service that we desire, and that left our school district with too little in taxes to cover the cost of an independent transit system to service its students. It is also this mentality, I propose, that led to the formation of suburban strip malls and the downfall of the downtown commercial district.

I am, of course, writing with a strong bias against suburban dwellers to make the bias against urban youth more apparent. The reality is that there are a lot of interlaced issues that have driven cities like Rochester and Detroit to their current state.