A new agreement between the ASUO and Lane Transit District over the system that allows University students to ride buses for free will ease tensions between the two groups and make future payments from the ASUO easier to negotiate, representatives from both LTD and the ASUO said.
Every year, the ASUO pays LTD to consider University student IDs as bus passes, allowing students to ride without paying a fare. But tension has arisen in recent years because leaders of the bus service provider believe they are being underpaid for the service.
Historically, the ASUO has used the University’s enrollment projections to calculate the amount it pays LTD annually. The problem is, enrollment projections often underestimate the number of students who will attend the University, meaning that LTD is paid for fewer potential riders than actually exist each year.
LTD’s leadership, therefore, has said it feels perpetually shortchanged by the ASUO’s payments. This year, however, the student government has changed the way it calculates its payments in a way that ensures students will pay less and satisfies LTD.
Instead of using the enrollment projection to calculate the amount to be paid for bus service, the ASUO will now use figures from the previous year’s enrollment. So, for the 2010–11 school year, the ASUO will pay LTD a group pass rate calculated using enrollment numbers from 2008–09, which is the most recent year from which complete data are available.
The resulting contract will be worth a little less than $1.2 million, an increase of about 18.8 percent from the current contract with LTD. If the ASUO had used the projection for next year instead, it would have paid about $50,000 more because the projected number of 2010-11 enrolled students is higher than the total number of students who were enrolled in 2008-09.
The result satisfies both sides. Students end up paying less because the previous year’s enrollment is usually lower than the projection. LTD will be assured that it will receive payment for every student it offers service, even if that payment comes in two years late.
“It will be a lot more stable (of a) contract than before,” said Ben Eckstein, one of the ASUO’s negotiators for the contract.
The contract will still pay for less bus service, however, because LTD predicts it will be forced to cut several routes to make up for a budget gap in the coming year.
The Breeze, the provider’s only route that runs on the University campus, will likely be among those cut. The route connects the University with shopping malls and student housing north of the Willamette River, but LTD director Andy Vobora said other routes would compensate for the Breeze’s loss.
Specifically, he said the high-speed EmX route, which runs from LTD’s Springfield Station to its Eugene Station via Franklin Boulevard, would compensate for the Breeze, allowing riders to transfer to routes that go north of the Willamette.
The cuts are being made in an effort to compensate for a $6 million budget shortfall brought on by the decline in state payroll taxes, which provide a sizable portion of LTD’s revenue. The Breeze is one of 11 routes likely being eliminated, while a further 30 will be changed to reduce costs.
[email protected]