The Ottermanempire.com

Longest Valley bus route ties Ajo, Gila Bend, Phoenix

The Arizona Department of Transportation has started a study of rural transit needs statewide, bolstered by the fact that Route 685 carried 371 people last month, a more than tenfold increase from April 2005. That was the first full month after the route was restored. It had been discontinued in 2000 after funding dried up.

Do the math   371 people ( that’s not different people btw though the article wants to make it sound like this is a neat thing it’s about  5 a day,  4 journeys a day   and 5 days a week with an annual budget of over $400k.  You are having money forcibly removed from your paycheck to provide a service more expensive than buying a cheap car for all these people, insuring them and giving them gas AND giving them $7 for each journey. It certainly takes a state to fork things up in the road that much.
cue the bleeding brain…

It would really be a blessing, and I don’t mind spending some of my tax money for something that’s needed,” she said. “There’s no way these elderly people could afford to drive themselves, even if they were physically able.”

Let’s make a deal.. you pay me to commute from Payson, where we’d rather live, since to me it’s very much needed. Actually, let’s not make that deal.  There’s no way people can afford to drive themselves  because ,er,could that be  because  some officious pricks thought that the money they could have used to provide for their own wellbeing was better spent on other “needs”?