Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matt Walker]: And we are live here on Thursday, 01/22/2026 in house transportation. We are in a series of budget proposals by, I guess, department heads and program managers throughout the agency. And today's topic is public transit. And we have had you in, Ross, earlier, but that was about service levels and changes and updates on what's happened since we were gone and all kinds of pieces. But this is about the budget for 2027 in public transit. So Ross, welcome back. And Dan, welcome back. And I guess I will turn it over to you to tell us, are you recommending spending our hardworking Vermont taxpayers money on public transit? If I would ask right out of the gate, are we still one of the highest spending rural states on public transit in

[Ross MacDonald]: the state? I'm unaware of any other public transit program in rural America that is as well funded as this one. Absolutely. And thank you, mister chair. Welcome. For the record, Ross McDonald, public transit program manager. I'm joined here with, Dan Currier, our lead, public transit coordinator. And, I am going to get into the numbers and also a little bit of a program overview and updates that are impacting those budget decisions. So the milestones and noteworthy dynamics are that to date, our rural services have been adjusted downward starting last year to about $101,600,000 in total budget savings. And those have been largely due to our underperforming routes and underperforming aspects of other routes. We do continue to work with our five thousand three hundred seven, our urban provider, GMT, and have been watching them and working with them to ensure that those $2,000,000 in route adjustments have not impacted their small trains of intensive city bonuses. And that's a series of six metrics that can lead to $600,000 federal bonuses for each one of those. Burlington remains the recipient of four of those factors, which puts them in the top 10 or 50% of all similar sized And so we're still maintaining that level of service as well. But there's more work to do. We'll get to talk about that today. As you're being told, operations, construction, the costs continue to increase. Wages, insurance, the capital costs for bus shelters to the actual rolling stock, are climbing. Last week, during testimony, Caleb Grant confirmed that in total insurance premiums have risen by a million dollars across all of our providers. Those are tough to take and as we look at this budget, though we do see increases, it is to maintain the successful routes and we're not looking to add any pilots or routes this year for the second year in a row. Our micro transit service really represented the last attempt to do more and different and better with a different mode. It's a technology enabled service for demand response. And what's happened there is we have continued those services but for the Bridalboro Evening Micro Transit Pilot and the additional local funds that this committee provided for the local match. Those have been fully extended. And so that 20% match on those microtransit pilots are now the responsibility of our state and local funds. Transit app, that's the Where's My Bus type technology, and we have 13,000 unique users each month. About 8,000 every week are using the Transit app, downloading to see where their bus is, when they're on the bus, when am I going to get to my location. It's also part and parcel of our IT procurement so that we can update our transit app and have modules that help us determine on time performance and other operational assessments. I'm sorry about say 8,000 Vermonters weekly are checking. So that's correct. Unique users, not the same people checking Well, unique users every month, and so every week. And and so we get it sent to us and cut many different ways. But there's 8,000 people using it every week and 13,000 unique users every month. So every week, there's at least 8,000 Vermonters that are checking on their bus. That's correct. They're using it on a regular basis. There is an option to also pay $4 or $5 a month and start the gamification on rating routes and providing feedback, but that's not something that that we pay for from a from a state program. Every year, we rely on fifty three thirty nine bus and bus facilities competitive grant funds. In the past, we had spent a lot of time and effort obtaining funds for our electric vehicles under their low and no emissions element of this grant. But this year, we did not ask for any electrification assistance. We just looked at the ICE vehicles, internal combustion engine vehicles. We asked for $3,300,000 and were not awarded. On the other side of the ledger, the GMT Urban application, they asked for $6,850,000, about 0.46 of the total amount only awarded or part of this national grant, but they were awarded. And so we're trying to figure out what happened there. We are really relying on these larger awards to cover our capital needs. And on February 2, we'll have a meeting with the FDA reviewers and determine what how they assessed our application. I am a little concerned that we have a lot of unexpended low note funds. And one of the first things they look at when they go to award funds are how have they managed their other awards? And we were always right there at the top of the list and drawing down. But deliveries, infrastructure needs, and construction projects have really slowed that drawdown down. And so we'll see we'll learn more, and I may have made a mistake submitting the application. We'll find out on February 2, we'll provide a full report to this committee. Yes, sir? We have a couple of questions. Representative Burke, representing.

[Mollie S. Burke]: So what you're saying is that you applied for a grant for regular internal combustion engine buses, because you've already got a lot of electric bus money in Schindler offers somewhere. Correct. So we haven't been able to purchase those buses because we need the garage with the infrastructure, is that the issue?

