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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC. Joining me is my friend and colleague, Colin Fiske, of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. Hey, Colin, how you doing?

COLIN FISKE:

I'm all right, how are you doing, Tom?

WHEELER:

I'm doing good. So if Colin's on the show, you know we're going to be talking about transportation. In particular, this week we're going to be talking about mass transit. So the importance of mass transit here in Humboldt County, both to serve our people and make sure that people are able to get to their appointments and do the things that people need to do, move around the county, as well as the climate impacts of mass transit, as well as threats to our current transit system and opportunities. So big topic, big show, let's get going. So Colin, we start off this show by talking about two related points. One is service coverage and having buses be able to get people to the necessary locations for them to live their lives and the social aspect of that, as well as the climate aspect. So let's start with social. Let's talk about the Humboldt Transit Authority and coverage. Do you want to offer any thoughts?

FISKE:

Sure, yeah, I can get started. So this is, as you're kind of getting at here, there are two main goals that pretty much any transit agency has. One of them is ridership, just getting more riders. And the other one is this coverage goal, which means that your buses go as many places as possible. And the reason for that goal is because there are non-drivers everywhere. Even in the really rural areas, there are non-drivers. And so it's really important to provide everybody with opportunities to get where they need to go, to get to their jobs, to get to school, to get to healthcare and shopping and all those things.

So I think just to put this in context, to put this in context, I think a lot of people often assume that in rural areas, everybody drives, but actually we know that in general, a quarter to a third of people in any given community are non-drivers. And that includes kids who are too young to drive. So that's a big chunk of people who also have transportation needs. It also includes seniors who have aged out of driving. It includes people with disabilities and it includes people who can't afford to either own a car or to pay for fuel or to pay for insurance or any of those things. So there's a good chunk of people who are non-drivers anywhere you go and they need to get around. So it is not possible to send a bus down every single street and road and highway, but I think HTA for the huge rural area that has to cover does a pretty good job of covering a lot of rural Humboldt. We have a route that goes all the way down to Benbow and Southern Humboldt. We have a route that goes all the way to Willow Creek.

WHEELER:

Well, we have a route that goes all the way to Ukiah now.

FISKE:

That is absolutely true. Good point. We have a route that goes all the way to Ukiah. And we have, you know, they coordinate with other transit systems so you can get up to Crescent City. You can kind of get all over the place on public transit, despite the rural nature of a lot of this landscape. But that's not cheap. It costs a lot to run those long distance services. And even though they are pretty well used, the subsidy that we give per rider is a lot higher than it would be or than it is to move riders around, say, the Arcata-Eureka area.

WHEELER:

And here we're talking about geographical coverage, but we also need to think about temporal coverage, being able to ride the bus at hours that are useful for you, right? Because if you can't get to your job on time, if you can't get to your doctor's appointment, if you can't get to the places that you need to get, what good is mass transit service to you as an individual? It is important that we are able to do both, get to the places, have geographical coverage, as well as get to the places on the times that you need. And here we do have some challenges. In particular, we have fairly good service during an ordinary workday. Buses in the Humboldt Bay region come every half hour or so, but on weekends that drops off.

And still, even though we have buses every half hour and that mostly works for people, it isn't as convenient as we would like. And it isn't as convenient as data shows can have a meaningful impact on increasing ridership. So the more frequent your transit service, the more useful it is to individuals. You can just show up at a bus stop and not worry and know when the next bus is coming because you only will have to wait a couple of minutes until your next bus. Here it's a half hour lead time between buses.

FISKE:

Yeah, and I think you and I, as frequent bus riders, we know that even when you're traveling somewhere in the middle of the day, where it comes every half hour, you still have to plan your trip. You still have to know when the buses are so you can get to where you're going at the right time. Whereas if you decrease that to 15 minutes or even less, a bus comes every 15 minutes, every 10 minutes or something, you get to a point where you don't really have to know when the buses are coming. When you show up, there's gonna be a bus within a few minutes, most likely. And that is the point where the research shows most people who have an option, who can drive or use other modes of transportation, are more likely to try the bus.

