To the editor: Having served 10 years on the Arlington County government’s Transit Advisory Committee and three years on the Transportation Commission, I have been concerned about the steadily increasing costs of the Arlington Transit (ART) bus network of two primary and 14 secondary routes.
In the last five years, costs have accelerated, due mostly to increased weekend service. Operating costs increased from about $11.8 million in fiscal 2018 to $21.4 million in fiscal 2022, an increase of 81 percent.
The county government’s Transit Strategic Plan for 2025-34 proposes, for fiscal 2025, to either add weekend service or increase weekday frequency for Routes #75, #77, #41, #45 and #53 and create a new #85 route, a total cost of $2.963 million.
As Transportation Advisory Commission member in 2013, I asked at several meetings about poorly performing routes, such as #62 and #53. Staff acknowledged there was a problem, but no action was taken over the ensuing 11 years.
Finally, for fiscal 2025, the county manager’s proposed budget would eliminate Route #62 and restructure Routes #53 and #61, saving about $666,000. Still, net service costs would increase by $2.3 million.
For primary routes, the cost-recovery goal – the amount recoupled through the farebox – is 35 percent. In fiscal 2022 (latest publicly available data), the best performer of the two in the primary network was ART 41, which covered 20 percent of its costs. ART 55 covered 9.5 percent of its costs.
For secondary routes, where the cost-recovery goal is 20 percent, the overall figure was 6 percent.
Based on data provided to the Transportation Commission in June 2016, the average cost recovery for the primary network for the fiscal 2014-17 period was 47 percent, and for the secondary transit it was 21 percent. The sharp decline since then is due to additional routes and steady increases in service levels, including rapidly increasing weekend service.
Another measure of efficiency is passengers per revenue hour (pph). In fiscal 2022 for the two primary routes, ART 41 carried 20.4 passengers per hour and ART 55 had 9.5 passengers per hour. Combined, these two routes averaged 15 pph; the goal is 35.
For the 14 secondary, routes the best was ART 45 at 12.7 pph; the worst was ART 62 at 1.5. The average was 7.6 pph, compared to the goal of 15 pph. (After adoption of the October 2023 Transit Strategic Plan, the standard for secondary routes was sharply lowered to 5.1 pph, allowing several routes to meet the standard.)
The proposed service additions should be postponed. And it is time for a serious look at poorly performing routes to reduce future costs.
In the County Board’s work session with the Department of Environmental Services on March 12, in response to a question from a board member about on-call/on-demand services (known as microtransit), county transit-bureau chief Lynn Rivers, said the local government was trying to get a grant from the state to study using microtransit for poorly performing routes.
This is a dodge; the county can use some of the savings in route consolidation for this purpose.
Joseph Warren, Arlington