A grassroots group that formed four years ago to push for weekend bus service in Franklin County is planning its annual gathering to advocate once again for improved transportation options.
Transportation Justice for Franklin County will meet Monday at 5:25 p.m. in the Greenfield Public Library’s LeVanway Meeting Room for its Stand Up 4 Transportation Day to “support transportation funding and regional initiatives.”
“Riders aren’t really an empowered group,” said Russ Fisher, a Franklin Regional Transportation Area bus driver who is an organizer of the event. He said FRTA has been looking at a proposal to provide “a half day” of Saturday service.
“We need to get some publicity out there,” he said. “This is dear to our hearts.”
Carol Letson of Greenfield, who was among a half-dozen people attending a planning meeting last month, said, “A lot of residents’ needs aren’t being served. We have people who can’t leave their homes and go where they need to go on a weekend, they can’t go to an afternoon event and come home after 7 p.m.; there’s no way to get home again, even on weekdays.”
In a Recorder letter to the editor, Letson wrote, “I have lived in Greenfield for four decades and realize that I will not be driving a car very much longer. We will all depend on the bus service as we age. We all will want the bus service to serve our needs even better than it does now.”
Among those initiatives being examined, according to Franklin Regional Council of Governments Transportation Planner Meghan Rhodes, is a COG-led survey of human service agencies to share donated FRTA vans to help get people to fixed routes, to classes and other services.
FRTA, meanwhile, is setting up a series of meetings as it plans its next yearly budget. The two-hour sessions are planned for April 12 at 3:30 p.m. at the Orange Armory; April 18 at 2 p.m. at the Turners Falls Discovery Center; April 19 at 12:30 p.m. and April 25 at 3 p.m. at the Olver Transportation Center in Greenfield; April 26 at noon at Leyden Woods in Greenfield; April 27 from 4 to 6 p.m. in Deerfield Town Hall; and May 1 at 11:30 a.m. at Oak Courts in Greenfield.
But the regional transit authority — which last year introduced fixed-rate fares and route adjustments and hopes to roll out a monthly pass to boost ridership — is also facing the possibility of seeing state funding rolled back to what it was three years ago, said FRTA Administrator Tina Cote.
“It’s very difficult for us to know what our funding levels will be,” Cote said. “I have no idea what the state will give me or what federal funding will look like. Obviously, people want additional services.”
Through what she said may be “deviations or reductions in stops and times along our routes,” Cote said, “We’re hoping we can find new efficiencies, but we don’t know what anything’s going to look like. In the meantime, it’s really important for us to get some feedback from the public.”
She said she’s asked legislators to put in earmarks in the budget to offer “partial Saturday service. We want to get feedback from the community to find out what’s the most important for them to accomplish on Saturdays if in fact we do get the funding.”
Rep. Paul Mark, D-Peru, said he’s prepared to advocate for adding $180,000 to help FRTA launch “partial Saturday transportation, although he added that the budget “is very uncertain.”
“It’s difficult in this year. But if you don’t ask, you’re definitely not going to get it,” said Mark, who along with Fisher, Cote and Rhodes is scheduled to participate in Monday’s event.
“On the one hand, what we have going for us, as strange as it sounds, is that Franklin County is the only county without any weekend service at all,” Mark said. “To me, there’s something wrong with that picture, and that makes a compelling case why it should be approved. On the other hand, the budget is tight, the budget all over the state and we’re in a period of uncertainty because we don’t know what the federal budget’s going to look like.”
Cote said FRTA has seen “stable” ridership this year. She’s been advocating for weekend service for “at least 10 years,” she said, but it keeps getting moved to the “back burner” because of insufficient funding.
“We need to build a system that people can rely on at least six days a week, and have it be consistent,” she said.
“We don’t want to put anything new out there so that next year, funding gets cut even more, so we have to make additional cuts after people have gotten used to the service. We could get all this money to provide Saturday service, but we might have to reduce service on the other routes we have Monday through Friday,” said Cote, who projected that health insurance for FRTA’s Franklin Transit Management workers will increase by more than 13 percent, “so that wipes out any increase we have right there.”