By John Arthur Hutchison, The News-Herald | Posted:  Thursday, January 29, 2015

Laketran has been allocated $3,477,425 in federal funding from 2016 through 2020 through the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency to help replace Dial-a-Ride and Commuter Express buses.

However, the county transit agency said the funding would be about $7,650,335 short of what is anticipated to be needed during the five-year span to replace 72 vehicles that involve 60 Dial-a-Ride and 12 Commuter Express buses expected to reach the end of their usefulness.

NOACA on Jan. 23 announced it awarded $42.7 million for transportation projects that aim to improve air quality and increase transportation choice in its five-county region that consists of Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Medina counties. Projects will be funded with federal Congestion Mitigation/Air Quality dollars between 2015 and 2020.

Laketran General Manager Ray Jurkowski called the CMAQ allocation “most unfortunate” and said it illustrates how fragile public transit funding is.

“For the past seven years, we’ve been initiating cost reduction and cost containment strategies as well as developing new revenue streams to mitigate the volatility in federal, state and local operating assistance,” Jurkowski said. “Now that volatility has spread to the capital funding side that we’ve depended upon to replace our obsolete buses that reached the end of their useful lives.”

Laketran was able to secure the capital dollars it needed during previous funding cycles to replace buses as needed, he said.

Jurkowski said the methodology to determine the allocation of federal CMAQ funds recently changed on the state level.

Metropolitan planning organizations such as NOACA used to receive the federal allocation directly from the state, but now heads of each of these organizations get together to determine the methodology across the state.

“Other (metropolitan planning organizations) across the state aren’t as dependent on public transportation and they were not very compelled to allocate money to public transportation,” Jurkowski said. “Even though (NOACA Executive Director Grace Gallucci) in that forum fought the noble fight, she at least walked away with some funding for public transportation.”

Commuter Express buses have about 500,000 miles on them when they need to be replaced and the smaller Dial-a-Ride buses have around 150,000 to 200,000 miles on them, Jurkowski said. If the buses are pushed beyond the mileage marks, they become more expensive to maintain and operate.

The impact of the CMAQ funding decision is likely to be felt more in the long term, likely after 2017, Jurkowski said, adding there is time to work with NOACA and other partners to find monies and programs to help mitigate a loss in both federal and state funding.

“This latest round of cuts underscores the need for our federal partners to demonstrate the leadership courage to pass a long-term, well-funded transportation bill to address the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and our state partners to reverse their more than a decade long disinvestment in public transit,” he said. “The state of Ohio ranks behind South Dakota in its support of public transit, hardly selling points in trying to attract new employers to the state or helping to stimulate local job growth.”

Laketran still plans move forward with plans to replace 12 Dial-a-Ride buses in 2015.

Jurkowski also reaffirmed Laketran’s decision Jan. 26 to use $581,000 in savings resulting from lower fuel costs to restore fixed route services on Saturdays beginning May 2.

“We’ve always said we’re going to do this for a period of two years,” he said.