click to enlarge - Courtney Lamdin ©️ Seven Days
- Passengers at the downtown Green Mountain Transit center
Green Mountain Transit warned public officials on Monday of potential future service cuts if the organization doesn't get enough funds to sustain operations by 2025.
Officials for the regional transportation authority said they are facing significant fiscal challenges due to the sunsetting of COVID-19 relief funds, which could lead to service levels being reduced by nearly a third. The announcement comes as the agency prepares to reinstate fares for Chittenden County-based services after a more than three-year hiatus during the pandemic.
“I don’t really see a scenario where we’re not going to have to consider some reductions, but hopefully it won’t be as drastic as laid out,” Clayton Clark, general manager of Green Mountain Transit, told Seven Days.
The transition to a fare-free model during the pandemic led to declining revenue. For the past three years, the agency has depended on one-time pandemic relief money. But the end of that aid, paired with inflation, means GMT may soon be in the red. Currently, funding for the $29 million operation comes from a mix of federal and state funds.
The situation could lead to a “transit death spiral,” a theory coined by academics in which revenue cuts lead to less service, leading to less ridership, and so on. And if ridership gets too low due to the fare reinstatement, Green Mountain Transit could lose federal funding that is contingent on certain levels of use.
“Our concern is that we could potentially end up losing some of that federal funding if we lost ridership,” Clark said.
Initial forecasts predict a $2.7 million deficit in fiscal year 2026, which begins in July 2025. If new revenue sources are not identified, service levels may need to be reduced by as much as 29 percent, Clark said.
The agency is working with legislators to discuss a path forward, but Clark believes that some service cuts will be inevitable. At that point, the agency would conduct ridership studies to decide what lines to cut.
“It’s likely that we’ll receive some additional funds that will help make this not be as drastic of a situation as it could be,” Clark said. “But we need to plan for the worst.”
Correction, March 26, 2024: Green Mountain Transit has delayed implementation of the return to fares because of a technical issue. A previous version of this story contained an error.