Letter to the editor: Westmoreland bus proposal

I congratulate the Westmoreland County commissioners on proposing to run their own bus system. This will be at least a two-year journey to save money for the county taxpayers. Two years, to give them a chance to work out the inevitable bugs, since county government has never operated its own buses. This will be a good experiment to see if government can provide better value for the users of the system, as well as for the taxpayers of said system.

Private companies were too high-priced, so in a competitive spirit, government stepped up and said “we will do this.” County government previously bid out several departments to the private sector, supposedly for lower cost and/or better efficiencies. Turnabout is fair play.

Will this be like many government programs, and prove to escalate costs above projections? Let’s do the experiment and find out.

Then there’s a chance that government will run the buses better/cheaper than the private sector. But all one has to do is look at the often inferior “service” that we get from government. In this case, government is certain that private companies are not providing a reasonable cost service. Let the games begin. Maybe we taxpayers will benefit.

Don Carrera

Penn Township, Westmoreland County