Get on the bus, gus

I'm a pretty big advocate of public transportation, and I hate to see the Port Authority flirt with making such drastic cuts, but I also wonder whether the our transit system operates as efficiently as it could. Somehow, I doubt it. I question, for example, whether there was sufficient demand to re-open the T's Overbrook line. Based on my own anecdotal experiences riding the bus on a regular bus, I wonder if the Port Authority couldn't scale back some its off-peak service. There seem to be an awful lot of near-empty buses running in and out of Oakland every day. And the fact that any money, whether federal, state or local, is being channeled into a massive and unnecessary project like the North Shore subway line while transportation agencies can't even afford to offer basic service is a travesty.