Bus ridership declines amid higher fares

Lynchburg’s bus ridership has steadily eroded since the Greater Lynchburg Transit Company enacted a 33 percent fare hike last October.

In December, the most recently reported month, GLTC recorded 86,600 rider trips on its public routes — a nearly 23 percent drop-off from September and a 3.4 percent decline from the same month one year earlier.

During a board meeting last week, General Manager Mike Carroll said he felt the fare increase was the biggest factor behind the shrinking numbers.

“Money is tight,” Carroll said, adding even “riders of necessity,” who rely on the bus for their daily transportation, will react to higher prices.

One such rider, Lakisha Clark, 35, said this week she’s had to stretch her dollar by taking fewer bus trips.

“I can’t go as many places as usual,” Clark, who’s dependent on the bus, said while waiting for a connection Monday at GLTC’s transfer center. “I’ve got to wait and do everything at one time.”

“I know people don’t think $1 would be that bad, but it is,” she said. “Some people don’t have it.”

The fare hikes, which took effect Oct. 1, were part of a slew of belt-tightening measures GLTC took last year after finding itself mired in a recurring deficit. Initially, a 33 percent across-the-board increase was passed, bumping the cost of a single-trip ticket from $1.50 to $2.

Officials later rolled back the increase on monthly passes, which had jumped from $45 to $60, sparking protests from riders. Starting Jan. 1, the monthly pass price dropped to $50.

But the move was quickly followed by a series of service reductions that proved even more irksome to GLTC riders.

The cuts, made with input from riders, included: nixing all Sunday service; eliminating Route 10; pushing some routes out to one-hour or two-hour service; and moving all start times back one hour.

The measures are expected to save around $183,000. Without those savings, GLTC said it would have been broke in a few months. It still expects to rack up around a $500,000 operating deficit by the end of this fiscal year.

This was the bus company’s second round of cuts. It had previously shaved its night schedule by one hour.

“The new bus schedule is messed up pretty bad,” said Adam Isley, 23, who uses the bus to get to work. “I just don’t think it’s right.”

Riders complained of having to wait an hour or more if their schedules don’t line up with GLTC’s schedule or if a bus is late, making them miss their transfer. Many were particularly steamed about having to pay higher fares for less service.

Jesse Gray, 68, said he has to take a taxi now to get to work on Sundays. The average cab fare is about $15, he said.

“It’s real bad,” Gray said. “It hurts everybody who has to work.”

Gary Hall, 52, said he wouldn’t mind paying more to ride, but thinks it’s unfair to pair fare increases with service reductions.

“To raise fares and then cut service, that’s what bothers me,” he said. “But we’re all stuck having to ride the bus. We depend on it.”

With help from his family, Hall hopes to get his own car soon.

“When you sit there on the weekends, wanting to go to the grocery store or something, but you can’t go nowhere, it kind of motivates you,” he said, of wanting to own a car. “You don’t have your freedom.”

GLTC traditionally sees a dip in ridership during winter months, but last December’s was more severe than 2010’s.

Ridership still was up for the year as a whole. In 2011, GLTC saw a nearly 8 percent ridership uptick on its public routes compared to the year before. This figure only considers activity on routes serving Lynchburg and Amherst County. It does not include Liberty University’s on-campus bus service, which is paid for by the university.

In other news:

• Following last month’s service cuts, GLTC is now adequately staffed and expects to see a significant decline in overtime.

Ballooning overtime for bus drivers has been one of the lead factors in GLTC’s deficit. Officials attribute the chronic cost overruns to an “acute operator shortage.” January’s service reductions cut the workload, though, dropping GLTC’s ideal staff size from 53 to 44 drivers.

No drivers were laid off to accommodate the curtailed staffing needs.

GLTC said it already saw a steep drop in overtime pay over the holidays, when LU drivers were on unpaid furlough until campus service resumed. They expect the trend to continue under the bus system’s new shorter operating hours.

• A re-test of a sophisticated new bus tracking system was mostly successful last month, GLTC said. More work is needed, but officials hope the software will be successfully integrated by mid-spring.

The system, from RouteMatch Software, Inc., will allow riders to monitor a bus’s progress by tracking its location online in real time. It will enable GLTC to create a more sophisticated dispatching system.

The project, paid for by federal stimulus funds, is behind schedule and a test run last December did not go well. But GLTC remains optimistic the project will be a success. The software already is in use within the smaller paratransit bus system.

GLTC has revised its amended discipline code and attendance policy based on input from the employee union.

The union filed a formal grievance and charge with the National Labor Relations Board protesting the initial changes. The new policies were slated to take effect Jan. 1, but were delayed to allow management to meet with union representatives.

Additional changes were made to address the union’s concerns, and the grievance is “dormant for the moment,” Carroll said. He reiterated GLTC felt its original revisions were legal and defensible.

The latest version of the policies will take effect during the first quarter of this calendar year.