[C]hanges to Green Mountain Transit routes have some Burlingtonians concerned about the end of the free College Street shuttle — but the city says it’s committed to keeping that route free of charge.
In April, the GMT board of commissioners voted to approve the NextGen Service Plan, which includes a combination of Burlington’s College Street shuttle and the South Burlington circulator. The change gives passengers a continuous route from downtown to the Burlington International Airport. The service will be every 30 minutes at peak times, rather than every 15 minutes, though hours will extend later into the evening and onto the weekends year-round.
The city of Burlington currently pays GMT for the forgone College Street fares. For fiscal year 2020, that means the city will pay about $129,000 to keep the route free. But since South Burlington doesn’t do the same, riders taking the extension will have to pay.
The shuttle, established in 1993, has been free since its inception. It brings more than 135,000 riders through Burlington’s downtown — from Lake Champlain up to the UVM Medical Center — each year.
But at Monday’s City Council meeting, community members were quick to raise concerns about the possibility of that changing, given the proposed merging, which left some confusion as to whether the free route would stay free.
“Free service is very important to low-income people going to the hospital, it connects the downtown and the waterfront, especially for people having a hard time getting up and down that steep College Street hill,” said Gene Bergman, a former city councilor, urging the council to do whatever it takes to keep the route open.
“We need it, we’ve had it, it’s very important to everyone that uses it and it’s very important that it be there,” said Charles Messing, of Burlington. “Keeping the free College Street shuttle will keep us looking open, instead of looking like ‘well this was a bad year to come to this town.’”
The city, however, said people have nothing to worry about.
“We want it to remain free, at least until we have fully robust conversation, because Burlington prides itself on civic engagement,” said Chapin Spencer, Burlington’s director of public works, and one of the city’s two commissioners on the GMT board.
Spencer said the NextGen process will make the city’s bus network look a lot more like a subway map, with interconnected routes that go through downtown, not just to and from it, along with color-coordination to make the routes user-friendly. He also said GMT is “bullishly” moving toward creating a world-class app with a real-time bus tracker and mobile ticketing.
Spencer said College Street is going to be just one of many routes where riders can stay on a heated bus for longer, and get closer to their destinations, without having to deal with the hassles of bus transfers.
Paul Conner, South Burlington’s director of planning and zoning, said South Burlington is already a major to contributor to GMT, helping to keep fares at their current rates, but that making their part of the route free isn’t something the city has talked about increasing their funding for.
“We are seeing this proposed new routing as being a benefit to our users,” Conner said. “We’ve not had a discussion about whether South Burlington would consider a further subsidy to make the extension free. Certainly that is something we could look into.”
He said the route will be especially beneficial in connecting South Burlington and other non-Burlington locations by saving people the trip up and down the hill to the Burlington Transit Center.
As for the GMT, Jamie Smith, director of planning and marketing, said they think the free shuttle is great, but that it’s really up to the cities to decide where the funding goes.
“We recognize that it’s valuable for the community and a lot of people use it for medical appointments and recreation,” Smith said. “We will certainly operate the services however our member communities feel is appropriate.”
