BURLINGTON — Carly Sehr said she bought her condo in South Burlington because it sits right on Green Mountain Transit’s No. 11 bus line. She doesn’t own a car and uses the service to commute to and from her job at a grocery store in Burlington.
So Sehr was dismayed to learn that the bus she relies on could stop running next year, she told transit agency leaders and about three dozen other riders at a public hearing in Burlington Wednesday. The hearing was the first of four scheduled this week and next centered on proposed service reductions across the region.
“It’s an unfortunate fact that not everyone who works in Burlington can afford to live in Burlington,” Sehr said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
The No. 11, which runs between downtown Burlington and Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport, is one of three local bus routes in Chittenden County that Green Mountain Transit says it may eliminate next summer in order to save up to $3 million that would fill a projected gap in its operating budget.
The other local routes are the No. 10, which runs between Williston and Essex, and the No. 8, which runs in a loop around Burlington’s downtown and Old North End.
Ending those routes amounts to what Clayton Clark, the agency’s general manager, has called a “worst case scenario.” Before taking that step, the agency would make service reductions on other bus routes in and around Burlington — including reducing the frequency that some buses arrive and limiting some service on weekends.
Green Mountain Transit’s board of commissioners still needs to approve the changes before they take effect. Plans are for an initial slate of reductions to take effect starting in November of this year, before another starting in February 2025 and a final phase, if necessary, in June 2025.
The cuts could impact at least 165,000 total rides per year, according to estimates provided by the union that represents Green Mountain Transit’s bus drivers. The transit agency has said it proposed reductions, where possible, on bus trips that had both relatively low ridership and relatively high operating costs.
But a reduction in weekend bus service in Burlington would, especially, be a challenge for riders whose jobs don’t align with a typical weekday work schedule, said Lillian Smith, a musician who lives in the city, at Wednesday evening’s public hearing.
“It already is hard enough for me, as a musician who works on the weekend, to be able to travel at that time,” said Smith, who, like Sehr, does not have a car.
Several riders at the hearing, including Smith, also voiced support for the agency’s No. 86 Montpelier LINK Express route, a commuter-oriented line that connects Burlington and the capital city. Green Mountain Transit is considering nixing the route next spring, though Clark has said it’s possible the agency could keep the route viable by restructuring how the agency pays for it.
Among the regular Montpelier LINK riders is Helena Kehne of Calais. Kehne, who said she cannot drive because of a disability, often gets to her job in Burlington by first getting a ride to Montpelier before catching the LINK Express to the Queen City.
Kehne is a social services provider for people with disabilities and said there are many people she works with who are concerned about the possible reduction in Green Mountain Transit’s services across the board.
“As someone who also has always relied heavily on public transit for a long time, I would really appreciate it if we could come together, work together, to try to prevent the routes being cut,” Kehne said at the public hearing.
The proposed service reductions would also have an impact on drivers, said Curtis Clough, president of the bus drivers’ union, in an interview. As many as 30 drivers based at the agency’s Burlington office — up to a third of its operators there — could be laid off if all of the proposed cuts take effect, he estimated.
Green Mountain Transit has said its budget woes come as pandemic-era federal funding that helped sustain its service in recent years is set to run dry sometime in 2025. But the union, Teamsters Local 597, has also levied blame with state leaders. Clough made the case that the state needs to put up more money than it has in recent years to support its largest transit agency.
Green Mountain Transit relies on a mix of local, state and federal funding to support its service. That includes assessments on many of the communities it serves, though the agency is facing growing pressure from some municipalities where local leaders have questioned whether those fees are unduly high.
“They’re a logistics company. They’re a company that helps people with social services get to their appointments. What they are not is a money printing company,” Clough said of the agency, at the hearing. “They don’t decide how much the state gives them.”
Lawmakers have tacked additional funding onto the state’s annual transportation budget in recent years to buoy Green Mountain Transit’s finances, but this year, it was likely not enough to fend off cuts, Clark has said. He told the crowd at Wednesday’s hearing that the agency has been met at the Statehouse with calls to “live within your budget.”
Some legislators and officials from the Vermont Agency of Transportation, meanwhile, have pointed to data showing Vermont outspends all other similarly rural states, on a per capita basis, when it comes to public transportation. Clark said at the hearing this suggests the state has done a good job supporting transit in the past — noting “credit where credit is due” — but emphasized that officials’ support has to continue.
Several of the Burlington-based drivers were at Wednesday’s hearing and passed out flyers urging attendees to contact state lawmakers about the proposed cuts. Among them was Nate Bergeron, who has been a Green Mountain Transit driver for 17 years and serves as a union steward.
Bergeron said in an interview that, on top of his concerns about drivers’ jobs, he was particularly worried about the impact of eliminating the No. 8 route, which loops around downtown Burlington and serves a number of housing communities for older adults.
It’s possible to serve some of those residents with individualized, on-demand transit services, he said, but pointed to state data showing those services have a higher cost per rider than the buses serving the area now. The state is obligated to provide public transit to certain people who are on Medicaid and don’t have access to a car.
“For a lot of them, having the bus is like a lifeline, getting them to their doctors or their pharmacies, to their grocery stores,” Bergeron said. “It’s their lifeline — and we’re cutting service on that end. How is that fair?”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Green Mountain Transit riders and drivers pan proposed service cuts.