MTA route cuts affect students, poor
For some, buses are only means of travel
A plan to cut routes and raise fares on Nashville buses will hit two groups the hardest — students at Metro magnet schools and low-income riders.
Both are watching the Metropolitan Transit Authority board, which meets Thursday to vote on whether to eliminate seven routes and a late-night bus service and add 25 cents to fares on July 1. The plan would make up a $2.9 million deficit in the 2008-09 MTA budget, $2 million of which is a result of skyrocketing fuel prices.
Several Meigs Middle Magnet School students board an MTA bus on Monday. The students will be dropped off at the Nance Arena Landport on Demonbreun Street.
Lorena Obrador rides the bus from South Nashville to her cleaning job at a West End-area hotel five days a week. She even rode it to Nashville General Hospital on Tuesday after she broke an arm falling down her apartment complex stairs.
"I don't know how I'm going to clean, and I certainly don't know how I'm going to pay any more for the bus than I already do. The bus, food, everything is getting more expensive every day," Obrador, 21, said in Spanish.
Her problem may be bigger than that. Her bus, the 37X-Tusculum/Mc
"They already raised the price this year once," Obrador said. "Now they want to take the bus off the street? What am I supposed to do?"
Some Nashville parents are wondering the same thing. Almost 2,700 students ride MTA buses every day in Nashville, and many attend Metro magnet schools, which use special programs to attract students districtwide but don't provide transportation.
Meigs Middle School Principal Jon Hubble said between 120 and 150 students at the East Nashville school use three MTA bus routes set for elimination — Madison/Old Hickory, Harpeth Valley Express and Tusculum/McMurr
Meigs seventh-grader Kate Cowan rides the Harpeth Valley bus most afternoons to a stop near her Bellevue home. Her mom, Nan, said the family will find a way to keep her at Meigs even while juggling three younger siblings at two other schools.
"But gas prices and logistics are going to be a really big problem for us," Nan Cowan said. The next closest bus stop for Kate will be a 15-minute drive for her mother.
It also would require Kate to transfer buses at the downtown transit center rather than the Nance Landport on Demonbreun Street, which fills up with students in the afternoon.
MTA Chief Executive Officer Paul Ballard asked Metro schools to subsidize the MTA budget in light of the many students who depend on buses. The schools declined, he said.
Tough choices
The routes tagged for elimination are those with the fewest riders and lowest revenue, Ballard said. Ninety-five percent of the system's riders won't be affected.
"We simply have to stop serving some of the neighborhoods to meet the shortfall in the budget," Ballard said. "Where we're setting our sights is to do the least damage possible now, in the short run, and look to the future for restoring as much as we can."
But Metro Councilman Jerry Maynard said route cuts and fare increases are a mistake when the MTA is trying to increase riders. "It sends the wrong message."
Mayor Karl Dean's proposed budget cuts $400,000 from MTA's request. Metro Council will vote on the total budget June 3, and Maynard thinks some funding should be restored. But he thinks that has to come with a plan from MTA to boost ridership and revenue.
Ridership has increased 47 percent in six years. Annual passenger trips rose from 6.4 million in 2002 to an estimated 9.4 million by June 30. Almost all of the routes being eliminated have gained riders in recent months.
Ballard said he expects ridership to keep growing at 10 percent to 12 percent a year, even with the cuts, but ridership still won't provide more than 30 percent of the revenue, Ballard said. The rest must come from local and federal funding.
Bus riders say they need more of a voice in MTA operations. Some who met Saturday to form a bus riders union pointed out the first public hearing was May 5 and comments were closed May 15. Some parents said they were shocked last week to realize their children's buses were likely to be eliminated.
Ballard said the board had to work within the Metro budget timeline. Delaying action until August would require $250,000 more be made up, Ballard said.
The projected route cuts, and the fare increases, weigh heavily on the MTA board, Chairwoman Gail Carr Williams said.
"Five or six years ago, I think we would have made these cuts and no one would have noticed," she said. "I think Nashville has already spoken that they want public transit. It's just right now, the dollars are hard to find."
Michael Welch, 18, rides MTA buses from his Whites Creek Pike home to Hillsboro High School and to his after-school job near 100 Oaks Mall. Next fall, he planned to use the bus after football practice. He uses the Vine Hill route and the Night Owl service, both slated to be cut.
"I really don't have a choice," he said. "My mom works, and I'm trying to. The bus, it's like the only way — and I mean the only way — I have to get around."
Maynard said public transit is a necessity for working families and individuals.
"We tell people we want them to work. We tell students to do their best. And then we cut the transportation they need to get to jobs and schools."
Contact Jenny Upchurch at 726-5970 or jupchurch@tenne
