Editor, The Beacon:
For the past couple of months, Votran conducted underpublicized public meetings for community input on proposed fare increases. I attended a couple of these unsurprisingly sparsely attended meetings. What I met at these meetings was primarily completely ill-equipped representatives unable to answer even the simplest of questions. Their mission was not to get community input. They will increase fares, regardless of what they heard from the public. The meetings were a façade to create the appearance of due diligence, nothing more.
Transit Services Director Bobbie King quotes the following on the Votran website:
“The proposed increase will allow us to maintain a high level of service across all of our forms of public transportation in the county. We are confident that even with the proposed increases, Votran will continue to be a competitive transportation option.” Ms. King’s quote is disturbing on several levels.
The problem is Votran is not a competitive transportation option. It does not offer a high level of service. As an “end-user,” there is no hesitation on my part to call out the completely absurd and verifiably false nature of her claims. People who rely on Votran, others that have lived in areas with better public transportation options, and those who wish they had good public transportation available know better and cannot be gaslit by Ms. King.
My experiences with the new highly touted rideshare service called VoRide alone negate Ms. King’s assertion directly and in its entirety. Attempts to use the VoRide service included instances of being told service was unavailable, destination error, fare error and horrible customer service.
The most charitable wholesale evaluation of Votran is that the service provided is mediocre (at best). To believe otherwise reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of public transportation: an essential component of a multifaceted approach for sustainable and functional regional growth.
In the current format, Votran sustains and rubber-stamps waste through inefficacy. Votran lacks vision. The only thing a fare increase accomplishes is maintaining the status quo. The citizens of this county have been and are poorly served on this front. Votran should improve their commitment to serving the public instead of hiding behind self-promoting smoke and mirrors.
Robert “byte” Wilson
Deltona
I guess I am not the only one, I send the following in an email to all of the County Council. Hello Gentlemen,
A couple of my friends and I have been testing the VoRide app to see if it would work for us and our visitors around town and to and from the DeLand train station. Just tonight, at around 6:45pm, I tested it to see if I could take VoRide from the SunRail/Amtrak station to my home and I got this response on the app “We’re sorry, there is no trip available to serve your request at this time.” According to what I found online, VoRide operates until 9pm on weeknights. Imagine if you were arriving on SunRail or Amtrak as a visitor or resident and you were told to use the VoRide app and VoRide transportation after arriving to get to your final destination in DeLand. And I can tell you, from our research, that whole system of taking a bus and switching to VoRide or taking VoRide switching to a bus is ridiculous. It is complicated and inefficient and it takes far too much time.
As a Council, you have approved another halfass and convoluted mess. Instead of making a more efficient and effective VoTran Bus service and allowing the private sector, ( through taxi services, Uber, and Lyft ), to deal with the door to door services, you got the County involved in yet another area of our lives it shouldn’t have been, thus MORE GOVERNMENT, my fellow less Government Free Market Republicans. If in the end VoRide is just going to cause more confusion and heartaches, please get us out of it.
We will never have a World Class Volusia County as long as our County Council has our County’s Government involved in just about everything under the sun, PLEASE get our County’s Government back to the basics of handling just its Core Governmental Responsibilities and demand those Core Governmental Responsibilities are handled well. Less HALFASS and more WORLD CLASS.
And to think within a few years, our Conservative Republican Free Market County Council has brought us 1,300++ Government Subsidized / Incentivised future Section 8 styled housing units, VoRide that is a halfass service that competes with the private sector, and made our charitable giving decisions for us, using our money, to the tune of over $3,000,000.00 a year, and has given away Corporate Incentives / Corporate Welfare of over $500,000.00 to an airline that is competing with other airlines at our airport. And of course the list goes on with the housing repair program, the Incentives of $2,000,000.00 to Spectrum using our ARPA funds, the $488.000.00 Library Counseling program, and more. Within the last 5 years our County Council, made up of mostly Republicans, has approved over $88,800,000.00 MILLION for housing programs in Volusia County.
Just the other morning, while listening to a conversation on a Sunday morning program about Kamala Harris’ housing plan of giving $25,000 to first time home buyers, I thought of our Volusia County Council and how that type of a program would be something as a body they, you all, would approve of. Governor J. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma was a guest on the program and he was explaining how Harris’ plan would only drive up the costs of home ownership and other negative aspects of such a proposal. Hmmm…just Hmmm.
I am not so sure we can handle any more of this wonderful Fiscal Conservative, Less Government, Free Market, leadership from you fellas, as a body, here in Volusia County.
Keith
I should add that my vocal criticism of the malfeasance and prejudice that guides their decision-making process in the design and administration was met with open hostility to the point of asking security to enforce exiting the meeting. But they didn’t stop there. I went to the reading section to peruse magazines, and security asked me to exit the Deltona Library for no good reason. I cooperated with their request, did not resist, while I did object and question the decision. To add insult to injury they called the Volusia County Sherrif’s Department because I was waiting for the bus outside. I have been banned for a period of one year from the premises of the Deltona Library for absolutely no good reason. for absolutely no good reason. I did not threaten anyone verbally all physically. It reeks of discrimination. The cowardice and prejudice are shameful.