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Date: 4/5/2022
SPRINGFIELD – Boston has done it. Worcester has done it. Lawrence has done it.
Now a group of city councilors are proposing the city uses American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to create a pilot program that would eliminate fares for three of the city’s most heavily used bus routes.
Councilors Justin Hurst, Victor Davila, Tracye Whitfield, Zaida Govan and Kateri Walsh rode the B7 route from Eastfield Mall to the MassMutual Center on April 1 to speak to bus riders about making that route as well as the Eastfield Springfield via Carew/Belmont-Dwight G2 bus line has the third highest ridership in the city and the Ludlow via Bay Street B6 route, which has the fourth highest ridership in the city.
At a press conference following their trip the councilors spoke about a resident they met on the bus who depends upon it to get to school and work. The mother with two children said she buys three monthly passes for her family at a cost of $56 each a month in order to ride. Another person relies on the bus to get to college.
The cost for a two-year pilot program to the city would be $3.4 million from the pool of ARPA funding. Hurst said the city has received $123 million in ARPA funding and has spend “very little” of it.
He added free transportation is “absolutely critical” to help people.
Govan noted this use of ARPA funds would “literally put ARPA money into people’s pockets.”
Davila said there are three supermarkets on the routes, which is important to food security issues in the city.
They will be bringing the idea to the complete council for support, which then in turn would be sent to Mayor Domenic Sarno for his approval, Hurst explained. With Sano’s approval, Hurst said the pilot program “would put the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority in position to take advantage of federal and state funding and compete for $5 billion in competitive grant money through Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and Sen. Edward J. Markey’s Freedom to Move Act.”
In a written statement, Hurst said, “I have had numerous conversations with Sandra Sheehan, the Administrator from the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority, who provided me with the data for this proposal. During our conversations she made the following clear in order for this to work:
The city of Springfield must pay for the fares of these three routes as Farebox Revenue accounts for a significant portion of their operating expenses (11.5 percent).
We make the entire route free even if it goes into other towns (she was concerned about the logistical nightmare of bus drivers having to monitor who was free and who wasn’t).
We lobby our state and federal legislators to fully fund the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority this year.”
As the councilors noted in a press release, “It is well documented that many of our essential workers on the front-lines of COVID 19 relied heavily on public transportation to get to and from work and access essential services like education and health care. Similarly, many low-income families ride the bus and data shows that they spend nearly 30 percent of their household income on transportation expenses. This pilot programs would serve as a way to get ARPA funding into communities and individual’s hands who need it the most instantaneously, which has proven difficult to do thus far.
Currently, the cities of Boston, Worcester and Lawrence have already begun pilot programs for free transportation in their respective cities and many others throughout the commonwealth are poised to do the same for their residents. It only makes sense that Springfield take advantage of this opportunity with the goal to make free transportation for all residents permanent.”