GILROY
– While the cost for Gilroyans relying on the Valley
Transportation Service’s paratransit rides will increase 20 cents
on Aug. 1, an additional surcharge will not hit local paratransit
service for another year.
GILROY – While the cost for Gilroyans relying on the Valley Transportation Service’s paratransit rides will increase 20 cents on Aug. 1, an additional surcharge will not hit local paratransit service for another year.
Excluding South County, the VTA is planning to begin initiating a $6 surcharge each way to paratransit riders who are traveling to a destination more than three-fourths of a mile outside current VTA bus lines and service areas.
The price for a one-way ticket will go from $2.80 to $3.
For example, if a paratransit rider is going to medical or shopping center along a bus route, the cost of the one-way fare will be $3. But if the rider’s destination is a friend’s home outside the three-fourth mile radius of VTA bus routes, the cost will be $9.
VTA paratransit service vans provide rides to seniors and disabled citizens who due to physical limitations can’t ride buses or walk to bus stops.
The surcharge for the service will be effective Oct. 13 in every city in the county except Gilroy, San Martin and Morgan Hill, where the surcharge won’t go into effect until July 2004, according to VTA spokesperson Kat Mereigh.
Mereigh said Gilroy Mayor Tom Springer – a VTA board member – suggested the South County deferment, pointing out special circumstances among South County paratransit riders. Springer could not be reached for further comment by deadline.
“The surcharge is a compromise to avoid cutting more of the current service areas,” Mereigh said. “Our goal right now is to maintain the service level we currently have, but to do that we have to raise costs somewhere.”
The VTA is currently at an unprecedented financial crossroads. Officials have estimated the likelihood of a reoccurring $160 million annual deficit.
Nearly 85 percent of the VTA’s operating budget is comprised of sales-tax revenues, which have fluctuated dramatically with the economy. With the current economic downturn, agency revenues have dropped 33 percent in two years after now eight consecutive quarters of declining sales taxes.
Paratransit service accounts for 4 percent of VTA’s annual ridership, logging 40,000 trips per year throughout the county, according to Mereigh.
Massive layoffs and service reductions equaling 21 percent were originally planned for October, but in June the agency’s board voted to defer the cuts by borrowing against future sales-tax revenue projected from Measure A – the half-cent sales tax for transit expansion and operations that county voters approved in 2000.
Future cuts are now planned to be delayed until January.