[Ross MacDonald]: And and we need delivery dates to be adhered to. And so when we purchase these vehicles, we've been told they'll be ready at such and such date, and then another six month delay, another twelve month delay.

[Dan Currier]: They have been realized.

[Ross MacDonald]: So we haven't had success in incorporating those electric vehicles. And also those performances are not allowing us to replace one electric vehicle a one ICE vehicle with an electric vehicle because of the hours of operation in the range, certainly around the wintertime, has put more pressure on those ICE vehicles. So this year, we said, all of our poor rated vehicles that are barely able to make it out of the garage or or temporarily in repairs, let's just ask for only four vehicles and try to get the number of vehicles in less than good condition back to the 20% percentage that is part of our transit asset management plan. And the transit asset management plan is something that Dan manages and we establish targets of what should our fleet and our facilities look like. And right now, we're about 30% of our vehicles are in less than good condition. So this would have brought us just around that 21%. With that not being awarded, it just puts that much more pressure on this year's application. That's why I'm asking the FTA for feedback, we'll be working with VPTA next week to once again try to align our needs and prioritize

[Mollie S. Burke]: condition. And how are the electric buses performing? It's a of

[Ross MacDonald]: a mixed bag representative. The Gillig model in advanced transit are working very well. The new flyers work very well when it's warm enough, but they have just been informed to not charge the battery if it's less than 41 degrees out. So GMT is trying to warm the vehicle up inside and then, you know, plugging in and those types of things. And yes. And, you know, this weekend comes to mind. So we have some of that, but otherwise, those operate very well. And we have two other Gilligs in the Rutland area, and they've had battery warranty issues. And they've been off the road for for several weeks. I think we're approaching a few months now. And so we we put our best foot forward. We wanted to address, you know, the the goals of of the of the legislature. But so far, have 65 funded vehicles that would give us about 15% of our total fleet as electric. 26 are on the road. Final deliveries, we were hoping in '27, they may bump out to 28. And new flyers telling us it's gonna be over a year before they fix those batteries. And so we've really bought into some operational impacts on behalf of our providers. And it's easy for us to apply and get those awards and give those dollars. But for those procurement processes, the deliveries, and then still managing their day to day needs has increased the degree of difficulty through no fault of their own. We should all agree. Frustrating.

[Patricia McCoy]: Yes. I just want to

[Kate Lalley]: point out that we could pretty much run a bus on coal. It would still be reducing emissions if we got everybody to use it. I applaud your emphasis on the reliability of the fleet. Obviously, we would prefer to have electric, but it's complicated right now in so many ways. Thank you for your understanding.

[Candice White]: Not to belabor the point, but just on the electric vehicles, Ross, do you believe that you purchased the wrong vehicles? I I think about Europe and the Alps and electric vehicles. I think there are good electric buses out there. Would you have made a different purchase today than you did a year ago? Any institution, any knowledge that you've gained from that?

[Ross MacDonald]: I appreciate that. If we were Atlanta flat and temperate, we wouldn't be having these conversations. Beijing, these are the cities that really are able to electrify in a great way. We took it on as a responsibility with our hilly and chilly climate. What would those vehicles look like in in an area like ours? And the range has been disappointing. We understood that we would lose up to 40%. We weren't expecting 50%, 60% reduction on hours and miles. When they are in operation, the drivers and the riders love them. They're smooth. They're easy to maneuver. They're very good on the road. And even in the wintertime, because of the extra weight, it's tough to get those things moving sideways. And so there's some good things. The Gilley, that's the standard best of us in America. We had several of those. The New Flyer, they seem to be ahead of the curve in their development. And when we chose when GMT chose them, we thought that was a really probably trying to pick winners and losers looking out five, twelve years of the life of the bus. If they're able to fix the battery issue, we may be past that. But that was unwelcome news with us taking a bit of a chance. We have used Ford eSprinters, Gilligs, new flyers, because we wanted to test and see which ones worked best and then make a statewide decision on this is the model for workforce development, for working with DTC and those people in terms of developing that workforce to maintain. I just had a quick follow-up. Referencing the batteries. Whose lives? Is that an insurance that's going to pick that up? Are we on the hook to license batteries? We include the warranty with the procurement so that the warranty will cover those costs of of fixing those batteries. It's just the operational impacts while we get those fixed or take those vehicles out, bring them to Albany, let's say the Marble Valley vehicles, being told like, well, bring it down here and we'll fix it. That's a cost. So I could see why they wouldn't want to take those vehicles down there, you'd have to tow them. That's right. So

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Representative Thomas)]: that's good that you had some warranty. What about I mean, we've got money and time and convenience that has been disrupted. Any type of thought about getting some re

[Ross MacDonald]: Recommendation for that type of stuff? Litigation?

