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Efforts to regionalize bus service get rolling
Feb 14, 2012 (The Garden City Telegram - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Plans to regionalize bus service for southwest Kansas were discussed Monday at the Finney County Transit Center.
Following similar talks in Dodge City and Gray County earlier in the day, Joel Wright and Kathleen Hornish-Doucet, both of Team Tech, a company hired by the Kansas Department of Transportation to assist in regionalizing bus service in Kansas, met with the Finney County Transit (FIT) board. Ryan Gallivan, another consultant hired by KDOT, was on hand to compile input and data from the board in order to begin planning possible bus routes between southwest Kansas communities.
Gallivan discussed the current demand for City Link, which operates routes in Garden City. FIT Director Bonnie Burgardt said the demand for the local service has exploded since its inception in September 2007.
"Before we implemented City Link, we were doing about 13,000 rides a year, and last year we had 77,177," Burgardt said.
Before City Link, bus service only was available on a demand-response basis, meaning that riders could call and ask to be picked up at any time of day. The City Link service provides fixed schedules and pickup locations throughout Garden City. The demand-response service is now limited to people who are disabled as certified by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
After gaining more information about the current bus service, Gallivan asked board members and city officials where they foresaw fixed routes three to five years from now.
Burgardt said that it was difficult to predict, given the high growth in ridership, and that she could not foresee whether the demand for the service would ever plateau.
Despite the transit system's rapid growth, City Manager Matt Allen brought up funding concerns.
"Prohibitors of the system growing is the limitations of KDOT funding and the percentage funding is eroding -- slowly, but it is eroding," he said. "We don't have anything that has a slope like the transit system ridership. It has just gone crazy. However, we can't build on that because any growth in the program would probably come entirely at local expense and the math doesn't work when you aren't getting 85 to 90 percent from an outside source."
Because many Garden City residents commute to Dodge City for work at National Beef Packing, and many Dodge City residents commute to work at Tyson Fresh Meats in Garden City, Gallivan said another source of funding could come from those employers.
"There are things you could do within those parameters, so for example, a meat packing plant that is struggling to find reliable workforce because people aren't showing up -- that means they have a need and public transit has the ability to help fill that need," Gallivan said. "Any time you go through and add service to a new destination, you have to find a way to pay for it."
Allen said when the current buses available have capacity for only 14 passengers at a time, this would be a difficult stance to take with those employers because it would require employees arriving for shift work at varied times.
Cathy Burkhart, mobility manager of Ford County and Dodge City, said that 14 to 20 passenger buses are the largest that KDOT allows due to funding regulations.
However, Harnish-Doucet discussed another funding model through KDOT.
"In laying out the 24-month plan for Flint Hills Regional, we also put in there as one of the strategies that we would need KDOT to provide what we call support funding. ... Use that bridge financing that you need when you have a project that you need to get through to a certain point until funding comes in from normal sources," Harnish-Doucet said.
Despite possible funding issues, the board agreed that there is a need for service among communities. Sister Janice Thome, FIT board member, said that there are a number of people in Garden City who must travel to Dodge City for either medical treatment that is unavailable in Garden City, or to the Social Security offices located there. Service to and from Holcomb, to the Garden City regional airport, and offering weekend routes also were discussed.
Burgardt said that eight counties in southwest Kansas, including Finney, Ford, Gray, Scott, Kearny, Wichita, Greeley and Hamilton make up one of four pilot programs in the state in which KDOT hired Team Tech to work on regionalization plans in different areas of the state.
"(Today), we're going to be going to Greeley County, Wichita County and Hamilton County and the day after we'll go to Kearny and Scott Counties for this same type of discussion," Burgardt said. "We will then be holding a meeting on March 5 at the city building, where Ryan Gallivan will present a preliminary route plan based on all of the information he gathers from those eight counties."
___ (c)2012 The Garden City Telegram (Garden City, Kan.) Visit The Garden City
Telegram (Garden City, Kan.) at www.gctelegram.com Distributed by MCT
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