WHEELER:

And that was always my experience living in Seattle. It was just, you show up at your bus stop and you just hang out until the next bus comes. I do want to point out two useful apps for folks if they are wanting to become more active bus riders that are useful in this trip planning. The first is obvious and dumb, but it's Google Maps. So Google Maps incorporates all of the bus times and is useful for figuring out where you have to walk, when the bus is gonna be there, all that sort of stuff. It is a pretty remarkable mapping service. And if you use mass transit as the option in Google Maps, it will get you there. It'll tell you what connections you need to make and so on.

The other is the transit app. And through the transit app, you can see real-time bus locations for the Humboldt Transit Authority buses. So if you're waiting for your bus and it's running late, you can always look at it to see how late is the bus gonna run? Or you can see when the next bus is gonna pull up if you haven't mapped your trip yet. It is quite a good app in that respect. So we've talked about the social impact of mass transit here in Humboldt County. It's useful for a variety of systems who can't use cars for their transit or choose not to use cars. Folks like you and I who are trying to reduce our vehicle miles traveled because we want to make an impact on our individual greenhouse gas emissions.

And so let's talk about greenhouse gas emissions and mass transit. So this is an environmental show. We are the enviros. So Colin, tell us about the role of mass transit in combating climate change.

FISKE:

So, the biggest source of climate pollution, greenhouse gas emissions in our local area by far, and also in the state and in the country as a whole, is transportation. And most of that comes from private vehicles, just the cars and trucks that folks are driving around every day. And so, of course, there's work going on to electrify vehicles and reduce emissions, but all of the research shows that we are not going to be able to get to a zero emission fleet fast enough to address the climate crisis. And not only that, but it's quite likely that we won't be able to just take our current fleet and replace it entirely with electric vehicles anyway, just because there are limitations on some of the key minerals and other parts that go into those vehicles. So, what do we do? We have to also reduce the amount that we drive. And taking transit, obviously there is energy that goes into powering those buses, but per passenger, per trip, it's a lot, lot lower emissions than driving your own vehicle.

So, getting on the bus is a great way to reduce carbon emissions, and those emissions are getting lowered even further because the state has a mandate for transit buses to go zero emission pretty quickly, and HTA is on the path to doing that locally. So, it is a great way, maybe the biggest way to lower carbon emissions is to get on the bus or walk or bike or anything to get in your personal vehicle.

WHEELER:

And as you said, HTA is doing a great job in decarbonizing its fleet as required by California state law, but we have unique impacts and challenges as a rural transit agency. The distances our buses have to travel are often much further than if you were the San Francisco transit agency or what have you. So we have the first of HTA's hydrogen fueled buses have come to Eureka and have taken some test drives. So be on the lookout for those to come. HTA has been very good and competitive in receiving grants to improve its fleet.

And maybe I'll use this grants to improve its fleet to transition to a discussion about the financing of a rural transit agency. So transit is something that requires a variety of funds. It requires state monies, federal monies, and then money that it can recover from riders at the fare box. As a rural transit agency, we are going to inherently receive less fare box money than if we were in San Francisco and people are getting on, riding a couple of blocks and getting back off. There's just going to be less ridership per mile here. And so we are more reliant on federal and state funds. And we have Trump as president. So Colin, maybe talk about some of these funding challenges for HTA and the dilemma then that this puts our transit agency into of trying to figure out or prioritize how it operates its buses.