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Representative Thomas)]: I didn't say litigation. I said, is there any?

[Ross MacDonald]: I mean, yeah, yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Representative Thomas)]: Go for it. That's the end game, I suppose. But the point is, can we present them with a bill that shows what they've cost us?

[Ross MacDonald]: So in March, we will have a full assessment from the Vermont Environmental Infrastructure Investment Corp, or BEIC, which will outline how these vehicles are doing, what are the issues around the state, and that should reveal the true impacts. It's not all doom and gloom. And as I mentioned, many times they're working as billed, but it hasn't So, I don't have an answer for you. But once we present that report to you, to have that next step, could be interesting and helpful. Thank you. Well, would support any type of aggressive move. Representative Keyser? Thank you. How long how many miles? How many how many hours do you get out of one of the buses in the cold? Well, it it depends. The larger buses, 170 miles, and that's usually enough for these these one day trips. On the e sprinters, once it gets below 30 or 20, then you're talking about 80 or 90 miles. And that could affect some of those command response trips to Dartmouth from Bennington, let's say. But because we have they are eight foot 15% of the fleet, they can say, okay. On those longer longer distances, go ahead and use that internal combustion in town. Let's use these two electric vehicles throughout the day, swing through, pick up the other one at lunchtime. So we're still using them throughout the winter months, those are the numbers that I'm familiar with. During summer, how many miles do have? Well over 200 on the larger vehicles, 150, 160 on the e renters. And again, that's covering most of the needs. And that's when they receive them, they go, wow, these are great. Let's hope we can manage the wintertime. And we did receive additional funding for those vehicles. So the cost to the state and to our local providers has really been pennies on the dollars. And so it was tough to give up that opportunity to have 95% of the vehicle paid for, plus the EW funds that we were able to use $2,200,000 of those to match the non federal share. And that really allowed for GMT to pull in 17 vehicles for a cost that would that's costing us maybe a few $100,000 instead of a few million dollars. And so it was it was worth a shot, and we'll hope for that that will continue to improve. No. No. Obviously, at night, when you're all done using, you're putting them on a charger, how does it take to charge those big batteries? Well, many times they're being charged for 30% to 90% or 40 or 70 to 90%. And so if you're coming in with five or 10%, it could be up to five or six hours. And that's still well off peak. And most of those chargers should have the software to engage off peak during the evening hours. And that's when the rates are lowest. But when you're working on a vehicle, when you have an issue, you're plugging in at different times and that can really increase the operational costs. And we'll talk about that in March with that report coming in. Okay, cool. Thank you. Okay. So through the electric experience, the GMT rural program can continues to be on track. And thank you for the time last week. You heard about that. We're very thankful for RCP, TBD, and GMT to all be working together to make that a reality. Last year, we were under our three year FTA review. And that's a big admin lift for all of us. But we received two findings. National average is over six. We've through those findings, one was just the way that we are drawing down funds based on activities. And but so a a clean review, and we're we're good for the next couple of years without delving into the those admin costs. The public transit program, as you mentioned, with some staff reductions, I did want to add this, is that we have four staff in addition to Maine. And in July, we had five and a half. We had a part time business manager from AHS helping our financial person really rework our process memos, our documentation, our audit prep. And she was wonderful. She retired in June. And we thought, well, we knew the financial times were going be rough. So we chose as a program not to hire again a twenty hour person for those purposes. And then we did lose our admin assistant in the first round of rescissions just earlier. I'm happy to say since then, we lost the public transit coordinator. And we brought our admin assistant and elevated her from another when she was RIFT and she took another position. We then grabbed her back in just a few months and she's one of those really A plus producers. So we're very happy to have her back on the team. But right now, this is Dan and myself, a few others. And we don't expect any impacts to the operations of the program, especially when we look at reducing rural entities from seven to six. That's one fewer entities to provide the oversight, the grant agreements, the invoicing, the management reviews. And so we are looking for admin pickups as a result. But so far, no impacts out on the street.

[Matt Walker]: Ross, you mentioned, maybe I didn't quite On the FDA review, you said you had two findings, an average of six. Of them had to do with the way you were drawing down funding. What was the other?

