The author argues that the transit company should either reduce the shuttle bus fares or increase the price of parking at the subway stations in order to push the commuters to ride the shuttle buses to the subway instead of drive there. Although the author's claim may have merit, his line of reasoning is flawed and thus his claim can't be accepted.The following appeared in the editorial section of a local newspaper:
"Commuter use of the new subway train is exceeding the transit company's projections. However, commuter use of the shuttle buses that transport people to the subway stations is below the projected volume. If the transit company expects commuters to ride the shuttle buses to the subway rather than drive there, it must either reduce the shuttle bus fares or increase the price of parking at the subway stations."
The primary issue with the author's claim comes from not properly analyzing the root cause of the less than projected shuttle rides. The author states that the commuter use of the shuttle buses that transport people to the subway stations is below the projected volume. He then proposes either to reduce prices of shuttle bus fares or increase the price of parking in order to raise the shuttle bus commuters. The author is assuming that people who aren't taking the shuttle bus are driving to the subway. That is a flawed reasoning that could have multiple different answers. It could be possible that the commuters are walking to the subway train or they are being accompanied by someone or taking a cab or riding their bicycle. A deeper analysis of how people are getting to the subway train would be quite useful in proposing a solution.
The secondary issue with the author's claim comes from assuming that there's only a financial reason behind why commuters aren't taking the shuttle buses . There could be a whole lot of reasons why commuters are refusing to take the shuttle buses. It might be that the safety of these buses is below par and commuters would refuse to go on such buses even at a very low cost. Or that these buses take a long time to get to the subway train while commuters are looking for a faster transportation system.
Finally, it could very well be that the company's projections are incorrect. Small errors in the data that led to these projections could have caused the transit's company projections to be higher than what they should actually be.
In summary, the author's argument that the transit company can increase the shuttle bus rides by either reducing the shuttle bus fares or increasing the price of parking at the subway stations is flawed. It would be smart for the transit company to find the reason why not enough commuters are taking the shuttle bus instead of directly proposing measures to increase that number.
