Lawmakers from Vermont’s House and Senate transportation committees advanced legislation on Tuesday that would allocate $850,000 for Green Mountain Transit to continue operating its bus services fare-free through the end of the year.
The funding is included in this year’s transportation bill, versions of which had already passed the House and Senate. Members of each chamber’s transportation committees met Tuesday morning to reconcile the differences between their respective versions of the bill, H.479, including the source of funding for zero-fare rides.
Green Mountain Transit plans to reinstate fares — which the agency has not charged since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic — in January 2024. That’s a change from earlier this year, when the agency said it planned to start charging fares by July 1, 2023.
The reason for that change, Green Mountain Transit officials have said, is that the agency needs more time to get its fare collection system back up and running.
Nearly half of the fare collection boxes that the agency was using before the pandemic have become obsolete, according to Clayton Clark, the agency’s general manager. He said it likely would be fall before the replacement fareboxes are installed and set up, and the agency’s workers and maintenance staff get trained on how to use them.
“GMT’s problems are our problems, right?” said Rep. Sara Coffey, D-Guilford, the House Transportation Committee chair. “We want to make sure they’re able to get this funding and get it out the door to address these issues as they make a transition.”
Both committees had planned to provide Green Mountain Transit with funding to keep fares free for the rest of the year, but they each had proposed taking different routes.
House lawmakers suggested funding fare-free service with $1 million — the amount that the transit agency asked for earlier this year — taken from the state’s highway maintenance budget for the 2024 fiscal year. The Senate, meanwhile, had proposed a $750,000 allocation of state and federal funding — as well as asking Green Mountain Transit to chip in $150,000 from its reserves — to fund continued fare-free service.
Both Green Mountain Transit and the state Agency of Transportation supported the Senate’s plan, officials have said.
At Tuesday’s meeting, lawmakers agreed to a compromise: Allocate $850,000 from the state’s highway maintenance fund for fare-free service, while asking Green Mountain Transit to pay the same $150,000 share. The committee also added language to H.479 stating that the Agency of Transportation “shall utilize available federal monies in lieu of” the $850,000 authorization “to the greatest extent practicable,” as long as it does not find that other public transportation agencies need the money.
“I think they’re getting more certainty with 100,000 more dollars where (the bill) settled from what the Senate sent over,” Sen. Thomas Chittenden, D-Chittenden Southeast, said after lawmakers reached the agreement.
Green Mountain Transit was only able to waive fares on its routes for the current fiscal year, which runs through June, after lawmakers approved a similar $1.2 million add-on to the state transportation budget last spring.
Extending fare-free service for the rest of 2023 will also give Green Mountain Transit the time it needs to meet another provision in H.479, agency leaders have said. The bill calls for the agency to develop and implement by January 2024 a “fair fares” system whereby some who use its Chittenden County routes could pay less or no money.
H.479 calls for the agency to develop this system “in consultation with community action agencies and other relevant entities, such as those that represent the migrant and refugee populations,” and report on the plan to lawmakers by Dec. 1, 2023.
Clark has said that Green Mountain Transit hopes this tiered-fare system would help buoy the system’s ridership numbers after it brings back fares. A January report found that the agency could expect to lose more than 15% of its riders if it starts charging again, compared to the number of people who would take the bus should it continue to be free.
If the agency loses enough riders, it also could lose some federal funding that is tied to ridership numbers, Clark said, which he called “a major concern.”
“Our hope,” Clark wrote to lawmakers earlier this year, is that with ‘Fair Fares’ and robust public education we will not see such a large decrease in ridership.”
The conference committee’s report will now head back to the full House and Senate for up-or-down votes.