While the COVID-19 pandemic certainly played a role in the steep decline in ridership over the past year, the Hop averaged 495 riders per day in December, but that number fell all the way to 450 in April, when the weather was obviously much nicer and COVID vaccines were widely available, making people who might have been otherwise reluctant more likely to venture back out into society. Thirty-seven of those trains pulled up and pulled away without gaining a single new rider.” In that time, 48 trains passed by the Cathedral Square platform, but just 22 people got on board. “We wanted to see what it looked like for ourselves,” reported FOX 6 Milwaukee’s Bryan Polcyn, “so on April 27 - a partly cloudy Tuesday with a high of 70 degrees, we watched a single streetcar platform for eight hours, 9 a.m. Now the public isn’t even willing to sink $0 into a ride on the Hop, as ridership has plummeted to just 450 rides per day. After the first year, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and the Hop’s other supporters knew that the original plan to charge $1 per ride would be a nonstarter as Milwaukeeans would be unlikely to sink even such a minimal cost into a streetcar that only travels in a two-mile loop. #TIME SINK FALLACY FREE#Thanks to a sponsorship deal with Potawatomi Hotel and Casino, rides were free for the first year.Įven then, ridership waned once the novelty wore off. The word “business,” however, shouldn’t be taken literally. The Hop, a $128 million boondoggle paid for with a combination of federal money and tax incremental financing, opened for business in late 2018. This, on a much larger scale, is what the City of Milwaukee has been doing with its streetcar system for years, and the terrible film it’s decided to keep watching is a horror movie. In order to justify this investment to ourselves, we invest even more in a vain attempt at salvaging it. #TIME SINK FALLACY MOVIE#The price of the movie tickets and the hour we spent in the theater are sunk costs, meaning that they cannot be recovered. The answer lies in what’s known as the “sunk cost fallacy”-our tendency to invest more of our time and money into things that we have already invested our time and money. Besides, why would we want to keep watching a movie we hate? It’s beautiful outside and if we leave now we can watch the sunset from the bar patio down the street. At this point, we might as well stick it out, right? #TIME SINK FALLACY PLUS#But we’re an hour in and paid $28.50 for two tickets plus another $25 for popcorn and sodas. We’ve all been there: We know the movie we’re watching is terrible. If the hull is breached beyond repair, let it sink.Milwaukee’s streetcar was always a massive boondoggle but, as Dan O’Donnell writes, its problems are now worse than ever. So, if the relationship still has an intact hull, let it sail on its own merits. Sinking more ships won’t make the first ones rise.Īnd the past shouldn’t dictate your future. When deciding if a relationship should continue, look at the value it brings to the present and the predicted value in the future, not the investments already made. Energy invested in the past doesn’t promise a return in the future. Moving forward because of sunk costs won’t make you happier. As such, they should not be considered in the decision of whether or not to continue the relationship. The years (or even weeks or months) of time and emotional investment have already occurred and cannot be recovered. In a relationship, the sunk cost fallacy can keep people together even when they may be better apart. It may not feel like money well spent, but at least it would be time well spent. You would be best served by writing off the money spent and using your time for something beneficial. Pretty silly, huh? I mean, the money is gone regardless of if you turn up at the class or use that time to perfect your soap whittling skills (something which I assume is preferable to the class in question). However, because you paid up front, you view the money as wasted if you do not attend, so you continue to show up, hating every minute. If you were paying per class, you obviously would simply stop going. You go to two classes and decide you hate the course and find the instructor particularly grating. It should not have any bearing on our decision going forward.Ī non-relationship example of the sunk cost fallacy would be the money paid up front for a monthly membership to a class. This fallacy relates to costs (financial, time, energy) that have already been invested and cannot be recovered. There are many fallacies that we fall prey to, but there is one in particular that plays a dominant role in relationships. We tend to think of ourselves as rational creatures when the reality is often anything but. I love learning about how our brains operate and how they often fool us.
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