After peaking in October, PART’s ridership shows a decline due to — you guessed it — the decline in gas prices. The colder weather didn’t help, either.

Looks to me like it’s the free market at work, except for the fact that PART’s ridership nowhere near supports its operations. I also can’t help but notice that operations manager David Morris threw in the usual talking point:

Morris said he didn’t know how many cars and other vehicles were not traveling on the region’s roads and highways because of the increased ridership on PART buses.

But reducing the number of vehicles improves the region’s environment and safety on the roads and highways, he said. Fewer vehicles mean less emission of pollutants, which improves the air quality. And fewer vehicles also result in less traffic congestion.

The answer is very few. Meanwhile, down in Lexington, officials are wondering how they can help make the I-85 bridge over the Yadkin River shovel ready,* especially now that Gov. Bev Perdue is throwing in her support for the project.

Guess what — the bridge was thought to be shovel ready back in 2005. But — according to Davidson County commissioners’ position statement:

“We know, we think this infrastructure money is going to come. And according to her today, people that are ready with projects will be more apt to get things done. And we know that this I-85 bridge, that the plans had been drawn and it was shovel-ready in 2005 until we had a number of preservationists that decided that maybe we needed to do some more work in that area and for those reasons and others, it was canceled and our money went somewhere else in North Carolina.”

That pretty much sums up exactly why there’s a perception that there are too many cars on the road and “we” need to get people out of their cars through taxpayer-funded programs like PART.

*I’m already tired of that term.