McKee Leaves Riders Out In the Cold - Amy Glidden

McKee Leaves Riders Out In the Cold - Amy Glidden

Governor Dan McKee, along with the leaders of our General Assembly and Peter Alviti, chair of the RIPTA board, are about to gut our public transit system. During COVID times, RIPTA, like a lot of transit agencies, faced declining ridership, reduced income from the gas tax, and fare money and federal money made up the difference. Now that money has run out. Although the budget shows that RIPTA is $8 million dollars in the red -- an amount they cannot possibly cover in "efficiencies."

 

By the way, the loss of federal money is around $40 million, and those dollars will run out in early 2025.

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Coupled with the fact that RIPTA did not ask for enough money in the first place, RIPTA faces an existential crisis with the actual budget deficit, including the fiscal cliff of around $50 million dollars. That is just to level fund RIPTA and does not include needed monies for the Transit Master Plan to expand and improve RIPTA. More federal money is not coming. Federal monies were only available for operating funds on an emergency basis during COVID. Typically, operating fund expenses are left to the states. The federal government is not going to step in this time.

 

The consequences of this are truly dire. If we go over the fiscal cliff, RIPTA will cut all  Sunday and holiday service, Park n' Ride routes, almost all rural service and reduce service to routes like the #20 to RI International Airport and the #92 on the East Side. Perhaps most consequently, all special Providence Public School trips will be cut. As a teacher at a Providence public school, I see hundreds of students getting on the bus every day. If those supplemental trips stop, the results for commuters and students who are unable to get on crowded buses will be catastrophic. I have personally seen the devastating effects on attendance when those trips don't run, something Providence and the state are trying very hard to improve. 

 

Solving this problem requires politicians to work together rather than blame RIPTA for non-existent problems and undemocratically undermine them by trying to have car-centric RIDOT involved. It means thoughtfully creating a budget with riders in mind that will not only end the fiscal cliff, but will enable us to implement the Transit Master Plan to bring RIPTA to more places and increase service and create more good-paying union jobs at a time when our governor calls for raising income. Let’s do the right thing and fund RIPTA for our drivers, our students, our commuters, and the elderly and disabled who rely on their service. 

 

Amy Glidden is the co-chair of RI Transit Riders and a Providence public schools employee, but the contents of this piece should not be construed as representing any organization.