The politics of a Shelter Island bus
Only on Shelter Island could advocacy for public transportation be considered politically incorrect.
That has been the general sentiment at Town Hall whenever the issue of the East End Shuttle — a coordinated bus and rail system proposed for all five East End towns — has come up. The board over the years has voted to support studying the concept, but no one at Town Hall has fully embraced it, at least not publicly.
This week the critics came out in force against town participation in a Peconic Bay Transportation Authority, a proposal with legs not only because of MTA taxes and service cuts but because the concept has been validated and vetted through the shuttle plan. They even spoke against a public vote on the issue and did so with tacit if not explicit support from Town Board members.
The town has a lot to learn about how a Regional Transit Authority (RTA) would work and what the town’s rights would be to opt in or out of it. Little about this proposal is set in stone. The bill to authorize a referendum on the issue is currently being amended to bring Brookhaven Town into the plan. What next?
Before weighing in on the bill, the Town Board needs to learn more about the potential impacts and benefits of increased public transportation to Shelter Islanders. So far, they’ve only heard from critics who would deny those favoring public transportation any say in the matter, whether it involves a Shelter Island bus or not. We need to hear from local businesses, senior citizens and their caregivers as well as our current taxi services, to fully vet the pros and cons of this proposal.
And we need to hear from our elected state and county representatives who unanimously and fervently support this plan. RTA opponent Art Bloom may be a Republican by occupation, as he said Tuesday, but so are Ken LaValle and Ed Romaine, who do not see the Peconic Bay Transportation Authority as a joke.
Legitimate questions about paying for this system should be pursued but not with a bias against the proposal. Breaking away from the MTA involves fiscal risks and they need to be spelled out. But the notion that no one can manage those risks any better than the MTA flies in the face of that agency’s own admissions. Any fiscal analysis should consider this: does it make more sense to pay $60 million in taxes per year to the MTA for next to no service or the Volpe Center estimate of $44 million for a vastly improved rail-bus system?
More debate is needed, and Town Board members will ultimately decide whether any of us have a say in this issue when they vote for or against a public referendum. Denying Islanders an independent vote on the issue, now that would be politically incorrect.
