November 05, 2004|By Larry Carson | Larry Carson,SUN STAFF
State pressure for cost efficiencies is forcing county transportation officials to pare little-used bus stops and routes and bolster more popular ones to prevent funding cuts to Howard Transit's 25-bus system.
A system of standards the state is using to evaluate local transportation systems has caused a drastic cut to a reverse commuting program that brought workers from downtown Baltimore to entry-level jobs in Howard County and is triggering the local route adjustments, which will take effect in January. The coming route changes follow cuts to bus service in March and a fare increase in July.
Howard Transit's manager, Ray Ambrose, said the changes will affect the Silver bus route from Columbia to Ellicott City, which is being consolidated into the Yellow route. The Purple route along U.S. 1 will see two midday buses instead of three. But night and Sunday service will be bolstered on the Red route, and more service will be added on the Green and Brown routes, he said.
Ambrose and county transportation planner Carl S. Balser said the changes are not cuts in service.
"We're trying to improve efficiency and not jeopardize funding," Ambrose said. "It's not a service cut. It's a reallocation of services."
But Richard Kirchner, chairman of the private Transportation Advocates group that was critical of budget-driven service reductions in the spring and summer, is leery of these proposals, too.
"It's the second major change in routing in 2004," Kirchner said. "Making frequent changes does a disservice to the riders." He added that the last round of cuts lengthened the wait between buses from 45 minutes to one hour, and the fares increased from $1 to $1.50 in July.
The changes are a response to a seven-part efficiency measuring system the state is using to evaluate local transportation programs. If local systems such as Howard Transit cannot meet four or five of the seven standards, they could see funding cuts in the next budget year, said Lenny Howard, chief of regional planning for the Maryland Transit Administration.
The standards set goals, such as raising 20 percent of the annual budget from fares, and include other measures, such as operating costs per hour, per passenger and per mile, local funding levels and the number of passenger trips per mile.
Howard Transit met three standards for fiscal 2003; 2004 figures are being evaluated, Howard said.
"We haven't drawn any hard, fast lines in the sand because we want to give local operators every chance to make adjustments," he said.
"We're very pleased that [Howard County] is being pro-active about it," Howard said, adding that eventually inefficient routes or systems could lose state money.
That has happened to the effort to bring workers from Baltimore.
Howard's reverse commuter program was begun with some fanfare in late 1999, and at its peak brought 100 workers a day from Baltimore to the county, officials said.
But Robert L. Flanagan, the state transportation secretary, ended $600,000 in mostly federal funding for the $880,000-a-year Career Caravan program June 30, according to Balser.
Howard County is continuing the program for about 30 workers a day, using $361,000 gleaned from social services and county funds, and a $1 fare charge to participants. The two buses used are county-owned vehicles, Balser said.
The county's economic development director, Richard W. Story, said the loss of state and federal funding for bringing city workers to the county might hurt businesses in the county.
"We're going to be in the same squeeze we were in three years ago, when businesses were turning away business because they couldn't staff up. Part of the relief valve was getting people from downtown Baltimore," he said.
