At 7:10 a.m. seven days a week, 365 days a year, a bus leaves Arcata and heads to Martinez, a small town in the East Bay area. There’s nothing especially unique about Martinez, save that a passenger railroad runs through it that takes passengers almost all the way to San Francisco, or, for the intrepid, all the way to Seattle, Los Angeles or Chicago. The bus spur up to and down from Humboldt, Route 7 of the Gold Runner bus line, is an invaluable service for people who don’t own cars, giving them an out from an isolated area with few means of egress. It’s also expensive to operate, and some of its runs — at some point in the future — might get axed.

The Gold Runner is operated by Amtrak and partially funded by the state, but management falls on the shoulders of the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority, a coalition of 10 local governments from Bakersfield up to Oakland. It’s in charge of making sure the route is cost-effective, and although quite a few people ride that route — more than 46,000, from October 2024 to September of 2025 — the authority spends more on it than it makes ($1.9 million to $3.2 million, during the same time period). Out of the Gold Runner’s 13 bus routes, the Arcata-Martinez route is the third most expensive.

The way the state calculates its revenue is a little byzantine: the amount earned from bus riders, plus the amount those riders then spent on a train ticket, divided by the amount spent on the route. Plug in the numbers from a well-performing route, and it should be more than 1. Route 7’s is 0.6.

There are a few factors dragging that equation down, the Humboldt Transit Authority’s general manager, Katie Collender, told the Outpost this week. It’s a long route with few stops for people to get on or off, and Amtrak has to lodge their drivers in a hotel overnight once they hit Arcata. (A recently completed study noted “disproportionately high operating costs due to its length.”) Many Route 7 riders don’t hop on a train to other parts of the country, either; they stop in the Bay Area, or catch another bus further south, thus decreasing the “train revenue” side of the sum. There are few daily commuters on the route, which means few constant, repeat customers.

Costs across the board have risen for public transit, the San Joaquin JPA’s Manager of Regional Initiatives Dan Leavitt told the Outpost during a phone interview. Post-pandemic inflation didn’t spare that sector, and they didn’t increase the cost of a ticket to entice people to begin riding the bus again. The cost of operating Route 7 has increased by 146% since 2022. The number of riders has only risen 47%.

But it is their job to keep the amount spent to a minimum, and they’re beginning to look at ways to bring that down. Route 7’s biggest days are Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and the number of people riding drops on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so those are the first days they’d consider decreasing service on.

However, Leavitt said they might bring it back into the black by focusing on increasing riders instead of reducing costs. He said they might attempt to vigorously advertise Route 7, or partner with universities along the route and convince more college students to ride the bus. During the holidays, they could even add more runs.

He emphasized no decisions either way had been made. None probably will be until early next year. Interested parties have until October 21 to comment before the JPA’s board talks about the study.

“We’re very supportive of Amtrak,” Collender said. Her agency “voiced support” for keeping services as-is. “It’s a great compliment to our North State route. We’d love to see it continue.”

Local public transit advocate Colin Fiske, the executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities, told the Outpost he was “concerned” about the prospect of decreasing the runs. He knows of people who depend on the midweek buses to access health care further south, he claimed, and they’d be “hard hit.” He also raised the issue of climate change; it’s counterproductive to make it harder to use an eco-friendly service.

“It’s really troubling that we’re seeing all of these cuts,” Fiske said, “And threats to cut service, at a time when we know that we need to be doubling down on it for climate reasons, as well as those social and equity reasons.”

Comments from Fiske were added after this article’s publication.