Back to 06/21/01 Agenda

RECOMMENDATION

It is recommended that the Agency:

1) Consider the attached recommendation of the Social Services Transportation Advisory (SSTAC) Committee dated April 1, 2001 as well as a subsequent letter from the Committee dated June 12, 2001 ;

2) Accept staff's responses to comments received from the February 27, 2001, unmet transit needs hearing;

3) Determine that the existing level of transit service as detailed in the 2001/2002 Transit Needs Assessment augmented by new trial services in the Cottonwood, Fall River Mills and Airport Road Areas (Exhibits D, E, and F) reflects the level of transit service that is reasonable to meet for each claimant jurisdiction out of its individual Local Transportation Fund (LTF) apportionment for 2001/2002; and

4) Approve Resolution No. 01-05 which reflects the Agency's formal unmet transit needs findings and Local Transportation Fund allocations, and adopt a Transportation Development Act (TDA) budget for fiscal year 2001/2002, and;

5) Approve 2001/02 Transportation Development Act (TDA) claims as submitted by eligible claimants. Claim amounts by jurisdiction are reflected on Exhibit B.

6) Authorize Staff to evaluate trial services as described in Staff report section entitled "Evaluation of Trial Services".

7) Adopt a weighted average 19% fare box standard for the RABA service area where services are jointly funded in the rural and urban areas.

SUMMARY

Adoption of the Staff recommendation will allow Agency staff to distribute TDA revenues to be received in 2001/02 and to complete the 2001/2002 Unmet Needs Process.

DISCUSSION

A brief chronology of the Unmet Needs and TDA claims process is as follows:

• February 27, 2001 - The Agency considered the 2001/02 Transit Needs Assessment and received public testimony regarding unmet transit needs. Staff subsequently met with the Social Services Transportation Advisory Committee (SSTAC) and presented the information generated from the hearing for formulation of the SSTAC recommendation. Staff prepared responses to comments and prepared draft findings regarding unmet needs that were reasonable to meet in each jurisdiction.

• March 29, 2001, the Social Services Transportation Advisory Committee met and made findings that there are Unmet Transit Needs that are reasonable to meet based on the adopted RTPA definition. The SSTAC recommendation is attached. The differences between RTPA Staff and the SSTAC recommendations are discussed further below.

• April 24, 2001, the Agency directs Staff to further review the five specific SSTAC recommendations in light of a one-time $150,000 subsidy from Shasta County Social Services.

• May 10, May 24, and May 31, public meetings were conducted in Cottonwood, Burney and at the Fairway Oaks Mobile Home Park. These meetings were intended to identify and assess the specific transit needs of these areas as they relate to the SSTAC recommendations. These meetings were well attended with individuals who indicated they would utilize transit services if they were available to them. The services proposed by Staff were discussed at these meetings. Modifications were made accordingly and the proposal presented to you today represents Staff's best recommendations of services that may eventually support themselves from actual fares.

• June 1, a meeting was held with Shasta County Social Services Administrators to discuss the proposed $150,000 transit subsidy for 2001-2002. Social Services indicated their desire to put these dollars to work in support of their Calworks clients. Transportation has been identified as one of the primary barriers to those in the Calworks program in the Intermountain and Cottonwood areas. Therefore, Social Services indicated that they fully supported the Staff proposal for these two areas. The Airport Road corridor service is supported by Social Services for a little different, but related reason. According to an informal survey done by the Employment Development Department, there are 100 employers providing nearly 2,000 jobs in this area. Social Services supports this service because it will allow job seekers and employees alike to access this area from the rest of the RABA service area. This is considered significant since many Calworks clients may seek or be employed in this area. Therefore, Social Services agreed to apply the $150,000 ratably to these three new services.

Extended hours and Sunday service were discussed. Although it is recognized that there would be benefits to be accrued from providing these services, it was decided not to subsidize these services because of the low probability that these services would meet the fare box requirement without a Social Services subsidy. The analysis for the extension of hours and Sunday service are similar. Ridership trends during evening hours and weekend service show a significant reduction in ridership for those times. Ridership data for the fixed route for a twelve day period from March 21 through April 3, 2001 was reviewed in reaching this conclusion. For this twelve day period, 890 riders used the fixed route from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. generating $723.50 in revenue. The cost to provide this service was $7,020 yielding a fare box ratio of 10.3%. If hours were extended complementary demand response would need to be in service as well. This factor would reduce the fare box recovery even further. It has, therefore, been determined the extension of the full RABA system for additional hours and Sunday service would not be reasonable to meet.

SSTAC is recommending that a limited fixed route Sunday service and extending the current fixed route until 8:30 in the evening. For the reasons stated above, RTPA Staff respectfully disagrees with this recommendation.

