Candidates all favor better public transit

• By AMY WOLD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Sep 16, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.
• Editor’s note: This is the eighth in a series about the candidates for the 12 Metro Council seats in the Oct. 4 primary. Due to coverage of Hurricanes Gustav, the stories are not being published in numerical order by district. The interviews were conducted before the hurricane hit Louisiana.

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The three candidates running for Metro Council District 6 agree that public transportation needs to be improved to help alleviate traffic.

They have slightly different ideas, however, about how to make those improvements.

Running for the District 6 seat in the Oct. 4 primary are Democrats Donna Collins-Lewis and Sarah Holliday and incumbent Martha Jane Tassin, a Republican.

For this story, the candidates were asked about traffic, crime, economic development, and taxes and fees.

All three agree that more needs to be done to promote and make using public transportation easier.

“The public transportation needs to be addressed,” Collins-Lewis said, but gave no specifics.

Holliday said the system doesn’t work because of the times of operation and the routes.

“People can’t get to and from their jobs,” Holliday said. “They can’t get where they need to go.”

People must be able to get where they need to go in a reasonable amount of time for the public transit system to be effective, she said.

“If they want us to be a city like Atlanta or Dallas, we should have a transportation system like those cities,” Holliday said.

Tassin said that in addition to improving the bus system in the parish, officials also need to investigate other options, like rapid transit along main roads or light rail service between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

“That’s certainly not going to happen overnight,” Tassin said. “But it is a step in the right direction.”

Addressing crime
Tassin said the Metro Council needs to make sure law enforcement has the best training and equipment possible. This year, police will have two academies to graduate new officers and the council has funded another 30 police officers on the beat.