[Ross MacDonald]: Yeah. So The other one was the inappropriate use of indirect funds. Vermont Association of Blind and Visually Impaired, it's a $150,000 grantee of ours. Their indirect rate was higher than the one that we had established. And in retrospect, we should have closed that grant and opened up a new grant capturing that new indirect rate for $150,000. It was a difference of a few thousand dollars at the end of the day. Didn't expect them to pull that one for their deeper dive. But that was the other one. We provide upfront funds to avoid the line of credit associated costs. And once we provide those funds, we draw them down from the feds. And what had happened in a few instances is we had provided the upfronts, drew them down before the activity had taken place at the local level. We thought our pre award funding authority allowed us to do that. We've been doing it since I was a kid. But they had interpreted it that none of those activities have to be through our system and reimbursed and recorded before we could draw those fed down. So we're making a $12,000 payment off $200,000,000 of activity, and they understood where we were coming from. Thank you. Representative Pouech?

[Phil Pouech]: And these are the bullets, milestones. I'm wondering if the Medicare, Medicaid contract isn't, could be a big button. I don't know if you want to just sort of describe that or you're gonna,

[Ross MacDonald]: where we sit. We really do bifurcate the program and try not to speak on behalf of our sister agency, Department of Vermont Health Access. But their model, this braided service model where our providers do the demand response for the non emergency medical transportation, our older adults and persons with disabilities, and our recovery and job access program, all fit well, all share in the amortization of those assets and those overheads, scheduling, call centers. We feel it is one of the better models in the nation. And we're not the only ones. We're asked to present how we work together. And we're hopeful to continue, but we're not the controlling authority, as a famous person would say. Representative White.

[Candice White]: Thank you, Ross. So just a question. You were talking about going from seven public transit authorities to six, and each one has their own business office. Is there an opportunity for consolidating those into one? Secretary Flynn was here yesterday and spoke about, I think, doing something similar on the AOT side. So do you see opportunity there for some efficiencies?

[Ross MacDonald]: After quite some time, there were 13 providers when I arrived nineteen years ago. And where it makes sense organically, we've many times advocated for the consolidation of these services. At some point, it does get to its limit. Four, five, or six is just about right because we do need those garages and those services and those supervisors to be regional. Also, I'd have some risks spread out amongst some of these agencies. Not all of our eggs are in one basket with one executive director who may or may not be here for a long time, those types of things. But to date, we have advocated for and tried to allow for those consolidation efforts. Right now, this one took a couple of years. This one didn't happen organically. It was really just something that we wanted to study through the legislative report process and get everybody on the right page. It was not as easy as coming in during the time of price season consolidating at those times. But there's no further consolidation plans in place. Let's get through this one and see what those pickups are. So many times ago, if we consolidate, we'll save money. And maybe we don't save money, but maybe the cost curve isn't as great as it otherwise would be. It's tough to really pencil that out, but we haven't seen incredible cost savings through previous consolidations.

[Candice White]: Yeah, and I just want to clarify that I don't mean further consolidation of the different entities. I mean just the business office. Because I think it sounds like you're doing some really good work and some of the consolidation of different entities, but sometimes you can still have different companies running, but just one entity that's doing the payroll, the benefits, etcetera, etcetera.

[Ross MacDonald]: We thought about those back office functions. Can we all share with one insurance program? Should we all do one HR software, the accounting software? Those types of things. We do have statewide procurements for our vehicles. We have statewide IT programs. And so where it's possible, we will ask a provider to act on behalf of the state just for those types of efficiencies you're talking about.

[Patricia McCoy]: So

[Ross MacDonald]: we have the Root Performance Report every year. And this is just taking some of those slides and sharing some of the larger broad brush metrics with you. As you saw yesterday, statewide ridership has declined a bit in 2025. We'll look a little deeper in the next slide. But it seems like this post COVID lack of commuter ridership, it's a little more context in the performance report. Around 4.5 is the the new normal state operating costs. You can imagine we're trying to bend that cost curve down. So we're not seeing $6.08, $9,000,000 increases. We're at $2,500,000 to sustain services. We're hoping the cost per trip would stay around $14.55 but that was not the case. But yes. Well, I'd say this puts a little bit finer point on.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II]: Sorry, didn't realize you were jumping to the next slide. I was just curious if you've seen any changes in ridership since the return to office order from the governor went into effect. Anecdotally, a lot more ridership on the Montpelier Link than GMT. I just don't know if other providers have been seeing that or if that's coming out in the numbers at all so far.

