In the old days TARC used to supplement its income by running charters to the Derby and other special events. A Bush-era ruling out of the USDOT reversed that, clearing the field for private enterprise. Miller had to bust some heads to crack open that market, and now its supplementing their income. Now the USDOT mulls reversing that ruling, leading to some hand-wringing here in River City.

Since the early 2000s there has been no transit service linking Kentucky from East to West. It is not possible, for example, to go from Louisville to Frankfort.

If Miller Trailways has anything to say about it, that is going to change. However, they need your letters of support to make it happen!

Greyhound abandoned the last East-West service because it wasn't profitable. Congress decided that it wasn't a good idea to orphan all those small communities without any inter city transit, so they created 5311-f funds to subsidize rural intercity transit. Kentucky gets $1.8 million worth of funds, and currently doesn't subsidize any inter-city bus transit of note. Instead, that money is marked as unspent and flows into a larger pot where it is used to subsidize rural on-demand transit services - basically taxis, running with an end-user fare of about $1 per mile.

The time to contribute money to transit is now. We can take a major step towards improved regional transportation around Louisville. Through the tireless efforts of Metro Council, KIRA, and CART, we are very close to operating two exciting demonstrations:

1. An "inspection train" on the Paducah & Louisville track, going from downtown Louisville out to Elizabethtown KY, a model of what a commuter rail line could look like on that corridor.
2. A city-to-city bus ride back to Louisville aboard a Miller Transportation's bus, a model for a better way of connecting Kentucky's cities.

Click Read More for how to contribute!