The argument between Democratic advocates of Maryland's transit systems and rural Republican legislators who say their constituents do not use them and should not have to pay for them with their gasoline taxes is an old one, but Gov. Martin O'Malley's unsuccessful proposal to raise more money for transportation by keying the gas tax to inflation has helped revive it.
"I'm driving around Lisbon, and there are green Howard Transit buses that are empty," Republican Del. Warren E. Miller said about the county's 26-bus system. "In Columbia, I rarely ever see one that is half-full."
Western Howard County Republicans like Miller and state Sen. Allan H. Kittleman recently criticized the current finance system for mass transit. They and Del. Gail H. Bates, also a Republican, want gas taxes to pay for highways and let transit be financed separately - perhaps by higher taxes for metropolitan-area residents. Bates said that among the big-city operations, the Washington Metro system "is great. The Baltimore system is the problem."
Meanwhile, western county residents must wait years for the doubling of lanes on Route 32 west of Route 108 and widening on clogged Interstate 70 near Marriottsville.
But County Executive Ken Ulman, a Democrat and a transit booster, said he and nine top staff members rode five of the scheduled bus routes in Columbia and Ellicott City for three hours from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 2 to test the service, and all reported the buses were about 75 percent full, said Kevin Enright, his spokesman and one of the riders.
"Sometimes I hear from people of another political persuasion that no one is on the buses," Ulman told 250 people at a meeting sponsored by People Acting Together in Howard, or PATH, last Sunday. "It's a good system that doesn't run frequently enough."
Ray Ambrose, the Howard Transit administrator, said the county-subsidized scheduled bus service has not run to Lisbon for eight or nine years. What Miller is seeing, he said, are smaller para-transit buses used for nonscheduled individual appointments for disabled people.
Howard Transit officials say ridership has grown 64 percent since 2002 to more than 750,000 riders a year, and routes have been changed repeatedly to achieve efficiency and allow more frequent stops.
Kittleman suggested at a recent Chamber of Commerce breakfast that Baltimore residents should pay an added penny per dollar in sales tax to help finance transit operations.
