GEORGE Part Three
We’re told that if the GEORGE bus is “defunded” (which I assume means “shut down”) the City can save about $450,000 each year. I think I read somewhere that the annual operating costs of the bus is along the lines of $580,000 - so I’m not sure where the discrepancy is. We’d obviously lose the meager $35,000 or so in fares but would we also lose some state or federal funding? Or would there still be costs associated with the bus service even after it has been shut down? On a related note, I think the City owns 4 buses - could those be sold?
As I mentioned last time, I’m going to try and think out loud about the costs associated with the GEORGE bus service. I don’t actually know how it works so this isn’t going to be a careful analysis of specific details.
So, what does it cost to run the bus? Obviously there is the bus driver who must be paid. I assume that running only one bus during the middle of the day reduces the driver cost to the City - although I suppose it’s possible that the City pays for two full-time bus drivers whether they’re driving or not.
The buses run on fuel and that obviously has a cost associated with it. Certainly the reduction to one bus in the middle of the day must reduce fuel costs - one bus uses less fuel than two.
No doubt the buses require maintenance. In the report on the history of GEORGE I think there was mention of an operating fee for the buses - based on the number of hours they run. So the maintenance costs probably go by the hour and aren’t actually related to specific repairs.
I’m sure there are other costs like insurance, signs, brochures that describe the schedules and fares. I read somewhere that the cost of collecting the $0.50 fare might be more than $0.50 - so maybe that’s another cost.
Understanding how the costs work is critical to the last post I’ll make in this series, where I will throw out some suggestions for improving GEORGE. For example, what is the added cost of running two buses all day instead of reducing to one bus in the middle of the day? What about the cost of running evenings or weekends? If collecting the fare is actually more expensive than the fare (seems hard to imagine) then why not make the bus free? Which costs scale with ridership and which are fixed (i.e. is there any chance of reducing the cost burden or would 200,000 riders just drive the cost of providing the service up)?
Could we save money by selling the buses we have and buying smaller buses? Could we get someone other than WMATA to maintain the buses for a lower cost?
For fun, in my next post I’ll kick around some outside the box ideas for an improved system - some of which might be practical and others that wouldn’t.
[UPDATE] I should have done my research before posting this! The Power Point presentation from the City Manager’s budget presentation on Monday actually has answers to most of my questions. It looks like the City pays WMATA a “platform hour cost” that covers drivers, maintenance, fuel, tires, and insurance. The FY2004 cost was $64 but the FY2008 cost is $80 and the FY2009 cost is $102! For some reason the FY2010 cost is $99. I didn’t see the presentation so I don’t know if the City Manager explained how or why the cost fluctuates (a 27% jump followed by a 3% drop seems odd to me).
This seems to imply that running two buses during the day instead of one would add 6 platform hours per day - or 1,560 hours per year - which would be $124,800 at the $80 rate and $159,120 at the $102 rate. I’m not sure if that’s exactly right since the current schedule would be 5,200 platform hours per year which should come to $416,000 at the $80 rate but the City Manager reported the gross costs to be $613,953. Even at the $102 rate it would come to only $530,400. Maybe there are non-service platform hours that have to be paid for?
The other odd thing from the City Manager’s report was that we generated only $18,000 in revenue on ridership of 70,911 - which is about $0.25 per trip. The fare is $0.50 per trip. I think on hot days when the air quality is bad people can ride the bus for free - but that doesn’t seem to explain why we would be bringing in only half the standard fare for the year.
In my future posts I’ll touch on the GEORGE options that the City Manager proposed (he offered 7 options).
Andy,
The excellent bus system in Chapel Hill, NC is free. You might do some research and find out how that works.