GILROY
– Looking forward to 2005, an adult or young person can expect
to pay an extra quarter for bus and light-rail fares.
Next Jan. 1, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority
will likely raise its adult, one-way fare from $1.50 to $1.75 and
its youth fare from $1.25 to $1.50.
GILROY – Looking forward to 2005, an adult or young person can expect to pay an extra quarter for bus and light-rail fares.
Next Jan. 1, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority will likely raise its adult, one-way fare from $1.50 to $1.75 and its youth fare from $1.25 to $1.50. A one-way adult express fare would go up 50 cents, from $3 to $3.50. Day passes, which cost the same as three one-way fares, would go up correspondingly.
It’s probable the VTA Board of Directors will approve these hikes at its June meeting, according to Chairperson Don Gage. The VTA’s Ad Hoc Financial Stability Committee, which Gage also sits on, is recommending the rate hikes.
“We think they’re fair,” said Gage, who is also a county supervisor and a Gilroy resident.
The goal is to help raise farebox recovery for the struggling Santa Clara County public transportation system. The VTA now gets back 11.6 percent of its operation costs from fares – dismal compared to other transit bodies around the nation.
“The VTA probably has the lowest farebox recovery of almost all the agencies in the nation,” Gage said. “Most agencies are up in the low 30s (in terms of farebox-recovery percentage).”
This round of fare hikes should allow the VTA’s farebox recovery to break 20 percent, Gage said. The goal is 25 percent, he added, although not all of that would come from fare increases. The VTA also wants to get back its ridership, which has declined more than 30 percent over the last three years. One way it may lure riders in the future is by giving discounts on monthly passes, Gage said.
In January, however, monthly passes would go up: from $52.50 to $61.25 for adults, from $90 to $122.50 for an express adult pass, from $30 to $52 for young people and from $17.50 to $27.50 for senior citizens and disabled riders.
A one-way ticket for seniors and the disabled would remained unchanged at 75 cents.
For young people, however, the one-way hike is 20 percent, 17 percent for adults.
“The percentages seem like a lot, but the amount isn’t a lot,” Gage said.
The VTA just raised its fares in August, and more small rate hikes would likely follow these. VTA officials don’t want to scare away riders with a huge, one-time rate hike, but they need the money to offset a $100 million annual operating deficit.
“We’re going to be looking at this every year over the next four or five years,” Gage said.
Since the 1970s, the VTA has received the bulk of its revenue from a countywide half-cent sales tax. Sales-tax revenues have decreased for the last 10 straight quarters, however, and the VTA’s fiscal straits have grown dire. Staff and board members have batted around the idea of asking for a second half-cent sales tax for operations, but a recent poll said voters were unlikely to approve this. Voters are already paying a second half-cent tax for VTA capital projects, and the VTA is also polling about yet another half-cent for these as well.
Gage said the VTA cannot ask voters for more operations taxes unless it can prove it has done everything else possible to help itself out of its fix.
The VTA plans to hold public meetings on the proposed rate hikes from March 15 to 18, at as yet unspecified locations around the county.
Gage has said that even with fare hikes, the cost of riding the VTA is generally still cheaper than driving. In a vehicle that averages 20 miles per gallon of gasoline it would take to drive from Gilroy to downtown San Jose and back – roughly 70 miles – is $6.30, based on $1.80 a gallon for regular unleaded gasoline.
