New StarTran routes approved

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By DEENA WINTER/Lincoln Journal Star

After an attempt to cut $350,000 from the StarTran public bus system’s budget failed, the Lincoln City Council voted Monday to approve a new system of bus routes.

The new routes and service changes are designed to target more bus service to areas where the buses are most used and scale back service on little-used routes.

But that decision wasn’t made until after Councilwoman Robin Eschliman failed to muster enough votes in support of a major budget cut to StarTran. Eschliman also proposed a big budget cut to StarTran during the summer budget sessions.

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She said the thing she hears “over and over” is that people don’t want to see empty buses driving around town. But other council members said it was a little late to make a budget cut on the day the council was scheduled to vote on a major restructuring of StarTran’s routes and service.

She only convinced one other council member to go along with the cut: Councilman Jon Camp said he didn’t like the new bus routes because they just offered a way to “lose the same amount of money more efficiently.” The new plan was revenue-neutral, but that’s not palatable to council members who want to reduce the city’s $6.5 million annual StarTran subsidy.

But Councilman Jonathan Cook said he assumes the national consultants – with help from local officials – know more about analyzing a bus system than he does and if the council didn’t like the direction they were headed during their 14-month process, they should have said so sooner.

Camp said that’s the very reason he opposed the new bus plan; he said the city often makes the mistake of hiring an outside consultant when city officials should “take responsibility for our own destiny.”

Councilman Dan Marvin questioned the use of the word “subsidy,” saying schools are also subsidized, by that definition. He said Eschliman’s budget cut should have been proposed prior to the public hearings where people weighed in on the specific route changes – most of them negatively because they’d be losing a route.

Some council members expressed distaste for the new free downtown shuttle included in the restructuring, but their vote to approve the whole plan means it will happen when the new routes go into effect next summer.

Council members John Spatz, Ken Svoboda and Camp voted against the new plan.

Reach Deena Winter at 473-2642 or dwinter@journalstar.com.