Future of bus service in jeopardy

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The city of Maricopa’s bus services may have the plug pulled if ridership does not improve drastically according to four city councilmembers.

“People need to start using this service or we will need to discontinue it,” said councilmember Julia Gusse. “We can’t keep spending money on a program that is failing when the city is bleeding financially.”

A rocky start

The Max, now in its third year, recently had the number of routes it makes to the Valley reduced from three to two and the stops changed from downtown Phoenix to the Tempe area in hopes of increasing ridership.

However, after the changes were implemented in October, the ridership shrank from about 100 rider trips a day to 20.

Since that number has grown to  about 33. A trip defined by the city is a one-way ride on its bus service.

“I don’t know if it is the fact we eliminated fares or increased advertising, but the ridership seems to be improving,” said city Transportation Manager Chris Salas.

When city officials launched the revamped Max service, they also rolled out a new in-town circular service called COMET, which loops through the city Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. till 6 p.m.

The service launched with a fare of $1 per ride, but witnessed zero to one rides a day, until council eliminated the fare. After the fair elimination, ridership increased to four per day.

“We put a fare moratorium in place to increase ridership, but it is clear that isn’t happening at the level we hoped,” said Councilmember Marvin Brown. “”I am not certain right now if the bus services in Maricopa need to continue.”

Councilmember Marquisha Griffin added, “We made changes to the services hoping they would improve ridership, but that has not been the case.”

Councilmember Allan Marchione said he expects to see full buses if the service is to continue.

The fare moratorium is due to expire Jan. 1 and Maricopa Mayor Anthony Smith said it is time for council to start thinking about an appropriate fare.

“I think we need to find a sweet spot between $3 and free,” Smith said.

Eliminating the services

The decision of what fare to charge riders is not the only question councilmember’s will need to answer.

In January the city council must decide if it wishes to reapply for the federal monies that pay for $560,523 of the bus services $786,906 operating costs. The city pays the remainder, $226,383. Those monies pay for the service to operate from October until August.

“I voted to not renew the service originally last year, but changed my mind due to the passionate pleas of community members,” said Councilmember Carl Diedrich “It is going to be important as we evaluate to look at the level of commitment for these programs in the community. The tough part of that evaluation is it must be completed in January, when we only have three months of data on two relatively new services.”

If funding is not renewed the service would end Aug. 31.

However, councilmembers Gusse, Brown and Marchione all said they would consider terminating the bus service earlier, a proposition that Salas said was possible with a 30-day notice to the contract provider.

“Even in the best of cities public transportation is a loss leader, but we have to ask ourselves as a council, is public transit feasible in Maricopa,” Brown said. “I am not certain if we should ride the bus service out until October,”

“Looking at the potential budget shortfall the city may have and lack of ridership with respect to taxpayer dollars spent on matching funds, I don’t see justification to continue public transit in the city of Maricopa,” said Marchione.

If the city council decides to cancel the service, Maricopa will have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars back to the Federal government.

The city was awarded roughly $600,000 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds in September 2009 to facilitate public transit.

To date the city has expended $508,435 on the purchase of two buses and the park and ride lot, which is scheduled for completion in December 2010.

According Salas, if the city were to cancel the service, it would have to pay back the roughly $258,416  spent to build a park and ride facility, return the two buses it purchased using an additional $250,019, and pay for depreciation on the vehicles.

“The monies from the federal government require a project to be in use for a minimum of five years,” Salas said. “If bus services are canceled before then, the funds would need to be repaid.”