PRTC Plan Would Relieve Some Overcrowding

• The following is a press release from PRTC. It is unedited. 

To partially relieve chronic overcrowding on its OmniRide commuter bus services, PRTC is recommending that its Board of Commissioners approve a plan to gradually add eight new morning trips and three new afternoon trips starting in late July.

This plan will be presented to the Board of Commissioners for its consideration at the Commission’s regularly scheduled monthly meeting on July 7.  The proposal is expected to alleviate some but not all overcrowding because it is limited to what can be done without additional public subsidies or the acquisition of additional buses.

OmniRide passengers have been urging PRTC to supplement OmniRide service for many months because of chronic overcrowding – the result of higher gas prices coupled with Congress’s one-year extension of the $230 per month maximum allowable employer-sponsored commuter benefit that all federal employees are eligible to receive.  The maximum benefit will remain at that level through 2011 and then revert to $120 per month unless Congress acts again.  

An analysis completed this spring, prior to PRTC’s Spring Service Change, determined that 20 percent of all OmniRide trips were chronically overcrowded, which means that they had standing-room-only on at least four days per month for reasons that were not incident-related.    Scheduling changes made during the Spring Service Change to better balance supply and demand during the peak periods of service decreased the number of overcrowded trips to 17 percent.  The majority of the standing-room-only trips occur in the afternoons when all OmniRide buses are deployed.

Despite the apparent need for more service, PRTC was unable to provide it before now because all available buses were already in use during the afternoon rush hours and budgeted funding was in short supply.  However, those obstacles have eased somewhat for reasons described below, making it possible for PRTC to recommend a partial relief plan to the Board.

First, in June, PRTC took delivery of four new federally funded commuter buses as replacements for retirement-age buses.  Rather than auctioning off the older buses as previously planned, PRTC is recommending that three of the four buses be retained in the active fleet to permit supplemental service in the afternoons.  The fourth bus is recommended for retention as well, but it would be used to permit the acceleration of  an ongoing mid-life OmniRide bus overhaul campaign, so that three buses can be overhauled at a time instead of just two.  

The second obstacle – funding – has been eased as a consequence of three things:

• Scheduling efficiencies that the Planning and Operations Department developed during the Spring Service Change that freed up some budgeted service hours;
• The use of higher-than-budgeted passenger fare revenues to self-finance some additional hours; and
• The use of some budgeted “contingency hours” that are part of each year’s budget for schedule adjustments that are periodically necessary to accommodate longer running times. 

Collectively, these additional hours can be redeployed to fund new morning and afternoon trips without requiring additional funding from Prince William County, which is the sole local government sponsor of PRTC’s commuter bus services.

If the PRTC Board of Commissioners approves the staff recommendation, new trips will be added gradually.  Because the plan will ease some, but not all, of the overcrowding, service will be supplemented based on where the most severe overcrowding is present.  Customers will be advised of additional services with posters on buses and announcements on PRTC’s website and the subscription-based Rider Express notification system.  The new trips will be incorporated into PRTC’s printed schedules in the fall.