<p>Citing a potential budget deficit of nearly $1 million for the next fiscal year, the Vineyard Transit Authority administration and advisory board voted unanimously this week to drastically reduce service for the winter season.</p>
Citing a potential budget deficit of nearly $1 million for the next fiscal year, the Vineyard Transit Authority administration and advisory board voted unanimously this week to drastically reduce service for the winter season.
The service cuts and projected deficit partly reflect the aftermath of the turmoil experienced by the VTA this summer during a tense, monthlong driver strike.
The strike ended in July when a contract was reached with union drivers, but VTA administrators said the fallout will include deep cuts in winter service.
According to VTA administrator Angela Grant, the projected budget deficit for 2021 can be tracked to three factors.
First, she said the VTA lease for its operations center at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport must be renewed this year, which is expected to cost $100,000.
Second, she said the VTA insurance policy doubled this year, with an expected cost of $200,000.
Finally, due to the new contract with VTA bus drivers following the conclusion of the monthlong strike, maintaining the same level of service will cost an additional $650,000 to $700,000 — all adding up to nearly $1 million. The VTA’s total operating budget last year was about $6 million.
The changes this winter will especially affect up-Island service. Only two routes run through Chilmark and Aquinah in the off season: Routes 4 and 5. Route 4 (West Tisbury, Chilmark and Menemsha via North Road) will be suspended. And according to the VTA website, it remains “to be determined” whether Route 5 (West Tisbury, Chilmark and Aquinnah via South Road) will run consistently.
Effective Dec. 1 through March 29, there will be no service on Routes 2 (Vineyard Haven-West Tisbury via Lambert’s Cove and Old County Roads), 7 (Oak Bluffs-Airport via County and Barnes Roads), 8 (South Beach) and 9 (Oak Bluffs-Hospital-Airport via Barnes and County Roads). There will be significant reductions on Routes 3 (West Tisbury-Vineyard Haven via State Road), 5 (up-Island via South Road) and 6 (Edgartown-Airport-West Tisbury). Normal seasonal reductions will be in effect on Routes 1, 10, 10A and 13 (all are down-Island routes).
There will also be no service on Sundays, except on route 10 (Tisbury Park and Ride).
Service reductions will also take place during the shoulder season, which runs from Sept. 29 through Nov. 30, on routes 1, 7, 9 and 13, and there will be no service on routes 2, 4, 8 and 10A, the VTA said.
A complete list of the changes appears on the VTA website.
The cuts drew criticism at a meeting of the VTA advisory board held Tuesday.
“I don’t think this is fair at all,” said Carlton Crocker, community rider representative and a frequent rider of the up-Island routes.
The scope of the service reductions are unprecedented, Ms. Grant acknowledged this week. In previous years all routes have run throughout the shoulder season and into the winter with only slight reductions to service to accommodate the lighter off-season traffic.
Because 85 per cent of off-season ridership is on Routes 1, 10 and 13, “that is where we will concentrate our resources. Great care will be taken to keep the most popular departures for our year-round population,” a statement on the website said.
According to numbers issued by Ms. Grant, routes that will not run this winter would have carried about 102 people each day; adding up to almost 12,000 passenger trips throughout the course of the season. Though this is only 15 per cent of VTA ridership, it includes a significant number of people who rely on the VTA for transportation to and from work, advisory board members said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Crocker voiced concern over the impact the service reductions will have on residents. He proposed maintaining or combining some of the routes that will be cut. He said the VTA administration has “conflicting interests” that pit the seasonal community against year-round residents, such as himself and people who live along the up-Island routes that will not run in the winter months this year.
“We have a very diverse customer base and balancing all those needs is difficult,” Ms. Grant responded.
“I’m not going to pretend to say that this won’t have an impact on some people,” she continued. “But this is an exercise in trying to figure out what we can afford and what we can’t.”
Full-time drivers walked off the job on June 28 in a highly visible strike that galvanized the community, even though bus service continued to run with replacement drivers. Under a new contract ratified by the drivers on July 28, hourly wages for all drivers will increase on a scale according to seniority and other factors.
After the strike ended, Ms. Grant issued a statement that the administration would be reviewing ridership data to make a recommendation to the board on the amount of service cuts that would be necessary to keep the books balanced. The winter service reductions would trim the budget deficit by about $200,000, according to an estimate by recently-appointed Edgartown advisory board member Mark Snider.
