THE Bus Is Unreliable

THE Bus Is Unreliable

Sunday's article about The Bus and the declining number of riders is wrong. The article attributes the decline to a price increase of a quarter for bus fares and the lower prices of gasoline, stating people are using their own vehicles for transportation.

The real reason the ridership is down since October/November 2008 is because THE Bus has not been a dependable mode of transportation.

The buses have not been running on a reliable schedule since October/November 2008. Hernando County took over the repairs and maintenance of the buses in the county transportation barn starting in November 2008. This was a poor decision by some of the former county commissioners.

The county cannot properly repair and maintain the buses. THE Bus has been forced to cancel or suspend routes because the county cannot keep the buses on the road in any consistent manner. That is the real reason the ridership is down.

People expect the buses to run on time everyday. If the county cannot maintain the buses and keep them on the road it is a given that the people will not ride THE Bus.

Register Chevrolet was doing the repairs and maintenance on the buses until October 2008. Routes were never canceled or suspended when they were doing the maintenance work.

The graph in the paper shows the decline in ridership started in October 2008 when the county over the repairs and maintenance of the buses.

Hopefully, the new county commissions and the county administrator will have enough smarts to correct the problem and look at the real reason ridership is down.

Robert Towles

Spring Hill

Hard To Believe

I didn't think it could happen, but it is now official. Thanks to two years of media hype, our country now has the most liberal and inexperienced president in history, Barack Hussein Obama. His resume consists of serving in the U.S. Senate for 144 days, spending the rest of his term campaigning for president.

His close associates list includes a convicted land-fraud developer who sold valuable land to Obama at a well-below market price in 2005, Tony Rezko; a well-known unrepentant domestic terrorist who blew up the Pentagon in 1972 and helped kick-start Obama's political career, William Ayers; and a racist, America-hating pastor and mentor of 20 years who's preaching stresses damning America, not blessing it, Jeremiah Wright.

This man and his socialist ideals (spread the wealth) are a threat to everything who made this the greatest country on earth. I say "God help America!"

Robert Bernecker Jr.

Brooksville