Planner sees obstacles to bus systems merger

Kingston’s municipal bus system has “significant problems,” county Planning Director Dennis Doyle said.

Kingston’s municipal bus system has “significant problems” that must be corrected before the city and Ulster County could consider merging their public transportation systems, county Planning Director Dennis Doyle said.

“If you want to remain in the transit business, if you want to continue to run your transit system as it’s currently run or make changes to it, that’s fine,” Doyle told aldermen during a Common Council caucus Monday. “We’ve looked at this system over repeated numbers of times and the system has significant problems.”

Doyle, who is also director of the Ulster County Transportation Council, said the most recent study of Kingston’s Citibus transit system was done as part of a sales-tax sharing agreement between the city and county. He said the county would consider taking over the city’s bus system, provided it did not cost any additional money. Doyle added that the county did not want to take over the city’s system, but would if that is what Kingston asked for.

What the county is currently offering is assistance to fix problems with the Citibus system, Doyle said. And at the end, the county could run the system, he said.

“We see this more as a lifeline,” Doyle said. He said the Federal Transit Administration would not even consider authorizing a merger between the city and county bus systems until the issues with Citibus are resolved.

Doyle said there currently is a triannual review from the federal government that says the city does not meet the minimum requirements to receive funding. He said the city is currently two years in arrears with respect to grants on its transit system. Doyle estimated there are $900,000 worth of reimbursable funds the city can no longer get and another $100,000 in grants from 2014 that it is in danger of losing.

To the city’s credit, when it found out about the problems, it moved to hire a consultant to help remedy them, Doyle said.

“I think you have a significant amount of work ahead of you in order to clean this up,” Doyle said. “I think as part of that work, we can consider a discussion about moving forward, if that’s what you want to do.”

If the city and county moved to a single operator system, a recently completed report shows how that could be achieved, Doyle said. He said the county could significantly improve services for the city by changing the route structure and creating a demand-response service, among other changes.

In response to Doyle’s comments, several aldermen said they want to have further discussions with Mayor Steve Noble, the city’s comptroller and its transit supervisor.

Council Majority Leader Reynolds Scott-Childress, D-Ward 3, said he would set up a meeting for that discussion to take place.