Over the past year, the VTA has also raised fares for both single trip and full-day passes in order to generate more revenue.
Tisbury representative Elaine Miller urged the board to remember that the budget deficit is not due to the VTA drivers demanding a living wage, but to state government which does not grant adequate funding to accommodate all the needs of the public transit system.
“If we want to increase service in the winter, we will need additional funding,” Ms. Miller said. “That is the message I want to take back to my selectmen.”
In order to qualify for funding from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, however, routes must meet certain boarding criteria for numbers of passengers. Ms. Grant said none of the routes that will be closed meet the criteria, making it more difficult to obtain the funding that would keep them running.
“There are a lot of people we have to please,” she concluded. “And the state is one of them.”
Comments
Payback for the strike.
AB OBPayback for the strike.
It takes 3 drivers to service
BS Oak BluffsIt takes 3 drivers to service the main up island routes, 3, 6 and 5. If they ran those routes for 12 hours a day it would be 36 hours of labor. The recent wage increase is around $2 an hour. So they are shutting these routes down because they can't handle an increase of $72 a day? When the administrator found the money in the budget to give herself almost $30k in raises over the last 3 years? It's time to pull back the curtain on VTA finances.
Ms. Grant mishandled the
T Bone IBMs. Grant mishandled the union and now mishandles the budget. All to the Island’s detriment. If the Board wasn’t in her pocket i’d recommend her replacement. She’s clearly overpaid and not the right person for the job.
As someone who lives on Beach
Frank Brunelle Vineyard HavenAs someone who lives on Beach Road this reduction in service is puzzling. The # 13 is supposedly responsible among two other routes for 80% of the service. How dismal must the other routes be! They run nearly empty most of the time in season, in the off season they are really dismal. What is going on? For a long time we have been asking for passenger counts and we never hear a word. We should be able to also know the CO2 per passenger mile for each route. Also, no response. This is crazy! A person can be at five corners, see three buses transit through the intersection, and easily less than 6 passengers between all of them. And this is in season. Something is really wrong with all of this and the buses are huge. When the cruise ships come in they fill up but they do not pull into the parking lot, they sit there on the public road for a long, long time while they load and then they take off for Oak Bluffs and Edgartown. Traffic is backed up, everyone waits, if they want to take on these passengers from the cruise ships shouldn't they at least pull into the lot and exit the lot like the tour buses do? This is out of control. How do they justify their actions?
All busses into Edgartown
Jane Chittick Main Street EdgartownAll busses into Edgartown pass right in front of my house and exit past my house .I love the public transit system. It is needed. HOWEVER, these huge busses even in full summer are NEVER full - in fact, only a handful of people come in and out of town. The small busses (vans) make such more sense -- why are we running huge busses? Further, the NOISE from these busses as they turn from Pease's Point Way North onto Main Street to exit town is DEAFENING (the only exception is the electric bus).Let's hope newly appointed VTA member MARK SNIDER-- a businessman -- can bring common sense to this 'runaway bus' system.
The cost of those electric
Ted VHThe cost of those electric buses put a big dent in the bottom line.
What did anyone expect? The
Paul OBWhat did anyone expect? The money has to come from somewhere. Oh and by the way, where does the State get its money to fund public transportation?....That's right taxes. I'm all for a living wage but we all must remember that we all have to pay for it or suffer the consequences of reduced services. You cant have the same service with higher costs without paying more.
It appears Ms. Grant is
David ChilmarkIt appears Ms. Grant is tossing an administrative tantrum. Perhaps look at her $30k in pay raises and re-examine the contract with TCI. How much are they getting? When was that contract last bid out?
Let's keep in mind a new
BS Oak BluffsLet's keep in mind a new driver with the VTA who chooses family health insurance brings home $280 a week BEFORE taxes. The new contract is not breaking the bank, mismanagement is the cause of the deficit.