[Ross MacDonald]: I think providers haven't really seen it. This is really the major corridor of state workers and those types of origin destinations. We were at Waterbury State Office Complex last week being told that the run-in the afternoon, we only have one run from Montpelier up to Burlington that is coming into Waterbury. And there are CNDs all the way from Waterbury up to Richmond. Many times we're using a smaller bus, but in the coming weeks, there will be another larger bus coming online. We're also wondering if we could take another, we have three in the morning, three in the afternoon in the midday run, if we were to take another of those evening trips and incorporate Waterbury, that could lessen the amount of standees. We're also asking GMT to let us know what a new run would look like in terms of cost. There would be a need for an $800,000 new bus. Depends on rates and overheads. We'll let GMT inform us of the final estimate. But any of those additional costs are not part of this budget. When we put this budget together before the return to office discussion and rules. The other item with return to work was what would it do to the parking here for people accessing the State House. We used to have a capital shuttle moving from Department of Labor, National Life, and up and down. Really expensive for $183,000 was the last year. It's really nice to see enough parking across the street from Mutual Union Insurance near the chargers. So that's good news. And we'll continue to work with GMT and try to address those impacts with Waterbury. We understand there's more state workers coming online who will be going to that location.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II]: So we might see increased ridership as a result.

[Ross MacDonald]: Or we already are. We already are. And what's that going to look like as things get through the pipeline here? Reps on McCoy and then Reps

[Patricia McCoy]: on Mylar. So do you keep track of ridership from Montpelier to Waterbury and then Montpelier to Burlington? Like take out, subtracting those people so you know there's an increase from Montpelier's Water. Yes. And then from water to enrichment, like you keep track of those.

[Ross MacDonald]: That's a big one, correct. Okay. Thank you. And so when we look at that ridership being down 3.7%, operating costs being up 3.7%, and overall trip costs as a result of 7.8 it's not across the board. We have ridership increases at three, four, 5% or staying around at five or six of our providers here. But we do have the GMT Urban is by and large the largest impact on ridership. They have all the more riders than any other location. Operating costs, they're on average at 3.75, we have some folks who have reduced operating costs. SCBT and advanced transit comes to mind. And as a result, we do have some providers whose ridership is up, operating costs are down and the trip costs are down. Advanced transit, SCBT also. So when we look at our own regions, so when we look at these different regions, it is a little bit of a mixed bag. And we can talk or look at GMC and Bennington. They brought on a union shop just during FY twenty five, and that did push wages a little higher and increase their operating costs. We're working with them to see what we can do to address those.

[Matt Walker]: Hold on, I think, sorry, Reverend Lalley is in the

[Ross MacDonald]: queue for you. Then you're next.

[Kate Lalley]: Yeah, Ross, could you explain what standee means? Sure, that's a term I'm not familiar with.

[Ross MacDonald]: Sure, you're coming on the bus and there is no seat available and you are holding onto the rail as the bus is 67 miles an hour down the road. And it's less than ideal. It's not unusual. We've had standees for years and years depending on the ebbs and flows of ridership, but it is to be avoided. And when we see that, we need to address it. And I think larger bus pulling in Waterbury and giving them another option might allow for fewer, if any, standees we're hopeful, rather than to invest in more services, which would be difficult to justify in these budget plans.

[Kate Lalley]: So standees are a side of roofless, yeah.

[Ross MacDonald]: Right. It's increased demand. We used to have 11 length trips down to seven. Probably not ideal but we'll continue to work. As I mentioned Dan Currier was at Waterbury State Office Complex last week talking to people about carpooling or vanpooling from different areas. People are coming from Essex and driving all the way to Richmond, they're standing where they prefer a van pool. That would cost about as much as a monthly bus pass. Those types of things will have to do a better job with mobility management along some of these corridors with lower cost options.

[Kate Lalley]: That's not just a solution where you just get a bigger bus, it can be more options. Yes. Yeah, okay, that's very interesting, thank you.

[Matt Walker]: Perfect, Casey. Is there any

[Ross MacDonald]: of the buses charging in at all? GMT Urban went back to fare collection and they are able to cover about 10% of their operating costs. So when you get a fare, 50% of that fare has to be used to draw down the federal portion and 50% has to be used or doesn't have to, will be used to draw down that local investment. And so that's 10%. In the rural side, we would see 23%, 5% fair box recovery. And when we talk about investing in that pair of box collection, the cameras, the cash management, at some point, it becomes a little less of a return on investment. But in the coming years, if we are short and we need to look for other ways to sustain services, going back to a fair is something that we could consider with our providers. Sure. Just curious, how many of those other providers we know of great GMT Rural are unionized? Are they all unionized now? No, TBT and GMT, GMCN, and that's it. And so the others are not unionized at this time. RCT will be partially unionized as they bring on the union in the Franklin County area. Does that mean it all becomes We're happy to work with any group of drivers, and we just need their partnership to understand the vision and the mission here. I just try to figure out the correlation if the ones that are unionized by your Upper Coast. When I'm back here and we're talking about the route performance report, I do have the transit rates to take a look at for sure. Just

