Green Mountain Transit may not need to reduce bus service next year after a new contract with drivers improved its budget outlook.
Leaders of Chittenden County’s ailing bus system have repeatedly cut routes and service frequency in recent years to manage multimillion-dollar budget gaps. The agency initially projected another deficit as high as $3 million in its upcoming fiscal year and was bracing for another round of cuts that would affect riders on popular urban routes.
But negotiations this summer between Green Mountain Transit and its unionized drivers, represented by Teamsters Local 597, yielded a four-year contract that increases hourly wages without adding to the overall deficit. The new contract, plus a higher-than-expected number of employee resignations and other savings, narrowed the budget gap to around $1 million, general manager Clayton Clark told lawmakers in a memo last month.
Clark is counting on the state Agency of Transportation, or VTrans, to close the remaining gap. He told lawmakers that VTrans leaders expect to provide the transit authority with about $900,000 in additional funding, largely through a federal carbon-reduction program.
The improved outlook, while not a sure thing, is enough for Clark to pause planning for further service cuts, which would have begun this fall.
“We’ll be able to have some breathing room,” Clark said in an interview.
Clark’s memo to lawmakers could also put pressure on state officials to follow through with a funding bump. In an email to Seven Days, VTrans public transit program manager Ross MacDonald emphasized that the agency has not yet prepared its budgets or made any funding commitments, only informal projections.
“No final awards or discussions thereof are appropriate at this time,” MacDonald said.
The new contract between drivers and the transit authority includes annual wage increases of 3.33 percent from the current base wage of roughly $30 per hour. It caps annual increases to health insurance premiums, paid by the transit authority, to 8 percent during most of the contract period.
But drivers agreed to forgo a $3,000 yearly bonus that union president Curtis Clough said was enacted during the pandemic. Their out-of-pocket medical costs will also increase.
Overall labor costs, which have risen sharply, will not increase next year, according to Clark. The transit authority employs only 55 drivers today, down from 70 or so in recent years.
Both sides touted aspects of the new deal. Contract negotiations have proven difficult in the past, with drivers staging a strike in 2014.
“Our members overwhelmingly ratified a contract that we believe will keep them and their families in good shape over the next few years and provide for strong protections,” Clough said.
The expected reprieve for the transit authority may be short-lived. The trajectory of rising costs and stagnant ridership still leaves Green Mountain Transit on an unsustainable path, despite having reinstated fares last year. Without more changes, Clark said, the transit authority expects to reduce service again in 2027.
However, the transit authority will use the next year to look for ways to improve the health of public transportation in Chittenden County. Clark’s work to pass off rural service in surrounding counties to other operators is moving forward. The authority is working with cities and towns to reexamine how it assesses local taxpayers for service while also searching for new sources of revenue.
If anything, a year without service cuts would allow Green Mountain Transit more time to plan future reductions, Clark said. Most of the lines that have been eliminated so far were relatively sparsely traveled. “Further changes are going to end up impacting a lot more people,” he said.
Its most recent cuts took effect in August and eliminated service to the airport in South Burlington and College Street in Burlington. The changes prompted frustration from some residents who were caught off guard.
Clark said Green Mountain Transit hopes to use the months ahead to “further refine how we communicate with the public.”
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