SPARTA gets review

By Anna B. Mitchell  

JANUARY 21, 2010 10:53 a.m. (0)

Aboard a minibus on the North Church Street route 10 riders – men and women, most of them middle-aged or older – turned to 11, 12, 15 and then a precarious 19 before folks started getting off at the Spartanburg Regional Hospital stop.

Initially silent, conversation turned to the crowded conditions before long.

“This was the biggest waste of money,” an elderly man said. “These little buses.

“Certain times a day, this ain’t big enough to hold all the passengers,” a woman seated nearby answered.

Three small buses were purchased to keep costs down where city planners found ridership light – but predicting exactly how much capacity to offer and when has proven difficult for staff who are also grappling with increasingly tight operational budgets for the city as a whole.

The SPARTA transit system annually carries about 500,000 people along eight routes to shopping malls, clinics, apartments, grocery stores and other stops, said Marc Keenan, general manager of SPARTA.

If every one of the riders paid the full $1.25 fare, which they don’t, revenue would be about $625,000. The bus system gives deep discounts to the elderly and disabled – who combined made up about half of those on the North Church bus late last week.

Small children ride for free, and the transit system runs promotions from time to time to get people familiar with the buses – like free Fridays this past summer.

Spartanburg assistant city manager Chris Story said the system collected a couple hundred thousand in bus fares last year.

State and federal subsidies cover more than half of the $1.5 million operation; what remains after fare revenue is a budget hole the city has filled since a Duke Power transit grant ran dry earlier this decade.

In 2009, the city paid about $600,000 to keep the buses rolling, Story said. Subsidies over the past four years have totaled $2.2 million.

The need for the bus system is apparent to anyone spending time in the city’s Liberty Street terminal downtown. Passengers have difficulty finding seats on the most popular routes to Westgate Mall and the Dorman Center (Walmart).

Monthly, these routes carry 5,000 passengers.

City officials, looking for places to save money, discussed the transit system at a recent City Council retreat.

Mayor Junie White said he sees a lot of empty seats in buses running through Converse Heights.

“They still have the maid route going through there,” he said.

White said the city is considering more small buses and cutting back on routes if necessary. No changes will take place until a year-long analysis wraps up.

“There’s always questions of what’s the most important type of service to provide,” Story said. “Survey data a couple years ago found most of those who ride SPARTA do it to run errands as opposed to daily to get to work.”

The city’s contract with First Transit, a firm that hires drivers and maintains bus fleets in 235 locations – including scores of cities – throughout the United States and Canada is up for renewal soon, and Story said the city has asked First Transit to review ridership data.

Keenan said SPARTA Transit is not fazed by the attention and has worked with the city several times in recent years to reevaluate the system. Meanwhile, he said, ridership in Spartanburg and across the nation has remained about the same in recent years, aside from a spike last year when fuel prices rose over $4 a gallon.

One area the city is looking for increased ridership is USC Upstate, whose George Dean Johnson School of Business will be ready for students later this year. One of the least used routes on the bus system is the Spartanburg Tech route, which includes the community college and USC Upstate, but it would be a natural connection between the suburban and downtown campuses.

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