FISKE:

Sure. So just to start off with the dilemma, we talked about these goals of coverage to provide good service for everyone who needs it. And then ridership, which largely depends on things like frequency, but also the density of the service area. Because your potential for ridership is much higher where you have more people living right around bus stops. And so if you want to maximize ridership to get those economic benefits, you're going to run your buses just directly through the densest areas back and forth as frequently as possible. But if you want coverage, you're going to have longer routes that go through lower density areas, go through rural areas. And those routes are given the same number of buses. When you run a longer, more circuitous route, it's going to be a lot less frequent. And so there's this tension there that's there for all agencies, but it's particularly heightened I would say for a rural agency like HTA where we do have these denser urban areas, Arcata, Eureka, getting out to McKinleyville and Fortuna. And then you have this very large low density rural area that they're also trying to serve.

And so that budget tension and where do you prioritize your service is very real. And so I would say that we know that HTA has done a really great job with very limited budgets. In recent years, they provide a pretty convenient service in the Humboldt Bay region where there's more people and they do provide these more rural services that take people long distances. But it's not currently super sustainable financially. So HTA estimates that of about a $10 million budget, about 4 million of that is basically it's a structural deficit. It's a hole in the budget that they have to fill with these grants that you're talking about. And we're really lucky that they've been really successful and had really great staff working to get those grants, but it is not necessarily a long-term sustainable strategy. And then we also know that a little less than $2 million of that budget comes directly from the federal government. And as you said, Trump and the Republicans in Congress have made no secret of the fact that they want to cut transit funding. So that is a very real possibility.

So we need money to make sure that we can keep providing the critical service that's currently being provided, even if some of those grants dry up or that federal funding is cut. But we also know that there are all of these well-documented needs that aren't funded yet, but really need to be in order to make sure that folks can get around easily on transit. And so you hinted at some of those, the hours of service. We don't currently have service on Sundays. So folks who ride the bus can't go longer distances on Sundays. They can't ride the bus. We need more hours, I would say, on Saturdays and even later nights, early mornings is a common issue. And we also need then that higher frequency to attract more riders in the denser areas that we're talking about. There's a bunch of other issues also that are unfunded, but well-known. But I would say when you add these things up, we're talking about increasing HTA's budget by more than 50% to just meet these well-documented basic needs that haven't yet been funded.

So yeah, it's a big challenge and they've done a really great job with really limited money, but I would say now's the time we need to increase the size of that budget to let them do an even better job.

WHEELER:

One other thing that I want to point out, we've talked about how HTA has been successful in finding and getting these grants, so great work to the HTA team there. But a lot of grant funding often goes to things like purchasing new buses, which is necessary and great that HTA has been able to find these grants. We're getting something like 11 new hydrogen buses as a result of a substantial grant that HTA was able to land. But this is distinct and separate grant money than operations.

You are listening to the Econews Report. I'm talking with Colin Fiske of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities about mass transit service in Humboldt County and how we can make it better.

Operations is often the harder thing to find money for. And so that is a big part of this challenge is we can have all the buses that we want, but if we don't have the funds to pay for the diesel or maybe the hydrogen in this future, or the drivers, we don't really have a good bus service, right? So this is another complication that I think folks often misunderstand either unintentionally or intentionally, looking at you, Supervisor Rexbone, that is a challenge for maintaining good mass transit options. So go ahead.

FISKE:

I was just going to say that I think that is fundamentally true. And it's, I just want to emphasize, cause it is a misconception that I hear quite a lot is like, is that the problem is we can't afford the right buses or we need to buy more buses. And it's true buses are expensive, but by far the biggest cost for running a transit service is the operations. It's paying the drivers, it's paying the mechanics, it's the fuel. It's all of those things are by far the biggest cost and the biggest impediment to running more service. So I just want to make sure that that is clear to everybody and that that's really where the biggest need is.

WHEELER:

So when figuring out how we can plug this hole in HTA's budget, how we can perhaps even expand service times or locations, we're needing more money. And last November, Humboldt County voters approved Measure O. Measure O included in its description opportunities for funding transit. It was a roads and transit measure that could bring in a dozen plus million dollars a year through new sales tax revenue in the county.

