To answer the question about the passes that the UW and MATC provide to students/employees...
Those organizations negotiate with Metro a rate to cover the passes. They pay by the ride. At UW, the Associated Students of Madison cover the costs via student fees for the student passes. Transportation Services covers the costs for the employee passes out of parking revenue. The employee passes alone cost Transportation Services in the range of $1.5 million per year. This cost is on the rise due to increase in number of rides...but is mostly stable for the duration of the agreement (usually a few years). It doesn't go up immediately when bus fares increase, but fare increases probably would affect the next negotiation. I'm not an expert on gas taxes...but I believe that those taxes tend to flow into federal and state coffers to be used for whatever programs those governments have designated. One of those locations (the only one?) is the Highway Trust Fund...which is used in small part to fund transit. According to this website (http://www.artba.org/economics_research/reports/gas_tax_history.htm) in the late 1990s of an 18 cent tax about 3 cents went to transit. -Dar -----Original Message----- From: Krause, Dorothy Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 3:16 PM To: '[email protected]' Subject: Re: [Bikies] bus fare increase Thanks for that, Robbie. Along the same lines, when I went to MATC, apparently I would have been eligible for a free bus pass, tho I didn't get one because I drove. I think the UW has an arrangement like that as well. How do those work? I've also wondered whether transit gets gas tax money? It would seem that would be a relative fair way of spreading out the cost, as well as being a bit of a 'sin tax' on us auto drivers. Thanks for info! Dorothy
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