I’ve found a way for the Providence Public School System to save more than $400,000 annually in transportation costs.
Every month, the School Department buys thousands of RIPTA bus passes, which it distributes to high school students from low income families or who live more than three miles from their school. In May of 2012, according to RIPTA, the School Department purchased around 2,000 bus passes.
How much does the city pay for these? Full price: $62 per pass.
After making several phone calls, I learned that RISD and Brown University, which issue passes to their students and faculty, pay $1.15 per ride, if the number of rides exceeds 500,000.
If the Providence Public School system used this model, the savings to the schools would be more than $400,000 annually. The savings actually increases because this year, the school is giving out more bus passes to ninth graders.
The School Department’s goal is to get students from their homes to their classrooms. If “giving” them a bus pass makes that happen, then they believe it’s money well spent. At the same time, someone needs to use the power of those numbers negotiate a better deal for Providence.
The downside, of course is that this means a $400,000 annual cut to RIPTA.
What is a supporter of both public schools and public transportation to do?
Imagine abundance and pleasure in public transportation
Last week, while the Republicans were busy in Tampa imagining a future with no taxes, smaller government, no unions and a plethora of jobs and millionaires, was dreaming about how we can get around our small state for the next 50 or so years.
I call for Rhode Island to become a leader in public transportation for the 21st century. Through an integrated system of trolley, bus, light rail, and commuter rail, citizens will be able to quickly and efficiently get to work, market, other cities and towns, and even to the beach. They’ll even be able to ride home after a late movie or show. (Currently RIPTA service ends around midnight.)
A high quality public transportation system will change the demographics of Rhode Island. It will encourage smart growth and eliminate sprawl.
I call for a system that can elegantly handle a tenfold increase in ridership within the next 10 years, reducing the need for one car per resident, reducing wear and tear on the roads and highways, and decreasing pollution and carbon waste.
Riding the bus doesn’t need to be free, but it does need to cost less, become more efficient and get you where you need to go when you need to go there.
We need a public transit authority whose goal is to maximize and increase ridership. As citizens we need to find a different model to fund it.
Current RIPTA funding is based on a fixed percentage of the tax on gasoline. This means that every time the price of gas goes up and people drive less, revenue for RIPTA goes down at the same time that the bus company is paying more for fuel and the ridership increases. This leaves RIPTA with less money to provide more services.
If we are determined to fund RIPTA through a gasoline tax, then it must be a percentage of the cost of gas, and a higher one at that – except that won’t work because people will drive out of state to buy gas. If we fund RIPTA through automobile registration, we must plan for a time when there are fewer automobiles registered. We must explore other options—public/private cooperatives, trolleys systems, jitney buses and so on.
Ultimately, to create a 21st century public transportation system, we must decouple RIPTA and the automobile. The goal of public transportation ought not to be just to provide free transportation to seniors , students and the disabled, but to reduce the need for and impact of cars on our cities and towns.
The Numbers
Approximate number of High School Students receiving bus passes in May 2012: 2,000
Number of days in the school year: 180
Cost of 2,000 bus passes per month for September-June: $1.24 Million
Maximum number of rides for those students during that time: 720,000
Cost of 720,000 rides @$1.15 per ride: $828,000
Minimum estimated annual savings to School Department: $412,000
Dollars cut from RIPTA, if these savings are implemented: $412,000
Better plan– negotiate the same (or better deal), give all students and staff bus passes. We should be encouraging public transit use by all Providence community members, including staff. This may eat up the $400,000, heck, it may cost even more. But there has to be savings to reducing the administrative cost of working through the complex rules of which students get passes and which do not.
Hi Jason, I in principal, I agree with your suggestion: “give all students and staff bus passes”
Unfortunately, The RIPTA program tracks every single bus ride with the Brown/RISD kind of a fare pass. So there’s a risk at the end of the year/month (however they account) that the schools would pay more.
That said, creating a “Student pass” would make sense.
I am comfortable with that “side effect” as a supporter of both public transportation and schools.
I don’t think the money should come from the “school” side of the budget. I’d prefer the city cut local funds and take on this expense entirely on the city books. Cut the current transportation costs, whatever they are, the city commits to maintain this new program, whatever the actual cost, and it’s recorded as a contribution on the school’s books (to maintain comparability with other communities).
Any employee of the city (which all PPSD employees are) should get a RIPTA pass as a part of their employment benefits. Of course, they should also NOT be guaranteed parking at their place of work. If they want parking, they should forfeit their bus pass.
Mark,
What happens if they use the passes for other than their intended use. Are there individual restrictions and/or limits for each pass?
