This crossed my mind when they talked about having a meeting in Fitchburg, but I was recently reminded about it again . . .
2010 RTA MEETING SCHEDULE
Regular Meetings Fourth Wednesdays of the month from 5 p.m. – 7 p.m.
NEXT MEETING:
Thursday, April 29, 2010
5:00 p.m.
Town of Westport, Kennedy Admin. Bldg (Community Meeting Room)
5387 Mary Lake Road
Remainder of 2010
– Wednesday, May 26, 5:00 p.m., Middleton City Hall
– Wednesday, June 30, 5:00 p.m., Room 260 Madison Municipal Bldg
– Wednesday, July 14, 5:00 p.m., Fitchburg City Hall
– Thursday, July 29, 5:00 p.m., Room 260 Madison Municipal Bldg
– Wednesday, August 25, 5:00 p.m., location TBA
– Wednesday, September 22, 5:00 p.m., location TBA
– Wednesday, October 27, 5:00 p.m., location TBA
– Wednesday, November 17, 5:00 p.m., location TBA
– Wednesday, December 22, 5:00 p.m., location TBA
INACCESSIBLE BY TRANSIT
When Fitchburg was doing it’s planning charrette, I recalled complaints about it not being accessible by bus. Here’s what one bus rider had to say.
You can only you participate in Fitchburg government if you own a car or you can get a ride to the meetings. A very large number of Fitchburg residents are totally left out of the process as they do not have cable TV, home interenet access, or cars.
The City hall and other buildings do not have bus service. There is very limited commuter bus service near city hall and you need to be able to walk up a very steep hill.
From my portion of Fitchburg (Fitchburg does pay for this bus service), I can travel by bus to Madison, Middleton, Town of Madison, and Dane County government buildings and meetings but not to Fitchburg.
The location of the proposed Fitchburg library cannot be used by myself or by my neighbors as we do not have cars. In my neighborhood, it is 15-45 minutes by Metro bus to almost any Madison Library (Central, South, Sequoya, Ashman) and the UW libraries. (Note that Fitchburg does pay for the use of Madison Libraries and UW Library access is based on WI statue.)
Now that the RTA schedule is out, another person has this to say:
Note that the first real meeting of the RTA board will be in a place you can’t reach by transit. It also appears from the Metro schedule I have that the last bus heading to the South Transfer Point from Fitchburg City Hall leaves at 5:40 (Route 48), so that’s essentially transit-inaccessible as well. You could get to the Middleton meetings by transit if you really wanted to, but the trip back to points east has hourly headways (Route 70) so there’s a good chance you’d be spending a lot of time waiting. And if the meeting went long you’d be out of luck, since the last bus is at 9:19 p.m.
On the one hand, I guess it points out why we need an RTA. On the other hand, it doesn’t look good for the transit dependent and their chances to have regular input in the process of shaping the RTA.
