*Updated to add information following Monday’s meeting.
GAINESVILLE, FL (352today.com) – Leaders from the city of Gainesville and the University of Florida (UF) met on Monday to discuss a new contract for continuing bus service on the Regional Transit System (RTS). It’s the first face-to-face meeting since the bus budget battle began more than a month ago.
The university provided a written statement following the meeting calling the talks “productive” and saying everyone wants an outcome that’s good for our students and the community.
“The city now understands better the university’s responsibility to assure our students that the rate being charged is fair. The city promised to provide a breakdown of the $84 an hour rate per bus so that we can evaluate it and then explain the amount to our students. We need to understand if this is an optimized cost. Everyone at the table agreed both to continue talks on a weekly basis and to keep details at the negotiating table as we work through these important conversations together.”
A spokesperson for the City of Gainesville agreed there will be additional meetings in the coming weeks to discuss the future of the RTS-UF prepaid bus fare partnership.
Gainesville city leaders who attended the meeting at UF included:
- Gainesville City Manager Cynthia W. Curry
- Gainesville City Attorney Dan Nee
- Chief Operating Officer Andrew Persons
- Executive Chief of Staff Cintya Ramos
- Director of Transportation Jesus Gomez
- Communications Director Jennifer Smart
Background
In the past, UF has had a multi-year agreement with the city to provide bus service for students, staff and faculty. The current contract ends June 30. The university proposed moving to a month-to-month agreement and new fee structure which would cut $6.9 million in RTS funding from $13.7 million to $6.8 million.
In response, the city said the revenue loss would force them to make dramatic changes to the service, including:
- Eliminating 11 bus routes, including all routes serving the UF campus
- Reducing 80,000 service hours
- Cutting 52 jobs – most of which are currently filled
“The 50% reduction in funding would mark a substantial shift in a working partnership that for 26 years has served both the City of Gainesville and UF’s students, faculty and staff,” said the city in a news release Monday morning. “Since 1998, RTS has provided expanded transportation for the university community through UF’s prepaid bus fare program, a service funded by the transportation fee UF charges as part of student tuition.”
UF Senior Vice President David Kratzer sent a letter to Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward on April 11 questioning whether UF is receiving fair value for those fees, noting that a one-way fare on an RTS bus costs $1.50 for nonstudent passengers while UF students pay $2.86.
That same day the city commission held a special meeting to discuss transit operations. Commissioners received an in-depth report from the city’s Chief Operating Officer Andrew Persons who detailed historical and current totals for UF and non-UF related ridership and the cost allocation model used by RTS to determine the hourly cost of transit service.
In a news release sent out Monday morning, the city said UF was not correctly calculating the costs.
“While the University of Florida did not provide information concerning how the $2.86 per ride figure was calculated, city staff believes that UF took the contract amount paid so far this year and divided it by the number of UF passengers to date,” said the city. “But this is not the way public transit systems operate, nor is it how a fare is determined. RTS calculates a fee by the service hour, not by individual passengers served. Additionally, using UF’s fare-based approach, the average cost per UF passenger (based on a 22-year average, including FY 2019, the last pre-COVID year) is $1.31 per ride.”
The city also says UF currently pays RTS $84 an hour to operate the buses and routes that support its campus, students, faculty and staff.
“The capital expenses to provide this service—such as paying to buy or lease buses, construct and maintain buildings, and other fixed costs—are not contributed to by UF,” said the city. “Those costs are covered by the city with help from state and federal grants.”
In FY 2024, the full cost of providing transit service—including those capital expenses—is $138.62 per hour. UF’s current negotiated per hour rate is approximately 40% below the current full cost of transit service.
The city says of its 39 routes, RTS has 20 routes that were created or expanded to serve UF students, faculty and staff which includes five on-campus routes.
The city added that it has spent $60 million to replace buses over the span of the 26-year partnership with UF and that the university has contributed $3.5 million toward new buses.
The city says replacement of retired campus buses is funded through state and federal grants which rely on ridership volume. Cutting bus routes and service hours would impact ridership levels and possibly mean the city would quality for less grant funding.
“We are currently operating with 102 buses, an expanding fleet of electric buses, and 266 employees,” said City Manager Cynthia W. Curry. “The city’s public transit service supports a population of more than 200,000 residents. If we do not reach an agreement, and routes are impacted, it could alter the ability of RTS to serve the community for years to come.”
In the release, the city says it’s hopeful the ongoing negotiations will lead to a full contract renewal, and that UF over the coming year will conduct research to analyze the traffic, safety and environmental impacts that could be expected citywide if major changes are made to the RTS-UF partnership.