As the Santa Barbara Metropolitan Transit District speeds ahead to re-open its downtown transit center, it is also looking to terminate its once-popular downtown and waterfront shuttles.
“This is obviously a painful and complicated one,” said Hillary Blackerby, planning and marketing manager for MTD.
Blackerby said a year ago MTD put the service on hold for the year for several reasons. Among them, the city closed State Street to motor vehicle traffic, the city and MTD’s finances were in flux, and “we were concerned about our ability to have enough drivers to cover all of our other service.”
Tuesday’s virtual MTD meeting begins at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, and Blackerby said it is “just the beginning of our public outreach. We go to our board with the recommendations, they send us to the public, we take that input back to the Board, and they decide.”
MTD suspended the downtown and waterfront shuttle routes after the city of Santa Barbara stopped subsidizing the route.
The ridership, according to the city officials, had plummeted from about 540,000 rides to 255,000 over the course of the past decade.
The decision came as Santa Barbara bwatched its downtown parking revenues drop $2.5 million out of its $9.8 million overall budget in the aftermath of the pandemic when the city stopped charging fees for its lots.
MTD is unable to fund the service — once heralded by former general manager Gary Gleason because they were among the first in the nation to run on batteries, and had an open-air chassis — without help from the city of Santa Barbara.
“We couldn’t afford it, and ridership was at an all-time low,” Rob Dayton, Santa Barbara’s transportation planning and parking manager, told Noozhawk.
The re-opening of the transit center comes as the agency begins charging fares for the first time in a year. Beginning May 10, MTD will return to its $1.75-a-ride standard fare. The Transit Center will reopen on Monday, April 26, to give people time to buy passes.
The Transit Center has been closed since the summer of 2019 — and a year of that was because of a massive renovation.
When it reopens, the inside will only be available for conducting transactions and getting bus information. Customers will not be able to remain inside the building to wait for their buses.
Transit Center hours will be from 6 a.m. until 7 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. on weekends and holidays.
All passengers will be required to board through the front door of the bus and pay a fare via cash or pass. Customers are encouraged to purchase their passes with debit or credit cards at the Ticket Vending Machines, in order to reduce cash handling.
MTD has already increased the capacity of people on its buses to 20 passengers on a 40-foot bus; and 15 on a 30-foot bus. Masks are required.
The return to some sense of normal comes in a year when MTD lost about $7 million in fare revenue, Blackerby said.
“The long-term financial impact is not yet clear, but it will take time to recover our ridership and passenger fares,” Blackerby said. “The aid extended by the federal government has been critical to supporting public transit service all around the country, and Santa Barbara is certainly not an exception.”
MTD has received financial assistance from a variety of sources during the pandemic, including $16.3 million in Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) money; $15.8 million from the American Rescue Plan, and $4.4 million from the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act.
“In addition to back filling lost revenues, these funds have helped us pay for the expenses that have popped up due to COVID: additional cleaning service, disinfectants, personal protective equipment, driver barriers, etc,” Blackerby said. “While there has been some temporary regulatory relief on the state level, there has been no financial assistance from the state of California.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