• June 11, the SSTAC met to discuss the revisions to the original RTPA Staff recommendation of April 24. The Committee generally agreed with the Staff recommendation. The group would like to see additional stops on Airport Road at Charlanne Drive and at Meadowview Road. These stops will serve the major employers in this area. Staff agrees with and supports this modification

In conclusion the RTPA staff recommends that the existing level of transit service as detailed in the 2001/2002 Transit Needs Assessment augmented by new services in Cottonwood, Fall River Mills and the Airport Road corridor, reflects the level of transit service that is reasonable to meet for each claimant jurisdiction out of its individual Local Transportation Fund (LTF) apportionment for 2001/2002. TDA revenues available after the unmet transit needs are met are available to the jurisdictions for other purposes, i.e., streets and roads.

Role of the Agency in Establishing New Services

One of the obligations of the RTPA is to "Identify the unmet transit needs of the jurisdiction and those needs that are reasonable to meet" (99401.5 (c)). Further, it is the obligation of the RTPA that "If the transportation planning agency adopts a finding that there are unmet transit needs, including needs that are reasonable to meet, then the unmet transit needs shall be funded before any allocation is made for streets and roads within the jurisdiction" (99401.5(e))

Historically, the RTPA has not found any unmet needs reasonable to meet with the exception of the current RABA system and the Burney Express. Claims have been based upon RABA actual costs and revenues. For purposes of meeting the requirements of PUC code 99401.5 (e) it is necessary to estimate the costs of meeting these new services determined to be reasonable to meet.

For this purpose Staff has estimated the transit costs depicted on Exhibits D, E and F. Exhibits D, E and F represent the generic needs expressed by individuals at meetings held in May. For this purpose $45 per service hour has been used. This rate is an estimate of RABA's costs.

As the local agencies begin to implement these services, they may realize that additional stops or modifications to Staff proposals are warranted or desired. There is a high probability that the actual costs of these services when implemented will vary from the Staff proposal. It is recommended that the costs of these services can be adjusted to actual costs incurred as part of the annual "true-up" process.

Staff has no reason to believe that these services will not be provided by RABA, but that decision is one to be made by the respective local agencies. It seems apparent to Staff that the local agencies will use RABA since all three services will need to interface and be coordinated with RABA provided services. Further, RABA was formed by the same local agencies to provide transit services, so it seems reasonable that they would be used for any new services.

For purposes of assigning costs to local agencies, the Fall River Mills extension of the Burney Express is allocated 100% to Shasta County. The Airport Road Corridor Express is allocated 100% to Redding. Both of these services are wholly contained within those jurisdictions. The Cottonwood Express was allocated 2/3 to the County and 1/3 to Anderson based upon the number of bus stops proposed. If the local agencies wish to share costs on another basis, it is recommended that be done at the time of true-up.

The estimated net costs to the local agencies after considering the Social Services subsidy and marketing expenses is as follows:

These costs represent only operating costs of these services. If additional busses are needed these may increase. It is recommended that no new rolling stock be purchased until after the trial period has ended and the future sustainability of these services has been determined. Spares or leased vehicles should be used to provide these services during the trial phase.

Evaluation of Trial Services

Social Services has advised Staff to consider their subsidy as "one time only". Therefore, it is necessary and desirable to establish clear evaluation criteria to evaluate these new trial services. This should be of benefit to the users of the system, the transit advocates who have lobbied very hard for these services and to Staff. For this purpose the following fare box standards are recommended:

These trial services should be put in service for a twelve month period. This will remove seasonal fluctuations and give realistic feedback as to the probability of these services meeting the fare box requirement absent a Social Services subsidy.

For purposes of computing fare box ratios for these services, the transit provider will need to be required to keep track of ridership by stop. This data will be used by RTPA staff to compute a pro forma or "what-if" fare box ratio if there was no Social Services subsidy. Further, it is recommended that this information be provided by the provider to the RTPA by the 15^th of the month following each calendar quarter. This will allow all stakeholders to monitor the activity of these new services. It is further proposed that this data be considered a condition of getting paid for services rendered.

For purposes of assigning costs to these services Staff recommends that the cost per service hour represent the fully allocated service hour cost of the transit provider (presumably RABA) plus the direct cost of marketing costs incurred to promote these services. This means that the costs will include these services' ratable amount of overhead. This is consistent with past practices of this Agency.

For purposes of assigning fare revenue to these new services, it is recommended that the revenue assigned will represent average fare per rider of the RABA system (not counting Demand Response) times the actual number of riders that use these new services.

TDA statutes are vague in addressing what a fare should be for a service. To provide guidance to local agencies implementing these new services, it seems appropriate that the RTPA provide some guidance or recommendations in this area. Based upon input received at the May meetings and consistent with current RABA operations, Staff recommends the following fare requirements:

It is recommended that riders on the Cottonwood and Airport Road Corridor expresses be allowed one free transfer to other RABA routes. These two routes should also be allowed to be accessed with monthly passes sold by RABA The regular fares, the discounted senior citizen rate and the free transfer are features of fixed route services in the RABA system. Considering that these two services will feed other RABA routes, this requirement seems reasonable. Any other policies that apply to regular RABA routes not specifically outlined should be applied to these new services.

