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Just as voters approved a bond measure last week filling AC Transit’s coffers with money for new infrastructure projects, cash shortfalls are once again threatening basic AC Transit service. After eliminating 43 lines last December to close a $50 million deficit, AC Transit now finds itself $17 million in the red and is mulling more service cuts, the sale of its top-of-the-line buses, and another service-saving ballot measure—the third in the last five years. 

An interim financial report, released last month, reported that soft sales tax revenue—about 50 percent of AC Transit’s funding—had opened up deficits of $4 million for this fiscal year and $13 million for 2004-05. 

AC Transit General Manager Rick Fernandez outlined 22 deficit reducing measures in a document released last week, but if revenues continue to slide, a request for another public bailout is possible. The transit agency has approved $60,000 for a political consultant to advise them on taking a possible tax hike to county voters, presumabl y in November. 

Talk of further cuts comes right as voters passed Measure 2, the regional transportation initiative on the March Ballot that earmarks $167 million for AC Transit projects including a Bus Rapid Transit System from Downtown Berkeley to San L eandro. 

The money, however, cannot be used to offset AC Transit’s operational deficit. “It’s so frustrating for people to see us improving our infrastructure, but then cutting service,” AC Transit Board Member Greg Harper said. “A normal business would s top innovating when revenues are hamstrung, but if we stop doing improvements we won’t be able to bring in new riders.” 

To help close the budget gap in the meantime, AC Transit is negotiating the sale of 25 brand new Belgian-made buses to transit operato rs in Washington DC, a move that would pare $8 million from the deficit. 

AC Transit Assistant General Manager Jim Gleich said service cuts had eliminated the need for the new Van Hool buses—Europe’s 2003 Bus of the Year. AC Transit has already deployed 1 33 Van Hools on its major lines. In the sale to Washington, DC, AC Transit would recoup all of its expenses, Gleich said, including the roughly $80 thousand spent last year sending mechanics to Belgium to learn how to maintain the vehicles. 

Meanwhile tra nsit planners are mapping out future service reductions as a last resort if the budget outlook remains dim. 

“We’d be foolish not to plan for another round of cuts,” Harper said. Since the economy soured in 2000, AC Transit has devoured its $50 million r ainy day reserve fund, he added. “We don’t have a cushion anymore so even the small stuff has to be sweated.” 

The only way to salvage AC Transit and other regional bus agencies is to offer more stable and diverse funding sources, said Stuart Cohen of the pro-mass transit Transportation and Land Use Coalition. “It’s been a perfect storm of events,” he said pointing to cuts in state and federal funding, sales tax shortfalls and increased unemployment that have derailed bus agencies throughout the state. He fears that downcycles damage AC Transit’s long-range viability because riders affected by cuts will ultimately stop using the bus. “It’s a cycle we need to get away from,” he said. 

To weather the storm AC Transit has won voter support for a series tax h ikes. In 2002 voters approved a parcel tax, netting the agency $7.5 million a year and in 2002 voters passed a half-cent sales tax totaling roughly $300 million.  

Separate from the current budget deficit, AC Transit is committed to a roughly $4.5 million service cut this June. The cut, which affects 13 lines—none in Berkeley—was supposed to go into effect with other cuts last December. AC Transit delayed implementation in hopes an innovative method to fund union pensions could raise money to spare the se rvice, but the plan fell through, Gleich said. 

Though it won’t be targeted in the scheduled June cuts, Berkeley has felt its share of pain from the service reductions. In December Berkeley lost Routes 17 and Transbay Route HX, and suffered reduced service on Routes E, G, H and 9. Last June AC Transit eliminated Route 8 and reduced service on Routes 65, 67, 51 and 52. Chris Ramirez, a junior at Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco, has seen his travel time from the Berkeley hills nearly double to 1.5 hours after AC Transit cut service on his bus lines in June and again in December. 

“Since they reduced frequency to every half-hour the buses aren’t as reliable and aren’t timed with BART,” he said.  

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