Is The Niles Free Bus Ridership Report Accurate?

Lying is the destroyer of trust and breaks the faith that holds the human community together. When we deceive by lying or other means we treat people as if they have no right to share in mutual trust without which we cannot be human together. This is especially true in politics at all levels where we cannot trust some elected policy makers to properly represent us.

It seems as though we live in an age where deceit is almost a lifestyle and our politicians conduct themselves as if the plain truth puts them at a disadvantage. At the national level we had to endure the Fast And Furious debacle where to this day the White House refuses to produce certain public information. The last few years have demonstrated that honesty may be a super human task for our White House.

At the local level the Niles Village Board persists in supporting its courtesy bus, also known as the free bus.They published a ridership report in the fall issue of Focus On Niles, page seven.

This report covers the period of April thru June, 2012. It alleges that 78,477 people used the service during the abovementioned time. I started watching the buses over a year ago because I learned that Niles taxpayers are shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to keep the program going.

Whenever I observed a bus there was never more than three or four riders and on numerous occasions I noticed the buses operating without any riders. The number of riders indicated in the aforemention report, 78,477 for a 90 day period breaksdown to 872 riders per day.

I'm going to give the village the benefit of the doubt and say that the report is inaccurate due to methodology because otherwise it is grossly exaggerated.