Better transportation

Little by little, details of the purchase by the Cape Girardeau County Transit Authority of Kelley Transportation Inc. are shedding light on what transit officials hope will be a major step toward meeting the transportation needs that have topped the concerns of community-assessment surveys for several years.

Kelley Transportation operates the taxi service in Cape Girardeau that has provided subsidized rides using ticket vouchers issued by the city and funded by a federal transportation grant funneled through the Missouri Department of Transportation. When the deal is concluded -- and that's expected any day now -- that subsidy will go to the county transit authority to offset the cost of providing public transportation in Cape Girardeau.

In addition, the transit authority hopes to use other profitable Kelley operations to finance its operations. And federal funding will be available to pay 80 percent of the cost of new shuttle vans, some of which will be used to provide service along a fixed route in Cape Girardeau.

Although the county transit authority was created by the Cape Girardeau County Commission several years ago, it has been unable to provide point-to-point rides inside Cape Girardeau because of the existing grant-subsidized taxi service. With the Kelley deal, the transit authority will be able to coordinate public transportation throughout the county, including inside Cape Girardeau.

County commissioners will co-sign a bank loan to help finance the deal, but the commissioners are careful to point out that the county isn't making the Kelley purchase. That's being done by the transit authority.

It will take months, if not years, to determine how effective and practical the transit authority's operations are. There are still dozens of other government-subsidized transportation operations in the county that, because of their funding sources, must restrict who rides in their vehicles. At some point it would be best if the transit authority could oversee all those transportation operations, even merging them all into one unified system for efficiency and operational savings.

Until then, the transit authority's purchase of Kelley Transportation offers an opportunity for broad test of the authority's capabilities in serving the public demand for more and better public transportation.