Toledo-area bus service will be cut by 6 percent under a plan the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority’s governing body approved shortly after voting to move forward with a proposal to buy a vacant downtown building to redevelop as a new transit hub.
TARTA’s board of trustees on Thursday accepted a new service plan starting March 18 that, among other things, eliminates a bank of “lineup” buses leaving downtown Toledo at 11 a.m. on weekdays, curtails service hours on suburban Call-a-Ride buses, and reduces or eliminates weekend and holiday service on selected routes.
James Gee, the transit authority’s general manager, said afterward the agency’s second service cut this year is prompted in part by a driver shortage and an accompanying need to rein in overtime expenses.
The impending line-up reduction was not well received among passengers waiting for 11 a.m. buses at Government station Thursday morning.
“I guess I’m going to have to wait, and be stuck out here in this kind of [rainy] weather, until the next one runs,” said Sonny Jon of Toledo, who boarded a bus to East Toledo. “That ain’t cool.”
VIDEO: Riders discuss TARTA’s plans to cut service
Elana Gonzalez, who was commuting across town from home to her job, said she’d have to leave home earlier to be on time for work if the buses she now takes no longer run.
Mr. Gee told the transit trustees that similar testimony about individual impacts was received during a public hearing about the proposed cuts, which he said were chosen on the basis of lowest ridership and spreading the impact across the TARTA system.
Cost-cutting has been a recurring theme of late with the transit authority, which in recent years has lost ridership as lower gasoline prices encouraged riders who also have their own automobiles to drive themselves often.
TARTA changed its bus schedules Jan. 7 to set up bus “lineups” downtown for all trips, not just during off-peak and weekend hours, and trimmed its total operations by about 50 vehicle-hours per day.
Mr. Gee estimated at the time that those changes would save the transit authority about $400,000, and Thursday he projected another $650,000 in savings from the new impending cuts.
In other business, The board voted 8-0 to authorize TARTA staff to enter negotiations to buy the building that Goodwill vacated at Huron and Cherry streets late last year.
Federal grant funding will be used to pay the $1.52 million appraisal-based price for the former Goodwill building, Mr. Gee said. City funding for environmental assessments of the building and street improvements to support the project will serve as the grant’s local match, he said.
The move means the end of the downtown bus loop, which opened in 1982 with five stations and “was good for a while and a problem for a lot longer,” Francis Frey, the trustees’ president, said after the 8-0 vote.
Mr. Gee earlier told trustees the transit-hub proposal will save TARTA 60,000 miles of travel its buses spend annually circling the current 12-square-block, four-station downtown bus loop, but the soonest the hub can open is late this year.
The loop was designed to replace a hodgepodge of bus routes throughout downtown with a unified system under which every bus made a circuit around the perimeter of 12 square blocks. Riders could go to any of the loop stops and expect the bus they wanted to stop there.
But as downtown office workers’ bus ridership continued to wane, the loop’s usefulness diminished, while merchants bemoaned the loss of curbside parking along it.
Mr. Gee said the proposed hub will offer amenities none of the loop stations provide, including restrooms, a snack bar, and token and pass sales, along with giving riders a sheltered area where they can wait for buses.
The Goodwill property is about two blocks from the closest point on the existing loop, the busy Government station on Jackson Street between Huron and Erie streets, but according to a TARTA summary of the proposal, it is centrally located among government offices, nearby housing, and downtown businesses that generate significant transit ridership.
Contact David Patch at dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.
First Published March 2, 2018, 12:00 p.m.
