Amarillo Transit
When assessing Amarillo’s public transportation, the bus is half full - or the bus is half empty - depending on how one looks at it. The system isn’t practical for many of the city’s residents, but for others, it’s an essential mode of transportation.
A Driving Concern
Transit service tries to balance cost, need
By JOE CHAPMAN
joe.chapman@amarillo.com
The Amarillo Globe-News April 4, 2004
All Aboard: A woman boards an Amarillo bus, part of a system that runs 12 hours a day but has its drawbacks.
“No one rides the buses” is a complaint Transit Manager Judy Phelps has heard, but it’s simply not true, she said.
“We’ve got the people out riding the bus. In fact, I had to go out to the transfer point this morning, and everyone of the buses that pulled in, there was eight to 10 people,” she said last week.
“Now there are periods during the day when they’re not as busy as at other times. But for example, we go by Palo Duro school, Horace Mann, and we fill them up.”
Route 3, which hits the J.O. Wyatt Clinic on Amarillo Boulevard, is so heavily used the buses easily get off schedule and have to catch up, she said. The system is especially convenient for people who live near pickups, like people in the Glenwood area who can walk to the city’s transit office, Phelps said.
Others rely on the bus to get to jobs at City Hall and the Downtown Public Library.
“It all depends on where you live and what time you’ve gotta be there,” Phelps said of the system’s convenience.
Last year, about 349,000 people paid fares to ride the city’s eight fixed routes. Another 23,481 paid for trips on Spec-Trans, which provides curb-to-curb shuttle service to people with medically documented disabilities.
Spec-Trans is nice for people who qualify, but the fixed routes aren’t always as viable for the rest.
A common complaint regards the system’s hours of operation. Buses begin picking up passengers at 6:30 a.m. and make their last stops just before 7 p.m.
“They still run a good 12 hours. You can hardly ask for much more than that,” said Korri Weise of Catholic Family Service Inc. “But when that’s your only mode of transportation” those hours are restrictive, she said.
Weise works is a case manager for the homeless and helps them find work while staying in shelters.
But most of the jobs they can take don’t fit into an 8-to-5 or 9-to-6 day, she said. Jobs at fast-food restaurants, hospitals and industrial plants often require employees to be there late at night or early in the morning.
“If a job gets off at 9 p.m., and they don’t have a way back to the shelter … then they have to quit that job because the bus system doesn’t run as much,” Weise said.
Another challenge to a practical bus system is Amarillo’s geography. Everything is so spread out across the city’s 92.39 square-miles that passengers can’t just step off a bus and get all of their needs met.
“In larger cities, you can use the bus system to go to a grocer, there’s a pharmacy, there’s a dry cleaners, (and) you drop your kids off at a day care,” Phelps said.
“Here in Amarillo, of course, the city’s not set up that way. Unless you have a lot of time to do a lot of walking, you can’t access the bus and all of the things you need to support your life,” she said.
Most commercial developments target people with cars, and few are one-stop shops. The shopping center at Southwest 45th Avenue and Western Street approaches the mark by offering a grocery store, pharmacy, bank, cleaners, an insurance agent and even apartment housing.
But the nearest child care provider and post office are several blocks away and require either an extended walk or another wait. And Amarillo’s buses run on 45-minute intervals, longer ones during peak hours.
Geography, wait time, hours of operation - such factors make public transportation difficult for people with no choice but to depend on it, and not enticing enough for those who have cars to use their vehicles less.
The only thing that could put more buses out and increase their street time is more funding. And that’s a grim prospect considering the extent that transit administrators already are stretching every local, state and federal dollar.
The transit system’s annual budget is $3.7 million. The state provides $673,000, the city contributes $790,000 and passenger fares generate another $185,000.
The city is supposed to receive $2.24 million in federal funding this year but so far has received $1.15 million of it. The rest hasn’t been released yet because Congress is still hashing out the transportation reauthorization bill.
The cost to expand all eight fixed routes’ service by one hour more per day starts at $169,000, according to Phelps’ estimates. But that figure doesn’t include the extra costs to pay administrators, dispatchers, cleaners, maintenance staff and risk management supervisors, she said.
To add another bus would cost about $215,000 for the vehicle and $176,000 to operate it for one year.
The city has considered selling advertising space on the buses, but no one was interested, said Alan Taylor, assistant city manager. The cost for the businesses to create panels durable enough to put on the vehicles’ exteriors also was a deterrent, he said.
*Bus Fares*
Fixed route
Adults: 75 cents
Students and children ages 6 to 12: 60 cents
Seniors and people with disabilities: 35 cents
Children younger than 6: free
Spec-Trans: Curb-to-curb: $1.50