Freedom Riders

Arlington is a city of magnanimous souls wedged into the Dallas/Ft. Worth SuperMultiMetroMegaPlex. I say magnanimous because a few years ago these kindly taxpayers financed a new baseball palace for the MultiMegaMillionaire owners (including, at the time, G.W. Bush) and the MultiMegaMillionaire players of the Texas Rangers. Today the city is drooling over public transportation.

While I haven't followed this issue as closely as, say, voting for Playmate of the Year, debate seems to have coalesced around two questions:

1. Should Arlington taxpayers get mugged to extend either the Ft. Worth or Dallas public monopoly bus line into Arlington, or

2. Should Arlington taxpayers be stadiumized into starting their own public monopoly bus line?

My suggestion, while obvious to libertarians, may sound so extremist to the good burghers of Arlington, and of the nation, that I'll pause afterwards to allow the gasping, wheezing and hyperventilating to subside.

How about a free market in public transportation?

Gasp! Wheeze! Hyperventilate!

Pause.

That's right, banish the monopoly charters and the taxi medallions. Throw the streets open to entrepreneurs large and small. Anyone with a valid drivers license and a street-legal vehicle gets to play. Buses, shuttles, taxis, limos, jitneys, vans, wheeled trolleys. Even Rail Lite if some enterprising gambler wants to build it with private -- repeat, private -- funding. Nobody's entitled to city-guaranteed success. If a taxicab operator can't hack it (yes, that's a pun) he should park it.

When free-thinking eggheads compete, innovative ideas get hatched. Like some of these possibilities:

A savvy bus operator notices that fast food eateries dominate major streets and intersections, so he contracts with them. In the morning a small bus (big ones seldom run full and are therefore inefficient) pulls into the parking lot of McWendy King, thereby not blocking traffic flow in the street. His riders are waiting inside, hence no need to build covered bus stops. Those riders are also fast food customers, chomping Breakfast-on-a-Stick with Secret Sauce. Everyone benefits, including the taxpayers.

A jitney jockey has developed a file of elderly widows and shut-ins. Mrs. McNoodle wants a ride to the beauty parlor so he starts dialing his list. "Hey Guido, I'm taking Hilda to Happy Hair Heaven. You wanna make that run to Handy Hunk Hardware today? If I get six people I'll discount everyone's fares."

Wheelchair equipped vans? A church gets together with service groups like the Elks, Lions, Moose and Squirrel. Or maybe they solicit corporate sponsors by plastering their logos all over their vehicle like a NASCAR poll-sitter. Repeat recipe as required. Who needs taxpayer's money?

Park-and-Ride lots? No need for the city to build any. They're already there. Ever see a church parking lot packed full of cars during the work week? The First Unified Church of Born Again Pagans should welcome the income from a Park-and-Ride lease. Night club parking lots? Empty during the day. Maybe offered gratis in the hopes of converting some homeward-bound bus trippers into happy hour sippers?

Eons ago when I lived in another SuperMultiMetroMegaPlex with a slash in its name, Minneapolis/St. Paul, a MultiMegaMillionaire gated community formed an association, bought a bus and hired a driver. Residents were delivered to work in the morning and home in the evening. Twice-a-day runs were also made to shopping malls for housewives and househusbands. The pity of it was the months of wrangling with city hall to get the permits. These services should be encouraged, not scourged. Why can't any of us non-MultiMegaMillionaires use whatever transportation we want? I'd love to ride a door-to-door shuttle to work and back. Even if it costs more than driving it'll save wear and tear on my car, and on me. I can use the time to snooze, read the paper, eat a Breakfast-on-a-Stick with Secret Sauce, or bang out yet another brilliant Loose Cannon Libertarian rant on my laptop. And yet another already congested street is spared yet another vehicle.

Insert your own ideas here. Yes, you, innovative competitor. No, not you, command-and-control politician. You don't have any new ideas. But your citizens do. By the thousands. In the libertarian vision of free market transportation the ideas people haven't even thought of yet will out-smart the ones people already have. All those tax-power-regulate planning boards will never solve our transportation problems. But the free minds of our own free citizens just might.

So how about it, Arlington? Want to out-California California as a trendsetter? Want to be the public transportation envy of the nation? Lock up your bureaucrats and let the free-wheeling begin!