When you’re a struggling veteran in the Green Bay area, you learn to embrace public transportation. In that regard, the draw is pretty good. Green Bay Metro has a great bus line with friendly drivers and service that runs very well.

After hours, they contract to VIA for an On Demand service. Or GBM On Demand. That service is also pretty good. It’s essentially an Uber that you share for a fraction of the price.

There are only two problems with that service. 1) It gets abused by school kids who treat it like a personal taxi (that is another matter entirely that the community as a whole is dealing with). And 2) there are riders that request rides and never show up. Wasting the time of the driver and any other riders that happen to be in the vehicle.

I’m happy to see a policy going through the government channels here in Green Bay to address the second concern.

The proposed no show policy would issue a warning to riders for the first and second infraction, followed by a 7 days suspension for the third.

I’m fine with the warnings. Sometimes the universe throws a bad customer in front of you at the grocery store, or your phone service may hit a dead zone and the arrival time jumps on you.

The 7 day suspension is fair. If they wanted to make it 14 days on the fourth violation, and a month on the fifth that would be fine by me too. But any progress is promising.

No show rides make honest riders late to work, even when buffering for travel time. It also puts strain on drivers, and wastes taxpayer dollars.

Green Bay leaders should support this ordinance. And take another step towards improving transportation services in the region even more.