Some Q&A with the Citys Acting Transportation Director Agyemang-Duah (Questions courtesy of Meg and Anne): Q1. Because the community college, Edgewater and parts of Riva Rd are county, are their any transportation solutions currently offered, or being considered by the county for transportation between the City and these locations? A1: I dont know of any plans by the county to provide transit services for this part of the county. Please note that the city receives $177,000 a year from the county to support Annapolis Transit, particularly the 2 routes that go into the county - Gold from Edgewater to the community college and Yellow along Riva Rd Q2. What is the status discussions of a Regional Transportation Authority? Would that cover the city, the community college/ Arnold and Arundel Mills area? A2. Unfortunately, I dont know. You may want to check with the Mayors office Q3. What are the financial impacts of eliminating the Circulator all together unless fees could make it self sustaining and modifying cost and area for Gold and yellow routes? A3. It could hurt parking revenue, especially at Park Place garage. Please note that the purpose of this downtown shuttle (Circulator) is to leverage existing transportation and parking resources to move people who park at the Citys parking garages, (in particular Park Place, Knighton and Gotts) quickly and efficiently to their destinations in downtown. Since its implementation, we have seen in increase in number of vehicles parked in these garages, especially Park Place. The Circulator was to be funded through an increase of the parking fee of $1 at Park Place. The parking fee was increased but the money was not dedicated to the Circulator. [JL personal commentary: potential issue / solution here]. Q4. Are there any numbers on the cost of the operation? There are many, many different numbers that are all over the place. Some clarification and actual numbers would be helpful! A4. The Department tracks direct operating costs (driver cost consisting of salaries and benefits, maintenance cost and fuel). For FY 2013, this was $850,000 for the Circulator. This number is smaller than what the Finance Dept calculated. This is because the Finance Dept includes all cost including even the parking operations expenditure, non-occurring (i.e one-time) expenditure, non-allocated (overhead) cost of about $1.26m because transit is set up as an enterprise fund and all administrative costs although there are other departmental functions that are not transit. Also Finance allocates the cost to the routes based on ridership, not mileage.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 19:23:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015