So going back to when this was being negotiated at the county, EPIC and CRTP initially objected to Measure O because as it was originally conceived by the county, this was exclusively a roads funding measure. And we said, look, it is unfair to urban voters whose roads are maintained by their city or they'll travel on Caltrans maintained roads that you increase taxes on them, that this is going to be reliant on a progressive urban tax base for this tax to pass and for no benefit to come to these voters, that we should have something that is going to relieve traffic congestion in our urban areas, that will enable folks to be able to get onto buses and have more frequent better bus service. And so the county heard our concerns, recognized the threat that enviro voters could vote against this and tell our constituencies to vote against this. And they included transit as one of the selling points Measure O.

Now, we are at the point where the county has to figure out how much of the revenue from Measure O is going to go to transit. And unsurprisingly, there is a contingent in the county that is seeking to renege on this promise and to have 100% of Measure O funds go to fixing rural roads to nowhere, right? So, Colin, you have been part of discussions, you've been part of an advisory committee. Tell us about this process and where we're at in determining Measure O funding.

FISKE:

Yes, so the County Board of Supervisors created an ad hoc committee to recommend what percentage of the measure of funding should go to transit versus roads. I was a fairly large number of members on that committee. I was one of the members. I was the designated transit advocate and the committee met once and it's now public information that the committee will be recommending 14 percent of the measure of funding go to transit. Now that seems a little bit arbitrary number. It is a little bit arbitrary and I will say that as the transit advocate on that committee I didn't agree with that. I thought that we needed more money to go to transit at least 20 percent, because as we've been talking about there's this very real threat of losing funding to maintain our current service plus all of these just desperately needed improvements to the service both to serve existing riders and to attract more riders so that we can address our climate issues among others.

So we are now at the point where that recommendation is going to go to the Board of Supervisors sometime in the next couple of weeks most likely and they will be deciding what percentage for the next several years what percentage of the measure of money goes to transit and we will be there advocating for at least 20 percent.

WHEELER:

So remember, from earlier in our conversation, we have a $4 million structural deficit in HTA's budget, right? So looking at all of their sources of revenue at present, even without any sort of reductions of federal funding, we begin each year in the red $4 million. And that money needs to come up from some other fund. And HTA staff, to their credit, have been great in finding that funding. But that is something that doesn't exist, and that's just to maintain service as it currently exists.

So with the threat of the Trump administration potentially pulling funding, let's consider Humboldt County as a right place to pull funding from, as it's in California, as we are a sanctuary jurisdiction, as this is a climate-related good thing for the world. This is 100% the type of money that is likely to be withheld in the future. This is a scary moment for our transit agency, that not only this funding that we have relied upon could go away, but that we already are in the red and operating this transit agency. So at 20%, Colin, approximately how much money would you anticipate that to bring in for the transit agency?

FISKE:

So the rough estimate for the total amount of measure of funding overall is 24 million a year. So 20% would be about $4.8 million a year, which if you're doing the math, that would be enough to more or less cover that structural deficit if needed. It would not be enough to cover that if the federal funding were cut. And it would be enough to also expand, meet some of those needs that we've been talking about, like the Sunday service or the more frequent service, but not all of them. And certainly not if we end up needing to use it to just maintain the current service. So it does not get anywhere near covering all of the needs, but it would be very helpful and at least guard against some of the contingencies of budget cuts and hopefully allow us to make some service improvements as well.

WHEELER:

There's a profound issue of equity here. This is a sales tax increase. Measure O was a sales tax increase. Sales taxes are regressive in nature, and this is particularly regressive. Majuro would be particularly regressive if it was only to fund rural roads, right? So our urban residents, our low-income urban residents would be taxed for no benefit. And we're talking 10.25% tax rate, I believe, in the city of Eureka, which is the maximum allowed under state law. We had to get special legislation to allow ourselves to be taxed this much.

