I miss the small flock of Birds that used to appear on the front step of my downtown Columbia apartment. Typically there were three or four, sometimes standing in a pack, sometimes tipped over by wind or a group of drunken passers-by the night before. They were my ticket to anywhere in town — as long as the battery didn’t die before I got there. They’re just $1 … and then 15 cents per minute.

Birds, which are essentially an electric version of the Razor scooters we coveted as kids, became a popular form of transportation when they were dropped in the city unannounced in August. After a night of recharging, nearly all of them would appear to have landed among Stephens College, MU and Columbia College. A glance at the app would show that a handful made their way into neighborhoods outside of downtown Columbia, but the scooters were limited almost exclusively to an area where there is the disposable income necessary to use them and short distances to travel on them. Students were the most visible customers, but every so often I’d see a young professional in a pantsuit, an orange vest-clad construction worker or even a parent trailing behind their more scooter-educated child buzzing down the street.

Buses take a backseat

Their usefulness is debatable, but for those who live downtown, Birds (and the similar Lime scooters) are more efficient than walking or waiting for a city bus. If I live within a mile or two of where I need to be and don’t have access to a car, it’s likely there’s a Bird within a hundred feet or so. For example, a trip to Hickman High School on North Providence is a 25-minute walk from my apartment, according to Google Maps. By bus, it’d be about the same amount of time to go one way, not including the time waiting at my nearest stop. By scooter, it took me less than 10 minutes round-trip.

Therein lies the question not only about scooters, but about any of Columbia’s public transportation: What is the threshold for convenience that Bird reaches but the bus system does not? Birds are designed with the consumer in mind. City transportation is not.

It’s unknown exactly how many scooters came to Columbia, but Steven Sapp, the city’s director of community relations, estimated in early October that 450 were on the streets. In the first 87 days of operation, the scooters were used 138,000 times and traveled 200,000 miles, according to Bird officials. For comparison, there were just 589,438 bus rides over the entirety of 2016.

The city’s bus system, which has tried — and, for the most part, failed — to attract consistent ridership outside of a few select routes, simply doesn’t match the needs of a majority of Columbia residents. According to the 2016 U.S. Census, 45 percent of Columbia households own at least two cars, four points higher than the national average. Meanwhile, 78 percent of residents drive alone on their commutes, and just 1.5 percent take public transportation — four points lower than the national average. Despite a nearly 40-percent growth in population over the past 15 years, the city’s traffic hasn’t yet become so unreasonable that residents consider other transportation options.

Why would they? Recent budget cuts to the city’s transportation department have eliminated some routes completely, pushing wait times in certain areas from approximately 15 minutes to sometimes more than 45. The city added a “flex” route in 2017 to remedy areas lacking coverage, but the route was eliminated this past fall amid budget cuts. And in June, the city will eliminate Saturday routes, according to a February story in the Columbia Tribune.

Columbia’s City Council also voted in September to end bus service at 7 p.m. and paratransit service at 6:25 p.m., cost-saving measures included in a 7-percent downsizing measure to the city’s transportation system. Fourth Ward City Councilman Ian Thomas blasted the board after it rejected nearly all of the proposed compromises for public transportation, saying, “We are making the wrong moral decision ... and a very bad one.” A number of citizens backed Thomas at the meeting, and in 2014, more than 60 percent of Columbia residents surveyed said they supported an increase in public transit funding, despite only 25 percent using the service.

State of neglect

The blame doesn’t lie solely at the city’s feet, though. Across Missouri, funding for public transportation has decreased from $7.7 million in 1997 to just $1.7 million in 2018. In Columbia alone, grant money allocated for transportation by the State of Missouri decreased by 92 percent between 2008 and 2012. Kimberly Cella, the executive director of the Missouri Public Transit Association, told the Columbia Tribune in October 2017 that most transit systems across the country receive about 40 percent of their funding from their respective states; .004 percent of Columbia’s transit budget comes from state grants.

Proponents of public transportation have implored Columbia to partner with MU, the city’s largest employer, to improve ridership. Many of the university’s peers, such as Iowa State University, partner with their home cities. At Iowa State, students account for about 6 million city bus rides per year — or about 94 percent of the city’s total ridership.

MU students were once regular users of public bus routes, too; beginning in 2007, student housing complexes contracted with the city to provide bus rides to and from campus for their residents. Each complex paid the city about $26,000 to let students ride for free, and during the 2007-08 school year, more than 300,000 riders used the service. After a few years of the agreement, the complexes opted to partner with Green Way Shuttles, and the city lost a substantial portion of its ridership. Columbia Transport Director Drew Brooks estimated in 2014 that students composed 70 percent of the city’s public transportation users. Without students, the city’s annual ridership dropped by 28 percent between 2014 and 2016.

Now, the school has approximately 23,000 parking spaces across 80 parking lots and seven garages, most of which have outstanding debt service paid for by student fees or revenue from the sales of those spaces. Students who don’t drive to campus often have the luxury of private shuttles provided by their apartment complexes. In addition, MU contributes money to the Tiger Line, its free on-campus student shuttle service.

The lack of interest in traditional public transportation and the perceived necessity of alternative options leaves the city in a precarious spot when it comes to scooters. Cities like Denver, San Francisco and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, have all banned Birds, citing inadequate regulation after the scooters were often left splayed across sidewalks in their city. Residents in Columbia have complained that they make certain areas impassable for those with disabilities.

Columbia’s City Council approved a temporary agreement between the city and Bird, in which the company must pay $1 per day to the city for every Bird scooter in use. Over the yearlong agreement, the city could net a maximum of roughly $165,000, or about seven times what it received in transportation funding from the state of Missouri in fiscal year 2016. And theoretically, hosting the scooters doesn’t cost the city any money, unlike the bus system, which would have required a budget of nearly $500,000 before the city approved the cuts in September.

Citizens stranded

Residents who need bus service, especially those who aren’t near downtown, are losing options for transportation. Representatives for residents with disabilities have lambasted the city’s disregard for their transit needs. And those without the means to pay for services like Uber, Lyft or even Bird have few options to get to work, grocery stores or other places they need to go.

Columbia’s city government, without much financial assistance from its state-level counterparts and with a populace that continues to vote down fuel tax increases, has its proverbial hands tied. Will the city address the transportation issues facing a seemingly small portion of its residents by making public transportation a priority, or is individual transportation simply too easy to pass up? We might not know until the Birds migrate home for the spring. ￼

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