Even more Madison Metro riders will be sitting in the dark after Tuesday's City Council vote.

By the barest of margins, 11-9 with 11 votes needed to pass it, the council decided to allow Metro Transit to wrap five more buses in ads between now and April 1, 2009.

The council had already authorized Metro to put full wraps on up to 15 of the city's buses as part of a two-year pilot project that will end just before the next round of City Council elections. Chuck Litweiler, one of three citizens addressing the council, opposed expanding the experiment. No residents spoke in favor of wrapping more buses in ads.

"You can't see out," said one regular bus commuter. "They have to have the lights on even on a sunny day. It degrades the ridership experience. You don't want just the people who have no choice to ride the bus."

Council president and longtime bus wrap opponent Mike Verveer agreed. "The disservice we are doing the riders is the real problem." However, he noted that he does not know from personal experience, as he rarely rides the bus.

North side Ald. Satya Rhodes-Conway is a daily bus commuter from her home near Oscar Mayer to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. She is also one of the two City Council members on the committee overseeing Metro and a member of the Ad Hoc Long Range Metro Planning Committee.

In a very impassioned speech, Rhodes-Conway argued in a strident but not shrill tone, "The only reason we are talking about this is because Metro staff did not respect the pilot program. I support a pilot program, but I don't think we should go back in halfway through and change it."

Revealing her professional training as a scientist, she argued that decisions should be made on the basis of the information gathered in the experiment and warned of the consequences of changing the study's parameters midstream. "Don't mess with it. Wait to the end and then decide. Keep the pilot whole and let's learn from it."

West side Ald. Jed Sanborn, the other council member on the committee overseeing Metro and the sponsor of the proposal, said, "In my perfect world, we wouldn't have this. But it's a matter of trade-offs."

He argued that if the council did not allow Metro to sell the advertising, they would have to cut service, because Metro's 2008 budget included the $50,000 revenue from the sale of the additional wraps.

Metro director Chuck Kamp told the council that Metro does not anticipate making up the $50,000.

If Metro does not generate money to replace the $50,000, the council will have to amend the city's 2008 budget to cover the loss, City Comptroller Dean Brasser said.

Budget amendments must receive 15 affirmative votes to pass. Ald. Zach Brandon, known as the council's budget hawk, said that would never happen. "We've already agreed to this," he said, referring to the council's middle-of-the-night vote in November to allow Metro to leave this revenue in its budget.

"It's really a vote about the budget," Brandon said.

Verveer countered, "It's routine to adjust each department's budget at the end of the year."

Ald. Brenda Konkel said $50,000 out of a budget of more than $40 million was not much and argued that it could be compensated for without cutting service or increasing fares to generate the money.

The City Council members voting against adding the additional bus wraps were Verveer, Rhodes-Conway, Konkel, Marsha Rummel, Paul Skidmore, Robbie Webber, Tim Gruber, Eli Judge and Julia Kerr.

mrathbun@madison.com