Mark has an excellent vision for public transit in RI, but has more to say about how NOT to pay for it than how to pay for it. The first is indeed a lot easier.
I think to make public transit and RIPTA work much better in RI requires a 3-prong approach: ensure proper operation within the agency which means, in light of recent revelations, not just criminal prosecution for any stealing (if indeed this did happen) but establishing a culture that rejects unethical behavior, ineffcient work practices, and any mangement style that does not ensure consequences for bad practices and rewards for good ones; second, an effort by all concerned to build farebox revenue by generating more paying riders – this will take cooperation from employers, especially those who provide, sometimes at great expense, ”free” parking and no transit incentives thus significantly discouraging transit ridership, the most notorious such employer is the State of Rhode Island; and third, a sustainable funding stream which could be a small portion of sales tax revenue (that grows automatically with inflation unlike the fixed-cent-per-gallon gas tax) as is done in MA and many other regions, sometimes with voter approval in a referendum.
To answer a few of these questions… based on the conversations I’ve had with RIPTA…
The current RIPTA fare boxes make it difficult to change the system. In other words, you can either pay cash, use a riptik, use a monthly pass or one of the ID cards a-la RISD/Brown. You can’t have a pass that say, lets kids ride the bus from 7am to 10 am and 2pm to 4pm…
The Brown/RISD type of pass costs the organization $1.15 per ride. If nobody rides, they aren’t billed. If they ride alot, then the billing goes up. That would be “risky” for a school, which likes to have fixed costs.
I don’t have a funding model for RIPTA that works. Percentage of sales tax is a nice idea though.
Interesting discussion, this, as it touches at the core aspects of why governments exist and parts of civil life (civilization) that only deliver ROI in hard-to-measure ways. Let me pull out a couple of factors not yet mentioned:
1. Getting kids to school – Kind of surprised that this hasn’t been mentioned. Providence has a classically penny-wise/pound-foolish approach to student transport – the 3-mile walk zone. We also have a big problem with absenteeism. Connection…? I pay every month full boat for a bus pass because we live next to Miriam Hospital but our Classical High student is IN the walk zone. The school department thinks its reasonable for her to walk both ways everyday, regardless of conditions. Is it any surprise that kids don’t make it to school?
In reality, the schools should be buying a LOT more passes if they’re going to use this as student transit.
2. This practice likely has a negative impact on the kinds of riders that Barry talks about under his second item. Having commuted downtown on RIPTA at various times, it’s a drag to get on a morning bus that’s packed with high school kids. You’re basically getting on a school bus.
3. Bus-based public transit scales poorly because demand is so ‘lumpy’. If additional riders were spread out through the day, it would be much better. But more riders really means more peak hour riders. The only way to accommodate them is to add more buses and that’s expensive. With trains/trolleys, you can add cars to existing runs at an incremental cost, not a directly additive cost.
4. Public transit is a money-losing operation, so stressing fare box revenue will only get you so far. Like most things that government – and only government – can accomplish, it generates an ROI that’s difficult to capture. If fare box revenue becomes the metric from which funding depends, it creates a negative feedback loop in which poor service lowers paying ridership which lowers funding which lowers service quality. Only people that _HAVE_ to take the bus will take the bus. Does that sound familiar?
The problem with this is you rob Peter to pay Paul in this scenario. RIPTA losing $400k in revenue is no small thing, where can it make up this revenue sans a fare increase?
@donroach, yep. I agree. Peter/Paul?
Nobody argues that “roads should make money.” In fact, roads are seen as job creators. They enable people to get to and from. RIPTA is seen as an expense? Why? Because, especially in Rhode Island, it is not the cool way to get to and from.
I’ve got three children in this house who ride the bus every morning. According to them, the bus is full of kids. (I pity the poor commuter who tries to get on too late.) But there’s no extra bus, except the ones before/after, which require transfers and more time.
Yes, all high schoolers outside a mile ought to get bus passes.
RIPTA ought to be able to have a flexible pass, rather than the one-size-fits-all. Even if the school department has to buy a full RIPTA pass, the economy of scale dictates that a discount is in order. If not, then trying out the RISD/Brown ID/Pass system makes sense. When this happens,
If we can’t get the “free” basic transportation for the kids, then I’d like as a parent to be able to buy in on the bulk discount rather than go to the supermarket for a bus pass.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject…
Why is it that RIPTA can’t get a monthly pass into a supermarket 15 days before the end of the month? There seems to be a whimsical system for distribution, where the folks at the market don’t quite know when passes are going to be in. Once, we came to buy our passes too late and they were sold out. We had to drive to East Providence to the nearest market that had a pass.
Public transportation for those who don’t have cars? Not.