A second round of reductions in Green Mountain Transit services in Barre has sparked criticism from city leaders. Meanwhile, the agency says it’s doing everything it can to get service levels back up amid pervasive staffing challenges.
As of Sept. 5, Green Mountain Transit eliminated trips on its No. 89 “City Commuter” route — which runs between downtown Barre and Montpelier — so that buses now arrive largely every hour, as opposed to every 30 minutes, as they did before.
At the same time, the agency temporarily suspended its No. 84 “U.S. 2 Commuter” route and its No. 93 “Northfield Commuter” route, and reduced the availability of its on-demand microtransit service, MyRide, throughout Washington County.
The schedule changes came just three months after Green Mountain Transit had resumed its normal schedule, ending an earlier round of service reductions on the No. 89, 93 and 84 routes that were in place for about 11 months.
Barre City leaders said these repeated service reductions — in addition to a separate decision by the transit agency, in February 2020, to eliminate an early and late run on the No. 89 route — have them concerned about residents’ access to public transit.
At a Barre City Council meeting last month, news of the service reductions appeared to spark uniform concern among councilors who are often starkly divided.
“Barre is one of the poorest communities in the state,” said Ward 1 Councilor Emel Cambel. “The needs are huge — and (bus service) needs to be taken care of.”
Clayton Clark, Green Mountain Transit’s general manager, told the council that the agency’s decisions to reduce service both in 2022 and 2023 could be chalked up to the same reasons: staff turnover and challenges hiring new staff.
The agency had 18 drivers available to cover its Washington County routes in June — the minimum needed for full coverage, Clark told councilors. But by the end of August, four of them had left their jobs, and there were no immediate replacements.
Clark said two of the drivers moved out-of-state, one transferred to the agency’s base of operations in St. Albans, and one was promoted to another role within the company.
“Cutting service, obviously, is not where we want to be,” Clark said at the meeting, to nods from the council. “We are committed to getting out of this cycle.”
The general manager said he has already hired four drivers to replace the people who left this summer, though it will likely be at least two more months until full service can resume in Barre. He insisted it was “not going to be 11 months, like last year.”
Clark said he hopes a decision last month by the agency’s governing board to bump up the starting hourly wage for drivers in Washington, Franklin and Grand Isle counties to $28 — provided they have a commercial driver’s license — will help with recruitment. It’s the second time this year the board has voted to increase those wages, he said.
At the city council meeting, Barre leaders voted to formally request that Green Mountain Transit’s board of commissioners bring back the two No. 89 runs it cut in 2020, including one from downtown Barre that arrived at the Montpelier Transit Center by 6:30 a.m.
Under the reduced schedule now in place, the earliest bus gets to Montpelier by 7:30 a.m., according to Clark. Under regular bus service, that arrival is closer to 7 a.m.
Clark said those two No. 89 trips were eliminated because ridership was so low — an average of three people in the morning and one at night — that the agency could no longer justify funding them. Unlike the service reductions in 2022 and 2023, he said, the February 2020 changes were intended as a permanent cut. That means the board of commissioners has to review Barre’s effort to reinstate the trips as a “new service” request, he said.
Several councilors balked at that characterization. “How can we cut the red tape and get this done?” asked Ward 3 Councilor Michael Deering II. “We’re not serving the people that need to be served the most.”
Barre City Manager Nicolas Storellicastro said in an interview that even under normal service levels, the No. 89 gets to Montpelier too late for city residents to catch one of two connecting buses that get into downtown Burlington earlier than 8 a.m.
That’s too late for many working-class jobs, Storellicastro said. He contended that, even if the city’s bus routes have low ridership, the buses still provide a vital service.
Clark said there has been a breakdown in communication this year between city leaders and the agency’s board of commissioners, especially after contentious discussion at a March board meeting that, he said, left both sides with bruised feelings. Barre city officials are set to attend a board meeting later this month to talk service levels.
Some councilors also drew a comparison between Green Mountain Transit’s decision last year to reduce service in Barre and, around the same time, increase service on the agency’s seasonal shuttle that transports skiers around Stowe Mountain Resort.
“Holy cow. You know who I am,” Ward 1 Councilor Thom Lauzon, one of the city’s most vocal conservative leaders, said to Clark at the meeting. “When you can make me see the inequity — holy mackerel. There’s something way off-kilter.”
Clark acknowledged in an interview that “the surface level optics of that, you know, don’t look great for GMT,” but said in reality there is little interplay between the two services.
The resort shuttle is staffed with temporary drivers who can’t be reassigned to local and commuter routes, because the local and commuter driver positions fall under a collective bargaining agreement, Clark said. “It’s a separate labor pool.”
The general manager also said the revenue the agency brings in from its shuttle routes — which are funded largely by the ski resorts they serve — helps offset some of the cost of operating bus services in Barre, and in other more rural communities.
Currently, the Granite City funds about 6% of Green Mountain Transit’s costs for service in the city, Clark said, and the agency’s board “has to look for revenue” where it can.
Green Mountain Transit charges similar local assessments to other municipalities that it serves. But as those assessments have continued to increase year over year, agency leaders and public transit advocates have pushed for state lawmakers to find a more sustainable funding source for the agency’s bus and paratransit services.
“There’s this sort of perception that we can just move things around anywhere within our service area,” Clark said, speaking about Barre. “And that’s just not the case.”
