Just small asides today, responding to the Bulletin blog-fodder.

Retail sales graph almost looks like a mistake. Those December sales must have been truly horrible.

30 year fixed mortgage rates are rising. So much for liquidity for the little guys.

Another story about Redmond Airport; as other wags have mentioned, it may be the only feel good story left. Don't know what it signifies, exactly. But interesting that the motel occupancy rates don't seem to match.

The accompanying Redmond 'growth' story doesn't impress me much. I still think the commercial growth is just the tail-end lagging of the bubble, the froth. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Big screen T.V.'s just keep dropping on price. This was one of my first blog entries, a guess that there was no rush to buy on Christmas of 2006. Sure enough, they were even cheaper just a couple of months later. They look to be getting close to half the price of the first time I looked.

Park board 'finds' funds for Pine Nursery fields. I'm sorry, how do you 'find' funds? Damn I wish I could do that.

Ouch. I'm not sure I'd like to be tagged as a 'Greasy Spoon.' A 'diner', sure, but if your name is Galloping Gerties, being called greasy just raises unpleasant connotations.....

I asked for a comparison on the BAT with other systems, and low and behold, we get an analysis in today's paper. But I don't know if it's exactly on the up and up. They just sort of do this magic trick of removing the maintenance costs of the six large used buses that are kaput.

Again, I wish I could do that! Hey, if you take out all those loses from that pesky money losing thing, I did really well.
What we essentially are using are some vans that were already in use before they started the BAT. So, yeah, if you do that.

Even there, is a guote from Heather Ornelas, Bend's transit manager, "Our fleet is older, true,but cheaper to run and maintain." Sort of like buying a brand new vacuum cleaner which totally fails, and resorting to your old vacuum cleaner in the back of your closet, and claiming that it saved you money.

Seems to me, you still are on the line for a new vacuum cleaner.

The other conclusion I can reach, is all transit systems are basically boondoogles. Bend's BAT cost 3.81 for each ride. But, I'm pretty sure, they leave out the "capital costs, like the buses themselves, or the buildings." Hell, last time they left out the 'fuel' costs, which is truly ridiculous. Interesting how they seem to fudge those figures.

So, comparing like to like, Bend has the highest costs per ride, even now. Klamath Falls is higher, but there a little postscript saying, "Includes on-demand service costs, which are higher than fixed-route costs." (No kidding, up to 20.00 locally, which makes K Falls a meaningless comparison.)

Wenatchee, Wash. is way higher, true, but if you read the article, they throw in this telling detail.
"....it serves a number of small towns miles from Wenatchee." So to be comparable, we would need to have routes to Redmond, LaPine and Sisters, etc.? Again, not a true comparison.

The maintenance cost appear to be in line, as long as you forget the nightmare of 6 very big very lemony buses that are completely UNUSED!

Always a good trick, eliminate for the sake of statistics the unforgiving facts. Kind of like encouraging the slower kids not to take the SAT's to keep your district stats up.

So I'm guessing, by the time we increase the routes, buy new buses, firm up the infrastructure, including those pesky 'fixed' costs that they've managed to leave out, that it would still be cheaper and greener to just give every one vouchers for a taxi ride.

I didn't set out to become such a critic of BAT. I hate to be so hard on them. But they are probably the most egregious about fudging the real situation, which I can't stand.