Green Mountain Transit bus stop on Pearl Street.Photo credit: Camila Van Order Gonzalez
Five years of data analyzed by Community News Service shows the state's largest transit system is nearing an inflection point on a backdrop of disruptive trends.
Will Gisbond performed the data analysis for this article in collaboration with Michaela Fudrig, assistant professor of mathematics and statistics.
by Will Gisbondcommunity news service As Green Mountain Transit reinstates fares on city buses for the first time since 2020, the company is struggling with a need for revenue, a desire to retain riders and concerns that the lives of those who stay there will be worse off. It seems that they are suffering from conflicting pressures. Now, airline leaders say not only will service likely be cut, but fare increases will continue.
“I think it's very likely that we'll have to make some adjustments over the next six months as we start to see what kind of revenue we're going to get from fares,” GMT general manager Clayton Clark said. If revenue goals are not met, major intercity service in and around Burlington will increase.
Five years of data analyzed by Community News Service shows the state's largest transit system is nearing its tipping point against a backdrop of disruptive trends.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Green Mountain Transit began reducing fares across the state, looking for ways to help Vermonters cope with the crisis while fighting the spread of the virus. has been abolished. Without fares, passengers could sit in the back of the bus and avoid passing. row of people. GMT continued free rides in 2020 and 2021 with the help of federal funding, but faced tough finances and began considering reinstating fares. GMT leaders called on lawmakers to provide funding to continue services during reopening plans. Lawmakers responded by giving GMT more than $2 million over the next two years to keep the service free.
The latest relief package issued by Congress in 2023 came with a caveat. In exchange for $850,000, GMT would have to scrap fares in 2024 and require 10% of its revenue to come from fares. This situation sets the stage for the confusion currently facing GMT leaders as they seek to reinstate fares on May 20th. However, the airline does not expect to meet 10% of its own budget, expecting fares to remain at around 8%.
Ridership data provided by GMT to CNS from September 2018 to February 2024 shows some areas of the system had healthier ridership, while others saw mixed results. It has been shown that
April is one of the least volatile months due to school holidays and vacations. His 14 days in April 2023 saw a significant increase in ridership compared to the same period in 2019, suggesting more people may have chosen to take the free buses. .
However, other two-week periods with similar conditions have broken that trend, showing that the elimination of fares has not necessarily increased ridership post-pandemic. Above all, the numbers show that passenger numbers have not yet fully returned to pre-pandemic levels.
“If we had done a free experiment outside of the context of a global pandemic, we probably would have gotten different results,” said Jamie Smith, GMT's director of planning and marketing. Although this is the industry standard, ridership has fallen quite significantly (after fare-free). ”
This data shows how GMT's services depend on specific groups, such as students. Clear declines and increases in ridership are evident across the data as college students leave for and return from school vacations. Holiday seasons and unexpected weather changes can also impact overall passenger numbers.
Smith also said the data is not necessarily reliable, given that fare boxes have not been touched since 2020 and drivers are counting passengers manually using keypads. Ta. This is most likely in conjunction with several known failures in GMT's data communications system. This accounts for the large “peaks and valleys” in the data, Smith said.
make the service “worse”
Clark said the decline in ridership and associated revenue from pre-pandemic levels is an industry-wide phenomenon, and even if GMT meets the 10 criteria, it will see about 30% of its service decline in the second half of the year. They say they have been forced to cut their production by 30%. % of revenue target originally reported by The Williston Observer.
Clark told CNS that the only situation in which such service cuts could be avoided would be if GMT received 2.5 times its current projected revenue. Currently, GMT is budgeting for fare revenue to account for approximately 8.2% (approximately $1.6 million) of its fiscal year 2025 budget. “I think it's unlikely that we'll see a spike in usage when costs come back up,” Clark said.
Dana Rowangould, a public transportation professor at the University of Vermont's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, explained the domino effect. Reduced ridership translates into lost revenue, and lost revenue often means reduced routes and time.
“Those who have the resources to do something else can quit, but those who don't have those resources are stuck in a service that is getting worse,” she says. “And the more people retire, the worse things get. It's like a cycle.”
Rowangould and PhD student Partha Pezeshknejad have been studying this dynamic since 2020, understanding that the pandemic has accelerated a perpetual cycle of inequitable transportation choices. They have published some studies and are working on others in the meantime. So far, their findings are overwhelmingly clear. Things like quality of service have become more important to people since the pandemic subsided, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to adapt to reality as transit agencies like GMT struggle financially. .
Rowan Gould and Pezesiknejad, who surveyed transit users in Toronto and Vancouver in the fall of 2022, found that 70% of respondents believed the pandemic was “here to stay,” and that people's changed transit habits (remote (such as options that suggest a permanent change). At the time of the survey, 13% said they had no plans to return to using public transport.
Clark said GMT leaders hope the new fare system will at least ease the burden on frequent flyers. The transit authority is implementing a $50 monthly fare cap. This means that if he rides an urban route twice a day, it will only take about 13 days for the rest of the month's rides to be free.
“The new system, in some ways, protects the people who use the service the most,” Clark said.
Ms Rowangould said she was disappointed to hear that GMT was considering further fare increases to combat the deterioration in service. She was hopeful that federal relief money that has been poured into the transportation industry over the years would help the agency “weather the storm.”
But now that funding has dried up. “Unfortunately, I'm not surprised (about future fare increases),” Lowangould said. “You know, their hands are tied.”
Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide free content to local news organizations.