These new services should be marketed to ensure their best chance of success. Obviously, if the general public is not aware of these new services they will not be used. For this purpose it is suggested that $10,000 be set aside for marketing these services to be applied equally to all three services. This is similar to the marketing effort expended when services were expanded in 1994.

Finally, if these services do indeed indicate that they can support the required fare box standards without a subsidy, it is recommended that the Airport Road Corridor and the Cottonwood Expresses be funded in future years under the "80/20" formula currently used to fund joint services in the RABA service area. This may require the local agencies to amend the RABA boundaries to incorporate these areas. If the Fall River Mills extension of the Burney Express is successful, it would be funded wholly by the County.

Fare box Standard

In October 1998, the RTPA took action to reduce the RABA fare revenue ratio to operating costs to 15% for 1997/98, 17.5% for 1998/99, and 19% for 1999/00. The fare box standard recommended for 2000/01 and thereafter is 19% and is based upon the percentage of service hours provided in the urban area and the percentage of service hours provided in the rural areas (Anderson area). The RABA fare revenue ratio to operating costs for 2000/01 was 19.1%.

Similar to previous years nearly all transit services (new trial services notwithstanding) will be provided by the Redding Area Bus Authority (RABA). The costs associated with fixed route and demand response services provided by RABA have been allocated to the three cities and the County based 80% on service hours provided by that jurisdiction and 20% based upon the population served in each jurisdiction. This formula is the same formula that has been used by the RTPA since 1993 to allocate jointly funded RABA services.

Exhibit "A" is a spreadsheet that apportions the available revenues to the local agencies based upon population and allocates transit costs to those jurisdictions. This schedule also deducts each claimant's transit obligation from its apportionment to arrive at amounts available for other uses.

"Off-the-top" allocations for CTSA services provided by Shasta Senior Nutrition Services ($235,000) and for Administrative costs ($200,955) have been deducted before funds are apportioned to the cities and the County. Funds to be used to match Overall Work Program (OWP) core functions have been deducted from funds available for apportionment. These funds will flow to the local agencies as they perform OWP functions.

The RABA budget for 2001/02 contains $1,604,273 in FTA Section 5307 funds. Consistent with RTPA Policy 6-3, receipt of these funds will reduce TDA obligations on a dollar for dollar basis. These FTA grant funds reduce the transit obligations for Shasta Lake and Redding by $175,742 and $1,428,531, respectively. In the event these grant revenues are not received by RABA, their respective transit obligation will increase by the same relative percentages.

A summary of apportionments and transit obligations for 2001/02 are presented as follows:

ALTERNATIVES

The Agency could choose to allocate transit costs differently than proposed and adjust the fare box standard differently than recommended. The fare box standard can be set anywhere from 15% to 20%. Adjusting transit cost allocations is not recommended because all local agencies have reviewed the attached exhibits and concur with the Staff recommendation. The amount to be provided to RABA has been reviewed with them and they concur that RTPA Policy 6-3 has been correctly implemented.

Adjusting the fare box standard is not recommended because the currently adopted standard of 19% reflects the mix of service hours provided in the rural and urban areas.

OTHER AGENCY INVOLVEMENT

All claimants, including the Redding Area Bus Authority, Shasta Senior Nutrition Program, Shasta County, and the cities of Anderson, Redding, and Shasta Lake, have been consulted throughout the TDA claims process, both through their participation on the Technical Advisory Committee, responses to comments, and through informal consultations.

FINANCING

Final action consistent with the attached resolution will have the impacts to the Local Transportation Funds for transit service operations as outlined in Exhibit B. The TDA Budget funds RABA's transit needs in accordance with the RTPA's adopted Policy No. 6-3, entitled "Policy to Determine Transportation Development Act (TDA) Revenue to Be Made Available to Eligible Transit Operators" that was adopted by the Agency on October 27, 1998. This budgeting process includes $400,000 of FTA Section 5307 funds and $92,904 of FTA Section 5311 funds.

______________________________________

Daniel J. Kovacich, Executive Officer

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Attachments:Available at RTPA Office

1) Resolution No. 01-05

• Exhibit A - Apportionments and Transit Allocations for 2001/02

3) Exhibit B - Schedule of Annual Claims/ TDA Budget

4) Exhibit C - SSTAC April 3rd recommendation (including conceptual Cottonwood Express Service)

5) Exhibits D through F - Schedule of Unmet Needs Deemed Reasonable to Meet

6) Staff Responses to Comments Received during 2001/02 Unmet Needs Process

7) Letter from SSTAC date June 12, 2001.