A bus system for St. Charles
If you live in the far reaches St. Charles County and your car goes on the blink, you’d better have a bicycle.
Or a generous friend.
Or cab fare.
Or a horse
Or good walking shoes.
Otherwise you’re stuck, because you can’t take a bus.
To most residents in this county of 340,000, a city bus is a contraption they see on TV, as alien from their neighborhoods as a kangaroo. Sure, there’s a neat little five-bus municipal system in the city of St. Charles called SCAT, but it doesn’t venture out to where most county residents live.
These days, riding to work bareback on a kangaroo looks like a better option than paying $3.75 per gallon for gas.
Isn’t it time that St. Charles County got a decent bus system? In 1996, voters rejected a tax increase to finance an extension of Metrolink light rail into St. Charles County. And suggestions for a bus system have been routinely shot down ever since.
But folks then weren’t paying $100 to fill up the SUV.
St. Charles could never support a true urban bus system. The population is spread too thinly over too much territory. But it might support a few routes linking major shopping centers and employers with main residential roads. Those routes could connect with buses headed for Metrolink in north St. Louis County, Earth City or the Boeing works.
With a decent alternative, some families might be able to ditch the second car, or stop chauffeuring teens to the mall.
Of course, commuter bus systems rarely support themselves and that brings up the t-word. It would take new taxes.
Dennis Boswell, street superintendent for St. Charles city, says the SCAT buses are often running full now that gas prices are so high. He’s hearing pleas for service from other St. Charles County towns. “We get calls from those places all the time wanting to know if we come out there,” he says.
Given the price of gas, perhaps the voters of St. Charles may be willing to pay more in taxes in order to pay fewer visits to the gas station.
Jim Gallagher is a business reporter, covering banking and finance. He also writes a Sunday column on personal finance. 
There is another alternative to taxes. Privatize the bus companies and allow them to charge what it really costs to ride the bus.
Brian - If public transit charged what it costs, nobody would ever ride it. And transit advocates, don’t bother with your “the roads are subsidized too” argument - the buses drive on those same subsidized roads. Fact is, in all but the most densely populated areas, transit is a feel-good boondoggle that taxes the many to benefit the few. In areas like St. Peters, where people will have to drive to a bus stop, transit won’t reduce pollution or traffic problems either.
SCAT serves the urban area of St. Charles county, which was designed on a street grid and can be effectively served by transit. That should be the end of the line, though. Hopefully, St. Charles county won’t make the same stupid mistake that Metro did, expanding service to suburban areas and bankrupting a perfectly good transit system.
I remember back in the day (50+ yrs. ago) St. Charles had a bus line. The main depot was at the foot of the “old bridge.” One could see Chuck Berry in the diner there on a regular basis. It served all of St. Charles. It failed. So did the cab servoce and the newspaper (Banner News). Good luck with that, though.
Your arrogance is showing and it’s not appreciated. Isn’t it time for urban elitists to concern themselves with their own problems and stop pretending they know what’s best for everyone else? The Post brings this issue up every so often like it’s supposed to be a priorty. If the citizens of St. Charles county want an expanded bus system, they’ll make one.
As someone who used the nearly useless SCAT system once to try to get to metro and back, I’d be thrilled to pay for a private bus line to get downtown. It seems to me there was at one time a private bus that went straight down I-70 to the city. But of course it would have to go to the park and ride lots to be effective versus Mid-Rivers Mall where they do not want commuter parking. St. Charles County Citizens have made it very clear at the polls that they are terrified to let ‘those people’ into ‘their’ neighborhood by paying a tax for Metrolink. They’d much rather build ANOTHER bridge. So give us a private bus line and make it reasonable to get to work!
Brian - contrary to other posts, I agree with you. The taxpayers do not need to fund any more bloated government-subsidized programs. I, for one, would gladly be a bus rider, if only it were efficient and reliable.
Nick, I wish you well. Perhaps some anger management classes? Or a micro-brew beer (to, of course, protest the AB sala).
To all of the other St. Charles countians who voted down the Metrolink extension, well, who’s getting the last laugh now? Oh, yeah, that would be the oil company CEO’s. Thanks so much.
The people of St. Charles had their chance and blew it.
They now should just be quiet.
“…blew it” ?? Resoundingly voting down the endless tax burden of Metro Link , overwhelming numbers of St. Charles voters hardly blew it. Bus routes can always be added/dropped as ridership demands — but the beast of an inflexible Metro Link will always need to be fed.
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There are a number of advantages to mass transit two being a reduction in both congestion and pollution not to mention that a subway or train system can be run without oil, but there obviously has to be a large enough mass (popoulation) to make such a system viable and there has to be a recognition by an informed public that such a system is to their advantage.
It’s difficult to think what New York or London or any of the major metropolitan areas would be like without an adequate mass transit systems.
St. Charles just might not be ready for that and you certainly are entitled to your opinions. As far as privatization being a panacea for all our problems there are too many examples (Enron, S&L, the list goes on) of what can and does go wrong. If you don’t think you are negatively impacted by such failures, well I did say something about a well informed public.