[Phil Pouech]: looking at this chart on the surface, you'd look and say, well, with inflation, the operating costs are gonna go up even if you don't change anything, right? Because of salaries and whatnot. And unless you put on more passengers, then your trip costs are gonna go up. But I imagine that trip cost is impacted maybe even more so by adjusting the services, adjusting the routes, reducing routes or adding routes or whatever. How much of that is more impacting than just inflation

[Ross MacDonald]: and number of riders. I think the GMT adjustments are more reflected here than the other rural adjustments. When we worked with the rural folks, this was in February through June as opposed to GMT proactively working earlier in the year to make those downward adjustments. And so I don't have an answer for you in terms of that bifurcation. But no question, as we continue to look at underperforming routes and importantly reduce hours, it's unlikely that all of those riders will migrate to other services to make for a more efficient system. Although with GMT Urban making those decisions, they have strengthened some of those stick factors I talked about in terms of efficiency and load factor, average number of people on a bus. And so there's that balance of what's efficient and what can we afford. Representative Thomas?

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Representative Thomas)]: What's the difference between the union pay scale and the non union pay scale? Do you know?

[Ross MacDonald]: It's a mixed bag. It's throughout the state. Wages for drivers has increased, whether that's a union shop or non union shop. Generally speaking, it's really in the benefits and the work conditions that are the change and not the hourly rate difference. And so that's where you start and talk about people's interest in unionization. Well, if they're already making the same hourly wage or close to it, that's a very big consideration. And then it's what are your health care contributions, and what are those work conditions? Are you forced to do over time? And if you are, what are those types of conditions and compensation? So all told, it's a little bit more expensive to operate a union shop. But if we looked at average transit rates, GMCN is the second lowest in the state, well under $100 because of overall trip distance, the type of vehicles they use. There are other overheads that go into these calculations remain low. So I am happy to provide a list when I provide those transit rates of driver wages and benefits, if that would be helpful.

[Patricia McCoy]: Thanks. Sure. Okay.

[Ross MacDonald]: So this year's public Rutland Report does outline underperforming services. And I'm happy to report that most of these have been addressed already. We look at some of these routes and they've already been adjusted downward or canceled. But we will continue to use this for our primary way of finding savings in the system so that we can sustain the other more successful routes. But there's some caveats here. And if I could, mean, Williston Essex in the urban system, that's an urban fall. And we defer to them on their decisions. Overall, their costs per passenger are much lower because of the densities that they have and the services they provide. But then when we look at the 5,311 services, the ones that we have more of an oversight and management role with, GMC and just one year with their Saturday service, they're thinking of shaving off a few hours where it's not so productive in the early morning. The city commuter will see what TVT is able to do when they take over that route from GMT. Springfield in town is interesting because SCDT was able to receive more local funds and they moved the service from an in town circulator to a micro transit service. Very curious to see what that looks like. But that's a dynamic where they said, this isn't working as fixed route. What else can we do? And they did get Springfield and partner agencies to change that. The Randolph Circulator, Bradford Circulator, those may need to be reduced or even in Bradford move to the OND program. But we'll work with Tri Valley Transit on those. The GMT World demand response, we saw those charts last week. Those will go away because TVT and RCT are taking on the demand response for GMT World in just a few months. The valley floor is of interest, and we spent some time with the performance report to talk about how it's different than other tourism routes. Less density, a lot more miles, those types of things, but it still has a very important role in that Madder River Valley area. And it's not so far off that we couldn't continue and again see what Tri Valley Transit with their overheads do compared to GMT Rural. And so we'll wait and see on this one. RCT, the Crown Connection, that has been canceled. I'll just ask a question for you.

[Phil Pouech]: Yeah. I'm not distrusting this information. I'm just sort of curious, the metrics for underperforming, is that from the federal government or is it something we've established here?

[Ross MacDonald]: We've established it. We look at all of these root classifications. And then as we bundle those, we say, okay, what is the average cost? And if you are more than 150% over that average cost, that's underperforming. If you are 66% or less than that average cost, then you are successful. We have acceptable, successful, and then the underperforming. And those are the metrics we've been using for a few decades now.

[Phil Pouech]: So you take what we have and you find that sort of middle point.

