City officials look for alternate ways to fund bus system

With deep cuts in Colorado Springs’ bus service over the past year — and more expected in the next couple months — the city next year will look at alternatives ways of funding transit, including perhaps creating a regional transportation district.

The Colorado Springs City Council recently gave informal approval for a study in 2010 on ways to rebuild a crippled bus system with funding separate from the city’s general fund. One idea popular among transit advocates is a regional transportation district, similar to the one that funds Denver’s extensive light-rail and bus system.

Colorado Springs Vice Mayor Larry Small said the study will look at a variety of ways to save a transit system laid low by budget and service cuts.

 One option, he said, is asking voters permission to create an RTD that is funded by either a sales tax or a mill levy on property. He said another option might be to ask voters for a dedicated sales tax for transit to be administered by the existing Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority.

Currently, only one-tenth of the 1 percent sales and use tax collected by that authority is used for transit. The lion’s share is spent on road and bridge capital projects and on street maintenance.

Small said he has informally approached elected officials in others cities about cooperating in some kind of regional transit system, and they were all at least willing to consider the idea.

The need for something different, he said, is pretty obvious. Before the economy tanked and sales tax revenues slipped, the city funded its Mountain Metropolitan Transit with about $9 million in city general funds and about $6 million to $7 million from RTA tax revenue, with federal and state grants adding even more. In 2010, the city may give the bus system just $268,000, relying on decreasing tax revenue from the RTA to fund a bare-bones operation.

How bare bones? In 2008, Mountain Metro offered 220,000 hours of fixed route bus service and 90,000 hours of paratransit. With the recent defeat of a proposed property tax increase at the polls and a 2010 budget shortfall of $28.9 million, Mountain Metro next year may offer just 104,500 hours of fixed-route service and 81,000 hours of paratransit. Those cuts would mean eliminating some routes, killing the popular FREX commuter service to Denver, and ending all night and weekend bus service.

David Menter, transit planning supervisor for Mountain Metro, said a more robust transit system could be built by bringing in — and giving some responsibility — to other cities in the region and by finding a funding source that is stable from one year to the next.

“That’s the conundrum of transit,” Menter said. “Transit ridership is growing here and nationally, and  we’ve shown that we can put together a pretty good system. But funding has to be stable.”

Of course, with the crushing defeat of  measure 2C, which would have tripled property tax to help fund city operations, it’s unclear what kind of mood local voters will be in should an RTD-type proposal make its way onto a ballot in the coming years.

Small said he expects the study next year will, in part, try to determine what level of transit services residents want and are willing to fund.

 He said he thinks a well-explained ballot issue that promises specific services in exchange for taxpayers’ dollars — much like the 2004 RTA ballot — could be successful.

It just may take a while.

“People are frustrated (with the city),” he said. “It appears to be anger, but really I think people are frustrated about the economy, the lack of jobs, the progress that has been wiped out. …There is no easy, fast fix for that. We just have to work our way out of it.”