A Way to Save Money on WAVE Transit?

Remember, folks, whenever government provides something it's never really "free."  This "free" program needs to be looked into if you ask me.

StarNews:

Padgett supports the Wave Transit-operated free trolleys, which loop around downtown seven days a week.

"It is a significant means of transportation," she said. "I think it gets used a lot more than people think it does."

The trolley averaged 7,000 to 9,000 passengers per month last year, according to Wave.

Also, people have reason to be very skeptical of WAVE's passenger numbers. This is what they said in an earlier article:

For the first 11 months of this fiscal year, there were nearly 1.5 million total system passengers who used Wave's fixed route, UNC-Wilmington or para-transit services.

If they're using 'passengers' in the traditional way to mean unique riders it's clearly a lie. There are only 200,000 people in the whole county. If they're using 'passengers' to mean number of times people ride the bus, it's still extremely doubtful. How many people are 'regular' riders of WAVE in the county? 1,000? (The number is really probably far lower.) Each one of those people rode the bus 1500 times last year? Impossible! And that's only 11 months.  Look at how empty the buses are. Something is clearly wrong here.