The Transit Commission met 08/23/2022. In addition to the update on capital projects, they received a number of reports. There was a brief but somewhat interesting discussion on the low ridership numbers.
APPROVAL OF JULY PAYMENTS – This was the one action item on the agenda. During this item, it is always reported what the year-to-date cost of fuel is compared to what was budgeted. Year to date the cost of diesel was $3.70 per gallon and the budget was $3 per gallon. The year-to-date cost of gasoline was $3.21 per gallon and they had budgeted for $3 per gallon.
The payments were approved unanimously.
VALLEY TRANSIT II SERVICE – There was not much to report. They had gained new employees and lost some employees. A couple more people were now working in the dispatch center. They were concerned that between school starting and the fact that they were still short drivers that there might be some service delays. They continued to actively recruit drivers.
FINANCIAL REPORT – The report went through the end of July, so Valley Transit should have been at 58% of their annual budget.
Year to date, the fixed route fare revenues were higher than at this point last year due to the increase in ridership. The ancillary services had lower ridership which resulted in lower revenue. The advertising revenue continued to be strong. They were currently underbudget in revenues and would remain that way for the rest of the year. [They should have been at 58% of their annual budget but were only at 40.34% for Revenues and 40.36% for Non-Operating Revenues.]
Their expenses were also under budget, although they were over budget in a couple of individual categories which had been the same situation for a couple months. Areas they were over budget in included Administrative Expenses (61.27%) and Utilities (64.13%), but those were offset by other categories.
It was noted that the Gas Purchases line item was still underbudget. (53.8%)
They received some of their federal operating support in July and were more under budget in expenses than in revenues. [They had a year-to-date shortfall of $3.5 million]
They were also under budget for their Purchased Transportation. The Outagamie County Rural Demand Response program was over budget, but that was because all the Employment Transportation moved over to Outagamie Country Rural Demand Response program. If those two budgets were combined, they were extremely under budget.
RIDERSHIP REPORT – The total Fixed Route ridership for July 2022 was 46,659 which was up 12% from July of 2021. AASD, Fox Valley Technical College, and Lawrence University ridership was strong. Most routes showed an increase in riders when compared to 2021.
The Demand Response ridership for July of 2022 was 7,083 which was a 28% decrease from July of 2021. That was a decrease of about 2,800 rides. Several of their ancillary programs as well as the Valley Transit II-ADA service saw decreases compared to 2021.
A commission member commented that the ridership in January and February of 2020 prior to the Covid-related decrease in riders had been nearly 80,000. He asked if Valley Transit had a projection for when ridership would get back up to that point. It seemed like they may need a lot of staffing if they saw an increase in ridership over the next couple years.
General Manager Ron McDonald answered that he didn’t know whether or not they would get to that ridership level again or when they would reach that number. They were still trying to determine what ridership trends were going to be. Travel patterns had changed post-Covid. Some people continued to work from home and others had found alternative transportation. Additionally, Valley Transit had temporarily reduced its level of service and the frequency of the buses which significantly impacted ridership.
He also noted that they could not compare July ridership with that of January and February.
The commission member responded that it would have been nice to see what the 2019 ridership numbers had been. [Looking back through old meeting details, in July of 2019 there were 64,852 Fixed Route riders which was 18,193 more than where they were now in July of 2022.]
General Manager McDonald said that they look at that. Pre-Covid, they had been on a trajectory to hit 1 million riders, but then the numbers took a dive when Covid hit.
The commission member mentioned that he had recently been in New York and the subways were empty. Everything had been pretty empty. He was sure the numbers were even worse there than in the Fox Cities.
General Manager McDonald said that the good news was that Valley Transit’s numbers were increasing and new people were starting to ride the buses. They were working with Lawrence University, and he thought that was an untapped wealth of ridership for them.
Refugees had also been using the buses. Sarah Schneider, Valley Transit’s Mobility Manager, and Stephanie Gifford, the Travel Training Specialist, had been working with World Relief to help new refugees ride the buses.
They were also going to the middle schools to help students learn how to get on the buses.
He felt it was still a difficult time and people’s outlook and travel patterns were different than they had been pre-Covid. In the past people used the buses to go to work and then after work would stop at the grocery store, go to the gym, or go elsewhere before returning home. Now, however, he didn’t feel that there were as many people taking multiple trips throughout the day. Instead, they were going directly to and from work and had gotten used to having their groceries delivered and were exercising at home instead of going to the gym.
Alderperson Maiyoua Thao (District 7) thought it was important to keep promoting Valley Transit and educating the community about the services that were available. She wondered if they knew how many students were using Valley Transit during the summer to get to jobs or other places they wanted to go.
General Manager McDonald said they do track ridership by groups, and “students” was a group they tracked. However, they did not know what purpose riders were using the buses. If students were using it to go to summer school than that would be something they could see, but, per federal regulations, Valley Transit was not allowed to track the purposes of trips. The only way to find that information out would be by conducting a survey.
STAFFING – General Manager McDonald said that they had implemented a $5,000 sign on bonus for full time drivers and a $2,500 sign on bonus for part time drivers who came in already having a Class B CDL with a passenger endorsement with no airbrake restrictions.
If new drivers didn’t have that, then Valley Transit would provide training but it cost Valley Transit at least the amount of the sign on bonus to provide that training and it takes weeks to get new drivers licensed.
They had been offering the bonus program for less than a month and had already made 5 fulltime job offers. He noted that they hadn’t been able to make that many job offers in such a short period in forever. One of the drivers was already driving. Two of them were in training. One was starting next week. One was still pending coming on board. So, 4 of the 5 were already pretty much on board.
They hoped to hire two more additional full-time drivers as soon as they could, and then maybe after 01/01/2023 they would bring on 2 more additional full-time drivers which would get them to the point of having enough drivers to look at restoring the services that they had temporarily removed.
Valley Transit had been approved to provide the federally required training for bus drivers. They were still trying to hire someone to assist with that training, but in the meantime, they were limping along getting people trained. And having people come on who were already licensed was tremendously helpful.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=959043&GUID=77586201-5E1A-4D16-96CF-E297084DE880
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