COUNTY TRANSPORTATION? SIT DOWN AND TALK

Cape Girardeau County government isn't much closer today to bringing about a public transportation system in the county than it was when the idea was first taken up in earnest some three years ago.

In the latest development, a five-member committee appointed last fall is exploring suggestions that were made by a previous committee in March 1999. The first committee had recommended that the county commission establish a transit authority with a paid transit administrator and central dispatching to run a fixed-route transportation system in the county.

That recommendation was contrary to an earlier finding by the Southeast Missouri Regional Planning and Economic Development Commission at Perryville that a fixed-route transportation system wouldn't work. The planning commission's 1998 study concluded that, while a fixed-route system might work in Cape Girardeau and between Cape Girardeau and Jackson, it wouldn't work in the lesser-populated parts of the county. So the planning commission suggested a system that would provide public transportation from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays on demand. It too recommended a transit authority to run the system.

Meanwhile, a lot of people in the county who need public transportation are still without it, despite the fact that about $2 million a year in federal and state money is flowing into the county to help pay for an assortment of transportation services these people can't use. The existing services are designed or funded to accommodate specific needs.

The latest transportation committee is on the right track by examining how to better use existing transportation services. As its chairman, Charlotte Craig, put it, "If all the existing providers could be coordinated with each other, then we could have countywide transportation."

Coordination of existing services is the key. Until representatives of all the services sit down and talk about how they can contribute toward a countywide system, there won't be much more progress than there has been to date.

The time has come to quit studying the idea and bring all of these transportation services together to see what can be done to establish public transportation in Cape Girardeau County.