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Federal cuts create roadblocks for OATS public transit service

Federal cuts create roadblocks for OATS public transit service

It’s tough to operate a public transit system—especially if your buses won’t function.
  
That’s the challenge facing Linda Yaeger, executive director of the Columbia-headquartered transportation service OATS Inc. In a typical year, Yaeger would expect to replace 100 to 125 (or 20 percent) of the 600 buses that OATS uses to transport nearly 30,000 disabled, low-income and elderly Missourians to nutrition sites, medical centers, workplaces and grocery stores in 87 Missouri counties.

  
To provide these services, OATS receives more than 30 percent of its funding from Federal Transit Administration grants, according to a 2006 annual report. But in 2007 and 2008, OATS will receive no funding from the federal government.
  
This year, the Bush administration instead used flexibility in the federal budget process to shift $438 million from equipment for OATS and similar programs to an anti-congestion highway grant that benefited only five large cities nationwide, such as New York City and San Diego. The shift occurred after the Federal Transit Administration advised the smaller transportation agencies on preparing grant applications that were not funded.
  
“Ultimately, things will have to shut down” unless Congress can provide a stable stream of funding to replace buses for these programs, particularly in outlying communities, Yaeger said.
  
The federal Department of Transportation gained that flexibility when Congress largely stopped “earmarking,” the practice of allowing senators and other senior members of Congress to individually flag funds for specific purposes, with the fiscal 2007 budget. Congress had used earmarks to provide replacement funding for almost all the buses used in rural areas and small cities. But these have become “political hotcakes,” Yaeger said.
  
Earmarking, long lampooned for funding congressional whims, had gained notoriety when pundits highlighted the “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska and other boondoggles. When Democrats took power in Congress, earmarks became increasingly endangered species.
  
Yaeger lost the all the capital funding to replace buses that Sen. Christopher S. Bond had preserved for the agency earlier. Now she faces a similar loss for 2008, although Congress has been unable to send the appropriations bill to President Bush for his signature—despite the fact that the federal fiscal year began Oct. 1.
  
Congress and the Bush administration have settled on no funding formula for a permanent transit capital program that would provide regular funding for vehicle replacement nationwide.
  
“We had one funding source. It sometimes takes a mess to get things to happen. Ultimately, if the money doesn’t come, the services will have to be reduced. Ultimately, things will have to shut down,” Yaeger said. “It doesn’t take sophisticated thinking by a rocket scientist to figure that out.”
  
Operations funding should increase in the next year for OATS and a southeast Missouri agency that, except for Ray County, are the only public transportation providers in outstate Missouri. (Urban bus systems in Kansas City metro area, St. Louis, Springfield, Joplin, Columbia, St. Joseph and Jefferson City also qualify for funding.)
  
The agencies had largely counted on such funding for covering the increase in gasoline costs—Yaeger notes one figure that pegs her higher cost at $12,000 for each increase of 1 cent per gallon—but now much of that increase may have to go into mechanical overhauls of buses that are simply worn out.
  
When services are reduced, OATS’s cutbacks could affect much of the state. Its service area covers more than 50,000 square miles, or about three-fourths of Missouri—essentially more than the western and northern halves—and can help more than 4 million residents. Of almost 1.5 million total trips in 2006, about 540,000 were trips to work, particularly for the developmentally disabled at sheltered workshops; 240,000 took residents to medical appointments; and 176,000 delivered seniors to nutrition centers.
  
Residents in many areas already have been unable to use OATS for access to work because service is only provided one or two days a week.
  
Boone County has about 20 buses in its OATS network, and Yaeger had hoped to replace six to eight this year, for which funding probably no longer is available.
  
OATS originally followed a planning track that called for replacing buses every 100,000 miles, although it tended to use 150,000 as the cutoff. Now, the average bus used by OATS already has 140,000 miles.
  
With the base price of buses, trying to find alternative means of replacing them is a tall order for the agencies, considering they struggled with requirements that they provide a 20 percent local match. A public board in Springfield and Greene County recently bought and donated a $43,000 bus. Less expensive buses are available for $35,000 and $28,000.
  
OATS has not yet invested in hiring professional fund-raisers and other personnel for a development program. “But we may be forced to do that,” Yaeger said.
  
Historically, OATS tended to rely on earmarks through Bond for its replacement vehicles. As a Republican, he is no longer in the Senate majority and has lost some of his influence. Bond did co-sponsor legislation by Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama that limited diversions of bus funds to 10 percent, but Yaeger said that an effort is under way to rename the grant program and continue that avenue for funding.
  
Yaeger, who is on the board of the Community Transit Association of America, a principal lobbyist, continues to work through Bond on changing the wording to allow the capital program to prioritize bus purchases over less urgent needs.
  
“I would prefer to get a competitive IT [information technology] system like UPS does,” Yaeger said. “We have to use pen and paper. But if you have to buy vehicles like I have to do, you don’t need the fancy recordkeeping system if you can’t move people.”

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