By Tim Hrenchir, Topeka Capital-Journal, May 18, 2010
Topeka Metropolitan Transit Authority members applauded after hearing a transportation consultant present findings Monday from a study his company conducted of this city's bus service.
Ted Rieck, senior transit planner with Kansas City, Mo.-based HDR, told members of the TMTA board a 35 percent reduction in its services would be necessary if the TMTA were unable to continue to assess its current 4.4-mill property tax levy.
TMTA chairman Pat Hubbell said findings of the study backed up what the financially strapped bus service told the Topeka City Council last year as it asked for an increase in the property tax levy the TMTA assess from 3 to 5 mills. Council members subsequently voted last August to raise that levy to 4.4 mills for this year only.
The council then voted last month to set a cap of 4.4 mills for the year 2011 on the property tax levy the TMTA imposes. The council plans to decide in August specifically what the 2011 TMTA levy will be.
Meanwhile, TMTA and council members alike had been awaiting results of HDR's analysis, which TMTA member Jack Alexander described Monday as being "very interesting" and providing "a lot of good data."
Rieck gave TMTA board members a PowerPoint presentation Monday in which he outlined some funding sources he thought they could potentially tap.
He said HDR concluded that overall, the TMTA operation is run efficiently and its management is doing a good job under the circumstances, though there is room for improvement.
Rieck said he didn't consider it a viable strategy for this city's transit service to switch from using its current buses, which on average carry 30 people, to smaller "cutaway" buses that carry 15 to 20 people. Rieck suggested such buses would at times become overloaded here.
Rieck also provided TMTA members a written report, which he said he hoped to revise before it is presented to the Topeka City Council at a work session May 25. Hubbell said the TMTA wouldn't make any copies of the report publicly available until then.
Tim Hrenchir can be reached at (785) 295-1184 or tim.hrenchir@cjonline.com.