GALVESTON, Texas (AP) - The city of Galveston is one of only a handful of small municipal governments in the state that administers its own public transit system, according to a Texas Department of Transportation database.
The Galveston County Daily News reports because the population of Galveston was less than 50,000 in the last census, Galveston is classified as a “rural” transit system. Out of dozens of state-recognized rural transit systems, the wide majority of those are operated by specially formed transit districts or third-party companies.
“If you look around the Houston-Galveston area, most of the others that do have transit components, they’re usually operated by others,” Assistant City Manager Rick Beverlin said. “You’re finding fewer and fewer communities of this size that are running their own system unless they are a community off to their own, separate from a metropolitan area.”
Galveston’s geography and focus on tourism does lend itself more to a city-operated form of transit, however, said Michael Walk, a research scientist and program manager at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
“Because it has sort of a tourist orientation and it’s a small island that’s separated from the region as a whole, I don’t think it’s that uncommon for a city like Galveston to want to have a transit system,” Walk said.
Beverlin and other city officials have frequently cited the fact that Galveston is one of few small cities to operate its own transit system, called Island Transit, in conversations proposing cuts to service.
South Padre Island and Del Rio are two rural cities that also operate similar fixed-route services, according to the database. Dozens more rural transit systems are operated through other means and not by cities.
The city has proposed eliminating the “lifeline” route on weekdays, just months after beginning the service. The lifeline is the only nighttime route during the week, and operates from 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. It also operates all day on Saturdays and Sundays, but the city has also proposed cutting the service after 7:30 p.m. on weekends.
Galveston City Council approved the “lifeline” route in May as a response to declining ridership and a loss in federal grant funding. The island-wide bus route loops from 81st Street to the city’s East End.
The city will hold a public meeting at 5 p.m. on Jan. 4, 2018 about canceling the service, city spokeswoman Jaree Fortin said.
City officials point to losses of funding as the reason for canceling the service. In the 2010 census, Galveston’s population declined and made the city ineligible for $750,000 in annual federal transportation funding it had previously received.
Since then, the city had recovered most of that amount. But in 2018, the city is set to lose another $500,000 in grant funding from the Houston-Galveston Area Council, Beverlin has said. The city also approved a budget in September that reduced its general fund allocation to Island Transit by $180,000.
Added to the problem is a consistent drop in fixed-route ridership over the years, Beverlin said. That has been the case for the lifeline route so far, with two buses combined collecting an average of $40 a day during the week, he said.
Each bus on the lifeline route costs $80 an hour to operate, Beverlin said. With two buses running per hour for four hours during the week, that equals $640 in overhead a day.
Sometimes, the ridership is so low that buses will go an hour or two without any riders, Beverlin said.
“If you’ve got services for an hour or two and you’ve got no one on it, you need to start looking at that,” Beverlin said.
No city turns a profit on its transit system, but Galveston’s farebox revenues seem on the lower side, Walk said.
Declining ridership is most likely attributed to changes in demographics, Beverlin said. Many of the people who use Island Transit are elderly or disabled and qualify for “demand-response” services, where riders can request a ride to and from a location of their choice, Beverlin said.
“To not look at it in the vacuum, those users either went from fixed route to a higher income bracket, they relocated, or they got older and are now demand- response candidate patrons,” Beverlin said. “Then, you probably are losing some to the Uber-type model as well.”
But cutting service sometimes worsens the problem, Walk said.
“It becomes a very vicious cycle as a transit system runs out of funds,” Walk said. “Reducing service makes it less convenient and less convenient service brings in less riders. You have to keep trying to balance the books.”
Making sure cuts to service don’t exclude former riders is tricky business, said Brad Coleman, operations supervisor for the Port Arthur Transit Department, which operates its own bus service. The city of Port Arthur had a population of more than 53,000 in the 2010 census and qualifies as an “urban transit system.”
“You have to make adjustments,” Coleman said. “While we’re making adjustments, we don’t want to leave out people who used to ride.”
Most rural cities in Texas rely on regional transit districts or contractors to operate services, according to the Texas Department of Transportation database. Some of those provide service across counties, and many are “demand-response” shuttle services.
The city of Galveston said it has contemplated moving away from some of its Park and Ride services, Beverlin said.
James Hollis, transportation director for Gulf Coast Center, which runs the mainland’s Connect Transit, said he has had conversations with the city on taking over some of those services.
“We’re prepared,” Hollis said.
The city hasn’t yet to come up with a full solution on how to get affected riders replacement transportation, Beverlin said. The city has recommended that the city council extends a subsidized taxi program, called Harris County RIDES, before it expires in May 2018.
Cutting service isn’t the only answer, either, Walk said. Sometimes better marketing can help, such as making transit systems easier to use and understand, he said.
Another option would be a campaign to increase community buy-in that transit is important to the economic vitality of Galveston, or even having business communities sponsor transit, Walk said.
“I think any transit agency that’s struggling would want to do whatever it could to keep its doors open,” Walk said. “Besides cutting service, there are alternatives to try to increase revenue.”
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Information from: The Galveston County Daily News, http://www.galvnews.com
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