And so I think that particularly for a supervisor like Supervisor Arroyo or Supervisor Wilson or – yeah, these two in particular, having the large jurisdictions whose majority of their base is going to be these urban residents, this should be particularly important to them that they can deliver for their area.

FISKE:

I would just add to that, that the, the majority, well, I don't have the numbers in front of me. So, so I'm not going to say the majority, but, but the bulk of, of the population of the fifth district is in McKinleyville and, and the biggest concentration in the second district is in Fortuna. So these are all areas across all the districts really that, that have more, more urban or suburban residents who are going to be more are going to, are going to be using the bus more potentially if we provide better service and, and who we need to, we need to provide service to.

WHEELER:

I imagine as well, a lot of these folks probably misunderstood Measure O. Because this is a county funding measure, this money is all going to the county. And so if you were a urban resident and you voted for this because you want the pothole on your city maintained street to be filled, I'm afraid you're out of luck. This is going to roads out to Xenia and Whitethorn and Maple Creek and all of these places that are probably not roads that you're ever really going to travel much in your life. These roads, we have an overtaxed system, right? We don't have the revenue base sufficient to maintain the infrastructure that we currently have. And so now we're coming up with these solutions to address that.

One thing that we've brought up previously to the Board of Supervisors, EPIC and CRTP, is the need to right-size our road network. This is just kind of a basic accounting problem, that our tax base isn't sufficient for the size of the road network that we currently have. So the supervisors in putting Measure O on the ballot ignored this structural challenge. And this is a kick-the-can-down-the-road sort of a solution. I think that in addition to figuring out more sources of revenue to maintain the roads that we have to a sufficient standard, we should also figure out what are the roads that we can let go. And there are a number of county roads that lead to one or two houses. And should the county be burdened with maintaining those roads to a certain standard if it's going to be for the benefit of one or two individuals? I don't think so.

FISKE:

I wanna bring up one other issue here, which may not seem related, but I think is, and that is safety. So we know roads in Humboldt County, people die on them every year. People are seriously injured. We have a real crisis of safety, transportation safety in Humboldt County. I would say it's particularly concentrated for pedestrians and bicyclists, but really motorists as well face real danger out there on the streets and roads. And so there isn't this influx of money, no matter how much of it goes to transit, more of it will be going to the roads. And so we wanna make sure that we're not just rebuilding roads exactly the way they are, but we're addressing safety problems and making them safer for all users as we're investing this money.

But also to bring it back to transit, this is a little known fact, I think, but riding the bus is much safer actually than driving a car. And so it's safer for the person who's doing it, and it's also safer for other road users. So the more folks that we get on the bus instead of driving, the safer the streets will be. And actually some research suggests that's one of the biggest safe interventions we could do. So investing in transit is also investing in road safety. And I think that shouldn't get lost in the conversation.

WHEELER:

So you, listener, want to see better bus transit, better mass transit, better bus service. In Humboldt County, you want to see expanded coverage area, expanded coverage times, more riders on the bus. Let's get those climate benefits. This is going to require money. And there is a political decision coming before the Board of Supervisors. Colin, how should people get engaged on this issue? What can they say? Who should they say it to?

FISKE:

So the number one thing I would say is contact your supervisor and really contact all of the supervisors, but especially your own supervisor. You can find their contact information on the county's website. If you want to get more engaged in general in supporting transit, just definitely check out CRTP's website, transportationpriorities.org. And we actually have a special email list and a special Facebook group just for folks who are transit riders and specifically want to support transit riders. So if you want to get involved with that, contact us through the website. But I would say right now, get in touch with your supervisor, let them know that transit is important to you. If you're a transit rider, let them know what your needs are and how important it is to increase investment so that we can meet your needs and everybody else's needs through transit.

WHEELER:

All right, unfortunately, we are out of time. Thank you so much, Colin Fiske, the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities. Thanks for joining, Colin. Thanks, Tom. All right, I will talk to you next week on this time and channel, more environmental news from the North Coast of California.