TARC's Proposed Service Cuts are an Embarrassment for Louisville
The bus off the fiscal cliff will now arrive every 45 minutes
As a network redesign looms, TARC has begun a series of service cutbacks in order to deal with their $30 million dollar budget shortfall as the agency redesigns their transit network. While these cuts are separate from the overall redesign, they give us a glimpse into the future of a TARC network with drastically reduced service. This glimpse shows us something that is, frankly, embarrasing.
TARC has already implimented several, light cuts to service but recently announced what I would consider a big one. Three routes would be eliminated in their entirety (the 22, 52, and 63), requiring some of the remaining routes that remain to reorient themselves to pick up these riders. Other routes are going through slight realignments. The biggest change is that the 4 (Fourth Street) and 10 (Dixie Rapid) will now arrive every 20 minutes instead of every 15.
This is a 25% reduction in service on two of the city’s four “rapid routes”. These routes are interesting choices for service changes. Before these cuts, the Dixie Rapid had no dedicated bus lanes, no raised bus platforms, no off-board fare collection, and now it won’t even have rapid service. I think it is safe to say that Louisville’s BRT is dead in the water, if it was ever even anything more than a corpse floating in an BRT wrapped inner-tube.
The other rapid route experiencing cuts goes through some of the densest areas in the city, and is in the best environment for transit in the city. It is also the route with the second highest ridership behind the 23. This is supposedly to increase reliability, trying to curb back against the many “ghost buses” that never show. This is somewhat counterintuitive when most experts agree that decreased frequencies lead to decreased ridership and therefore, decreased revenue. In Surmounting the Fiscal Cliff, Yonah Freemark and Lindiwe Rennert cover specifically how other agencies have surmounted the fiscal cliff and doom loop by increasing frequency along certain corridors:
Many agencies also redistributed service across their existing networks. This included shifts in service volume from routes with heavy loss of ridership to those with lower losses; an increase in the number of routes offering all-day, frequent service; and improved frequency of weekend service. They also commonly took pandemic-informed steps, by shifting service away from the 9-to-5 morning andevening commuter peaks, toward more robust midday and evening service offerings to account forgreater flexibility in work start-stop hours and to encourage greater use of transit for nonwork trips.
I could go on for quite a while about how this all is not great but it is worth noting that this is not really the fault of TARC themselves. The transit authority is given limited ability to advocate for itself, and they cannot really impact their level of funding beyond applying for grants or increasing fares. They have had to rely on a 2.2% occupational tax as basically their sole revenue stream (besides fares) since the agency was founded. The state of Kentucky provides a measly 1% of TARC’s budget, making it one of the least supportive of any state in the country for local transit agencies.
The state of TARC is primarily the fault of Metro Council and the Mayor. Lets be honest. These are the people who should be profoundly embarassed that service reductions are taking place. The fiscal cliff did not arrive suddenly, it was apparent early on in COVID, and not changing your revenue stream for 50+ years generally leads to fiscal issues.
Mayor Greenberg has done practically nothing to address the fiscal crisis at TARC. When TARC had to lay off drivers, he simply said it was an “opprotunity” for JCPS. This opprotunity is clearly working out so far, given that school traffic is now so bad from school pickup lines that TARC buses have to take permnant detours around JCPS schools. It is quite clear that the needed leadership to change things has not come from the mayors office.
When it comes to Metro Council, they were given assessments of the fiscal crisis and coming service cuts, luckily they came in clutch with some brave advice: Figure it out, good luck champ. Multiple council members basically told TARC to figure out the numbers and make necessary cuts. No alternative revenue streams have been considered by metro council, no solutions have been provided. None of them need the bus to get around, of course.
Local advocacy to do something about these cuts is limited, but I think it is worth acknowledging. ATU Local 1447 protested the cuts before they happened, leading to Greenbergs “opprotunity” comment. The local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America has a Get on the Bus campaign to advocate Metro directly fund TARC and increase levels of service. Beyond that, some piecemeal work is going on in local organizations such as Strong Towns Louisville and Streets for People.
The lack of action by city government is embarassing on two fronts. One is that it just shows a clear lack of care for the people in our city who rely on transit. It does not even appear to be on the radar of any leadership outside of TARC itself. The second, which is made extra embarrasing by the first, is that other peer cities are seeing record investment in transit and are nearly recovering from the ridership drops brought on by COVID. Nashville is currently voting on a 3 billion dollar plan to improve transportation in their city, which is proudly supported by their mayor. Cincinnati approved a new tax to fund transit in 2020, and their system has seen record ridership since then. Indianapolis just opened their second BRT line (and its actual BRT, with lanes and stuff!) We are getting lapped, again and again, while we are cutting transit even further.
I do not want to end with an “everything sucks” message, but, it kind of does. We are not doing great on the transit front, and that suckage can fuel advocacy for real solutions. I strongly recommend everyone check out the Get on the Bus campaign and contact your metro council person about how these cuts will affect you and your community. We can do what these other cities are doing. If we really care about regional city rivalries, we can’t let fucking Indianapolis beat us.