Arcata’s city council will decide tomorrow if the Arcata & Mad River Transit System will be completely merged with the Humboldt Transit Authority.

AMRTS and HTA have had a working relationship for a while. In 2001, AMRTS contracted HTA to do all of their vehicle maintenance and provide parking. In 2023, HTA started running and staffing all of AMRTS’ routes, as well as maintaining the buses. 

The city council decided to transfer all of AMRTS’ assets to the HTA back in January. This final resolution makes it official. 

AMRTS has been its own independent department since its founding in 1975, but Arcata managed to keep the budget small by employing their drivers part-time and running the buses only on limited hours. However, according to a staff report from tomorrow’s city council meeting, Arcata “does not have adequate staffing resources to implement cost-effective operation of the A&MRTS on its own.” The decision is also in large part due to the high cost of insuring a fleet of buses — about $70,000 a year, paid to the California Transit Indemnity Pool. Arcata will no longer have to pay that premium if it isn’t running AMRTS.

HTA and AMRTS both have a “mutual desire to maximize the efficiency of regional transit services,” according to the agenda, and feel that the simplest and most cost-effective way to make their services better is simply just to fold AMRTS completely into HTA.

If passed, 12 vehicles will become HTA property on May 1, including eight buses. All of Arcata’s local, state and federal transportation funding that originally went to AMRTS will instead go to HTA.