Article published October 17, 2009
TARTA seeks to end holiday service, cut Sunday hours
| TARTA OUTLOOK |
• The agency is proposing to save $1.88 million byreducing some bus hours
and routes.
• Hearings are scheduled for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. an |
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By DAVID PATCH
BLADE STAFF WRITER
TARTA buses would run for fewer hours on Sundays, not at all on six major holidays, and less frequently during off-peak hours the rest of the week under a package of proposed cuts intended to offset a forecasted decline in the agency's levy revenue.
A fare increase also is likely.
The routes-and-schedules proposal that James Gee, the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority's general manager, will present during open-house hearings Thursday includes eliminating four commuter express routes, lengthening the time between evening "line-up" trips by 10 minutes, and dropping weekend service on two routes.
The net result, Mr. Gee said, will be eliminating 47,000 annual bus-hours of service, which is expected to save the transit authority about $1.88 million.
"We looked first at [cutting] the services with the lowest ridership, like the holidays, and after that, we really looked at preserving the service-area coverage as much as we could," he said.
The open-house hearings are scheduled for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the transit authority's headquarters at 1127 West Central Ave. If implemented, the route cancellations and schedule changes would start Dec. 27.Mr. Gee said he also plans to recommend fare increases, including raising basic bus fare from $1 to $1.25. A separate hearing about fares likely will be scheduled for mid-November, he said.
Unlike routes and schedules, a fare increase must be approved by the transit authority's board of trustees. Mr. Gee said he expects to have a recommendation ready for the trustees' Dec. 3 meeting, with an eye toward implementing any increase in January. A 25-cent increase would boost revenue by an estimated $150,000.
The transit manager warned of a need to cut service and raise fares when he advised the trustees early this month that TARTA's property-tax revenue is expected to drop by about $900,000 next year after property revaluations by the Lucas County auditor.
Mr. Gee said he is recommending a much deeper cut, rather than one of about $900,000, because he expects further losses in tax revenue while TARTA's operating costs are likely to keep rising.
"We don't want to make this cut and then have to come back in six months and make another one," he said.
TARTA is on the brink of contract negotiations with the union representing its drivers and mechanics, and has sustained ridership losses in the past year because of regional job losses and retreating gasoline prices. Mr. Gee said some bus riders were lost because of a previous round of service cuts implemented last summer, when skyrocketing fuel prices pinched its budget faster than rising ridership boosted farebox revenue.
The six holidays that would lose service are New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
TARTA runs about 155 bus-hours of service on those days, Mr. Gee said, and with drivers and mechanics paid time-and-a-half to work those days, service elimination would save about $9,000 per day.
Sunday service would be cut back to about nine hours in the middle of the day, with the first trips leaving the downtown Toledo bus loop at 10:45 a.m. and the last trips departing at
6:45 p.m.
The 28/30 route serving central Toledo via Lincoln and Indiana avenues, and the 34 Detroit/Byrne/Western route in South Toledo - would lose all weekend service.
City Councilman Michael Ashford, whose central Toledo district includes neighborhoods served by the No. 28/30 bus, said he would ask for a meeting with TARTA officials to discuss the cuts.
"I'm very greatly disappointed. There are a lot of people in that area who depend on transit," he said. "If you're in the service industry, you're usually working weekends."
A small route in Maumee is proposed to be dropped. Mr. Gee said ridership on the 34K bus along Key Street and Dussel Drive is weak and can be handled by the Maumee Call-A-Ride route.
The 34K trips will be replaced by additional trips on the 34H route that covers most of the same stops except for Key and Dussel. That change would allow one less bus to be on the road, Mr. Gee said.
The four runs to be dropped are expresses from park-and-ride lots at Southland Shopping Center in South Toledo and St. Joseph Church in Sylvania to the Owens-Illinois campus in Perrysburg, and from St. Joseph's and River Place in Perrysburg to Arrowhead Park in Maumee.
Each route makes a single morning trip to O-I or Arrowhead and a single afternoon return.
"Those express routes were popular when gas was $4 a gallon. Now that the price of gas has dropped, ridership has dropped too," Mr. Gee said. The routes could be reinstated if gasoline prices soar in the future, he added.
Caroline Merritt and Matt Marinelli, O-I employees who take the bus from Sylvania to Perrysburg every work day, expressed disappointment on hearing of the plan to drop the route.
They said they saved money and enjoyed the ride. Both described the TARTA drivers as "excellent."
"I hope it doesn't happen," Ms. Merritt said.
Evening and weekend "line-up" trips are to run every 80 minutes, instead of every 70 minutes. Mr. Gee said that was primarily an effort to improve on-time performance, because some routes were difficult to complete in 70 minutes.
But it also will mean the last weeknight buses departing downtown will leave at 10:10 p.m. instead of 10:50, potentially affecting workers with evening-shift jobs.
And during midday hours, buses on many routes within Toledo that now run half-hourly would instead run every 45 minutes after the cuts.
Overall, Mr. Gee said, the cuts will reduce TARTA service by about 15 percent.
"There will be significant changes every day," he said. "We are reducing the frequency of the service, but still providing coverage."
Staff writer Carl Ryan contributed to this report.
Contact David Patch at:
dpatch@theblade.com
or 419-724-6094.
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