[Ross MacDonald]: Yeah, what is that average? And again, in the past, we'd say, well, what could we do here? What if we brought in this community? What if we made that stop over here? What if we do an outreach program? This year, we're just don't have the time to keep throwing money out on it under underperforming roots. And so we'll be asking for a little bit more aggressive response to these underperforming roots. As I mentioned, the Crown Connection has been canceled. US two commuter had already changed and reduced one of their routes. Westover has been canceled. The Rutland Connector will work with Tri Valley Transit. There's been a dynamic there from last year that may impact future performance. We keep trying. We keep thinking the 80 niner from Randolph down to White River Junction is

[Phil Pouech]: just

[Ross MacDonald]: an obvious commuter route. And no matter what we do, we've never been able to make it work. We should be riding those buses and talking about vanpools with those drivers and make that that's an expensive route. So what is a Rutland Connector? Let me try that one. Is it coming over Route 4? The Rutland Connector connects Middlebury and Rutland. And last year, we had TBT moving from Middlebury to Rutland and a bus from Rutland going to Middlebury. And we halved that so that now we have to take that into consideration with the new metrics, with the new hours of service and costs, and see if those are still underperforming as we make these adjustments. So then my next question is for the 89 from Randolph to White River Junction.

[Patricia McCoy]: Randolph seems like a, I don't know, I mean, why Randolph?

[Ross MacDonald]: Sure, well,

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Representative Thomas)]: you know

[Patricia McCoy]: Is there something there that I'm not aware of? Well, Maiden and

[Ross MacDonald]: I used to start in Montpelier.

[Patricia McCoy]: That's right.

[Ross MacDonald]: And then then moved down, but then we weren't getting the ridership. I said, okay, so then let's let's reduce the miles and the hours. Let's go from to from Randolph down and let's pull into Sharon and are we serving those communities? And we keep making these adjustments and doing the outreach and the corridor outreach through Front Porch Forum and those types of things. It hasn't worked and again, for ten years, we're just not able to try another iteration other than another mode, I'm afraid.

[Patricia McCoy]: Don't know how many people, White River Junction is a pretty big area.

[Ross MacDonald]: So I don't know how many people daily would just stop in Randolph. Randolph, then the Royalton, and Sharon, as they move their way down. And it goes past White River Junction, Lebanon for the institutions Dartmouth and Dartmouth College, of course.

[Candice White]: Just to follow-up on Board of Senator McCoy's question. So does that bus go to the Dartmouth Coach? Do we have any service at the Dartmouth Coach? Because that is a desirable destination.

[Ross MacDonald]: So that's the connection where they come into the Lebanon area and advanced transits, 70% of their services are in the New Hampshire side of things. And so if they're going to the Lebanon town center, that's where they can get on the bus to get to Dartmouth Coach. And we use that all the time as a family and those things. Unfortunately, every time you ask somebody to transfer, you're losing about 50% of the ridership

[Candice White]: in general terms. Would we consider a bus that goes all the way to that Dartmouth coach connector?

[Ross MacDonald]: I'm not sure. Most folks, it's the kiss and ride, as we call it, or they've got all that parking and it's folks like me living in Peacham coming down and want to go to Boston and New York. And so you're looking for a schedule, the convenience. I don't know if that would move the needle. And I think we've discussed, and it may have been part of the stops in the past, so we can bring that forward.

[Candice White]: Yeah, just asked because I think it's a certainly Dartmouth coach is used for belongeders who are going to Boston, and there is decent parking there, but if there were a way to get there with an express bus or something, guess the two might have some ridership.

[Kate Lalley]: Yeah, we have a connector from PBM to the Dartmouth coach? Like we used to before the pandemic, I think.

[Ross MacDonald]: Believe so. No, there was mega bus for many years that was running in between. But no, not to my knowledge. Okay, and so that's where the money is to sustain our existing services. And we'll be aggressively looking at making those changes. These are the four on your slides that you have available, just some people ask about what are those categories. And so there's the categories for your review. Doctor. Timothy?

[Timothy R. Corcoran II]: Thanks. Could you just clarify or give an example of an inner city route? Like, how how is that different than the commuter routes?

[Ross MacDonald]: Inner city are longer routes along major corridors that connect to the inner city hubs to get us around the country. And so we invest in Greyhound services from Springfield, Mass to Montreal, coming up all the way through Vermont. And we have invested in Premier Coach or VT Translines to provide services from Colchester to Albany. And Albany Airport, Albany Intercity Bus Terminal, and the train station. And that's been successful. Those buses are a million dollars. They have bathrooms. They have the Wi Fi. They have the videos and those types of things, more of a train type of experience than a bus experience.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II]: So they're not under one of our transit agencies? No. Okay.

