GATEWAY ridership gets look
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on September 28, 2014 1:50 AM
GATEWAY's board of directors spent Thursday afternoon's meeting analyzing ridership numbers and the cost of implementing an automated tracking system for rural route vehicles.
Ridership numbers, detailed by GATEWAY director Alfred Fontana in his director's update, revealed that the rural routes have an average ridership of 2.14 riders per hour stretched across 15 vans.
"Essentially the rural route is transporting one person every half hour," Fontana said. "To balance the rural route funding, we would need to increase ridership to 3.5 people per hour, which is unrealistic. A more realistic number would be 2.6 people per hour."
Current operating expense for the rural route is $42.04 per hour. The cost per passenger was $19.61, and increasing ridership to 2.6 people per hour would result in a break even cost of $16.16 per rider.
Riders pay $12 to ride the rural buses, and operating costs would need to be reduced to $25.68 per hour to maintain the current billing rate. Fontana said he would be working hard until the next board meeting in October to find a rate to charge that would satisfy both riders and keep the operating costs in the black.
"I'll be getting more reliable data before I make a recommendation on what we should do," Fontana said. "The $12 fee is too low, and we'll lose money on rural operations if the rate stays at $12. The further along you go with the $12 fee, the further you're going to go in the hole. By the time the November board meeting rolls around, we should take action."
Fontana also said increasing ridership is a pertinent concern, as this would help subsidize operating costs.
For the 2013-14 fiscal year, the urban route had 222,090 riders and the rural route had 59,442 riders.
Fontana introduced a plan to potentially install automated tracking software on rural vans last board meeting, and said it would cost $50,000 to install the equipment and train all employees on how to use it.
After speaking with CTS Software, the company providing the service, Fontana said the actual cost would be $27,000 to install the equipment and provide training, as well as an additional $600 per month cost for maintenance and cellular data charges.
One position would be eliminated by the installation of the software, freeing up $23,000 to put toward the purchasing of the system. Ideally, board members said, the person currently holding the position who manually enters the ridership data will be moved to another position within the GATEWAY system.
The GATEWAY board plans to apply for a Community Transportation Program grant from the North Carolina Department of Transportation for the 2015-16 fiscal year.
A public hearing will be held on Oct. 30 at 10 a.m. in the anteroom at City Hall to discuss the grant.