On Aug. 1, the San Luis Obispo Regional Transit Authority will raise the cost of its fares for the second time in two years. According to RTA officials, the agency is facing desperate financial times: Federal and state public transportation money is drying up or is tenuous at best, a development that might eventually cause the RTA to drastically cut back on service.
Perhaps the most ominous sign for the future is internal negotiations with an employee union moving at a snail’s pace. The Teamsters want a significant pay raise for their drivers, mechanics, and utility workers. Transportation officials, however, say there’s no money available for workers’ salaries.
SLORTA runs three main bus routes connecting Santa Maria to all parts of San Luis Obispo County. It also operates transportation for the disabled and trolley services in Avila and Cambria. With a fleet of 40 buses, it ties the counties together for the poor, the elderly, and people who simply don’t want to rely on the internal combustion engine.
The RTA’s board has approved a 25-cent increase in the basic fare rate, and rates for the elderly and the disabled are expected go up 15 percent. The basic fare will go up to $1.50 from $1.25 and the RTA 31-day pass will go from $35 to $40. This may not sound like much for some, but the cumulative effect might be crippling. Fares have jumped 50 percent since 2007 and further rate hikes are likely if the punishing fiscal times continue.
Unfortunately, the rate hikes will do little to bulk up the precarious financial situation of the RTA. Rider fares only pay for 18 percent of the total costs of a ride. The RTA is dependent on a revolving door of federal, state, and local support to survive. Recently, the state has kept that money to balance its budget.
“We had zero funds from the state this current [fiscal] year,” said Ed King, executive director of the RTA.
Luckily for King and his organization, the federal stimulus bill helped make up for the gap and helped to fully fund the RTA. But now that money will soon be gone, and it’s unlikely there will be any more coming. The state has said it would fully fund its traditional obligation to the RTA and send the money later this year.
“I’m very optimistic,” said King, regarding having enough money to balance the next fiscal year’s $6.9 million budget. He’s said he is aware though, that what Sacramento gives, it can also take back.
For the first time, King said, the RTA has a contingency plan in case funds fall through: Sunday service would be suspended and weekday service would cut back by an hour. This would save $291,980, only a small part of a shortfall should any of the RTA’s fund sources disappear.
What the RTA is going through is happening to nearly every transportation outfit, said Ronald L. De Carli, executive director of the
San Luis Obispo Council of Governments, an organization that provides transportation planning and money to public transportation agencies in the county.
If not for the federal stimulus funds, there “would have been drastic cuts in almost every transit system in the county,” De Carli said.
On top of that, the RTA has been negotiating with its unionized workers since October of last year. The authority used to contract out for much of its bus services, but brought the entire workforce in house last year. The workers voted to be represented by the Teamsters and have been demanding to be paid the same as other city bus drivers and mechanics. The workers were given what a transport official calls a “small bump” in pay and benefits when they were hired, but it was nowhere near enough to bridge the gap between what they were getting before and the going rate for what government workers get paid.
But De Carli said even if the RTA wanted to, there just isn’t any money left over for increased wages. Any salary increases would have to come from reduced services to the public, he said.
—Robert McDonald
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This article appears in Jun 3-10, 2010.