If you want to cut service, I
Sara Piazza EdgartownIf you want to cut service, I have a suggestion. Thirty buses an hour go back and forth in front of my house on Main Street during July and August. They are too big, too fast, and too loud. They hiss, they belch, they roar, they spew fumes, they are too wide for the road and bully the bicycles into the gutter. I have watched them on the corner of Green and Main come within inches of mowing down bicyclists and pedestrians. These monsters have ruined the town of Edgartown, if not the whole Island. I'm not against public transportation for the good of the community, but this is out of control. There is no reason that thirty buses an hour need to go past my house during the summer. There is no reason that those huge monstrous machines need to come all the way down to Church Street, where some days the queue is so long they have to keep circling the block. They need to stop at the Triangle and they need to stop at the West Tisbury Rd. and on Katama Rd. where people would have the option to either walk the rest of the way, which would get them into town faster than sitting in traffic, by the way, or if they really need to ride the rest of the way they could get into a smaller van. Come and sit on my porch some time and take in the spectacle that is the monster VTA buses. VTA is out of control. These monster buses are too big for the island, and definitely too big for our historic villages.
People are not going to walk
BS Oak BluffsPeople are not going to walk from the triangle. Would 90 vans be preferable to 30 buses passing by your house? How many cars pass by your house an hour? Maybe we should ban cars downtown and make everyone use public transportation.
BS - sorry, but those are
Sara Piazza EdgartownBS - sorry, but those are false assumptions and your numbers are wrong. Many of the buses are empty. And yes, if people actually knew that the last 1/2 mile of the trip into town involved sitting in backed up traffic, many would opt to get out and walk. Also, more foot traffic would actually improve the up-town businesses because it would get people out of their vehicles and they might actually enter some of those businesses rather than driving by rather than having to deal with pulling off the road into a small parking lot and not being able to get back out across the bike path, pedestrians, and two lanes of traffic. We need a new paradigm. Why do we need to accommodate every single person who comes here, at our own peril? I'm not saying "no buses," or "no public transportation" - I'm saying we need to rethink the manner in which we are providing this service - and I am most vehemently saying that those monster VTA buses, as they are now, are totally out of place here - clogging the roads while they're only partially pulled over while the driver is patiently waiting for a passenger to fish out a few dollar bills to feed into the antiquated payment machine (with one person on the bus, meanwhile inconveniencing ten cars behind it), or stopped in traffic heading into Edgartown so the bus can clear the corner at Pease's Point Way - while carrying one passenger) and they are most definitely and unarguably wrong for downtown Edgartown. (Oh, yay for the quiet electric buses! Really? They are much wider than the regular buses. Why don't you ask a driver of the new electric buses how they like maneuvering around the corners in Downtown Edgartown - they don't) We could have buses half the size - with less offensive roaring engines and hissing air breaks and foul fumes, and still offer decent service - and no, that would not mean 60 round trips past my house because the buses are not full. And it wouldn't mean more cars because those tourists wouldn't be driving one anyway. Even having half the buses stop on the outskirts of Edgartown, would make a difference. The invitation is open, come spend some time on my porch while we still have a bit of the season, and then tell me what you think.
But we need the VTA -- many
island girl WTBut we need the VTA -- many working people, and/or seniors and juniors as well depend upon the bus system. It allows folks to get around the island without resorting to a traffic clogging vehicle and those who don't or can't drive have reasonably priced transportation. And yes, tourists to use them -- particularly those from other countries. However, we don't need the BIG buses -- shy not schedule the smaller buses on routes with lower traffic or during the off season. This is a vital service -- sort of like school buses -- and we are darned lucky to have it.
It does seem that a very thorough analysis needs to be made of the budget and some thoughtful fiscal planning undertaken. The buses have to have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars -- including the recent acquisition of the electric buses. They weren't inexpensive and I believe that that some towns have invested in infrastructure to charge those buses up during routine stops.
This seems like a hissy fit retaliatory move.
Yes, the buses may be virtually empty off-season but schedule the small buses during those times.
Public transportation is not a luxury; it is a necessity particularly on our super costly island. We should be encouraging this service -- but it needs to be run cost effectively! -- and expanding it not discontinuing service, even if only temporarily.
We Love The Island;it is our
Rusty Shackleford West TisburyWe Love The Island;it is our home. Every year for the last 35 years, it has gotten worse as far as us enjoying this paradise during the tourist season.It is the same for , every mainland tourist spot in the country. Cram more people to a place, more busses, more cars, more air and land and water pollution. It might sound redundant to you, at first, but some destinations have had to go by allotments of "people/car" limitations. It might seem like a tough solution, but being an island, a confined space of land, MV has exceeded it's "full capacity". Do something NOW, or someday it could become an island of casinos and hotels.
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