[Ross MacDonald]: So when we look at those cost categories, the cost by category is just something I want to bring forward because when we talk a lot about GMT Urban, we're also talking about one of the more effective and efficient services. It's very different than rural service. That's why they have their own dedicated funding that we support. But for us, the rest are 5,311 rural services. And that demand response that I shared with you last week used to be $24 before COVID. To see that increase and the increased demand is putting pressure on the O and D line item. Oh, I was on it.

[Patricia McCoy]: Refresh my memory, it's urban only in the Burlington area.

[Ross MacDonald]: We only have that one

[Patricia McCoy]: in So they have

[Ross MacDonald]: that dedicated federal money that's coming in. And then we add about 50% to their budget with our own FHWA flex funds and our own capital and other assistance that we provide in their annual grant with GMT Urban. Okay. Yeah.

[Patricia McCoy]: Thank you.

[Ross MacDonald]: Yeah. And that allows them to get to stick factors because that gives them more money for more services. We did bring online a micro transit service in six, now seven areas, and it's an expensive service. It's expensive, but we hope it's worth it. We know the surveys show that it gives people more agency and options, but it hasn't proven to be a truly efficient mode. But that's still fairly early. The commuter services as well, very concerning to see a $30 one way trip to get somebody to do their job. That's $60 a day to get somebody to and from their job. That's nice if you can afford it. I don't know if we can prioritize commuters over the rural, the tourism, especially when we have Dan's program, the band pool program, where that really is for commuters going more than 20 miles to a employment center and for seven sixteen per trip that we may be looking at trying to move more commuter services to that band pool option and giving people a little bit more responsibility and helping us get them there efficiently. So we're almost done before we get to the numbers. But how are we gonna maintain these services? Well, we're gonna continue to use the carbon reduction program funds. Those, in addition to our congestion mitigation and air quality funds that we flexed from the FHWA program, we can apply those dollars 80% fed, 20% non fed for operations. Our formula funds that we receive from FTA based on population and those cover operations at fiftyfifty percent fed state. Unfortunately, we're unable to use the STBG funds, Surface Transportation Block Grant funds from FHWA for operations. And so we can only use those two buckets of money for operations from the federal ledger. That's been a big improvement for us because CMEC traditionally was only used for three years for a new start, and then they would go onto our FTA formula ledger, and we were gonna run out of those dollars. But now with the IIJA a few years ago, we can apply CMEC and by extension Carbon Reduction Program funds at that eightytwenty. That was a big news in our program. We'll have to maintain reduced capital awards through our annual granting plan and rely on that 5,339 bus and bus facilities grant program to cover those gaps. Again, more work to do there and surprising that we were shut out last year. Very thankful that GMT Urban was able to receive their dollar because that allows us to focus our other capital dollar on our rural entities. So the '27 budget, as it'll be demonstrated, really represents a 3% increase from '26, but you'll see a 9.8% increase. But that's because when we are talking about those competitive dollars that are coming online and being delivered next year in FY '27, that really isn't part of our budget, but it's part of us trying to assign the delivery of those competitive awards. And we'll go through that in just the next slide. But we did see a 0.6% decrease in state funds. We don't expect that to appreciably impact our abilities to continue and sustain our successful services. And as we mentioned, this budget does not include any increased commuter services to address the back to office policies. Not to say that we can't work with the agency of nature again and others to see what that looks like if there's a need for those types of accommodations. We'll continue to work with GMT Urban and address a projected million dollar budget shortfall with them. This year, we're able to provide about $900,000 more than last year in '25. In '26, we provided $900,000 more, but it's still not enough. And so what can we do with the GMT Urban folks? We're wondering, with the rural transfer, does that change their overall urban needs and costs? That's to be seen. And we defer to GMT Urban to work with us through their budget. As they look at addressing those shortfalls, we have Dan here and Steven Fauvel, our primary consultant, working with their planners to ensure any adjustment downward would not impact those stick factors. We don't want to reduce services, reduce costs, and then they lose $600,000 in a stick factor or 1.2. And then that's further going to exacerbate their issues. So more on that in the coming months for every time we get to speak to you. And at GMT we're all transferred. We're ahead of schedule with RCT. TVT comes online and we're very much looking forward to seeing how that affects the service costs and quality in those areas. And then pursuing the lowest service cost options, increasing cross agency coordination, particularly with the O and D program that you heard about last week. And this year, we received $600,000 one times to invest in more rural, more volunteer drivers. This year, we're going to make more dollars available for mobility management, talking about those frequent long trips. Can we bundle these trips? Can we work with the providers as we talked about with the health care providers to try to find some efficiencies through those efforts? And that's all we are. Representative Clark?

[Patricia McCoy]: So the $1,000,000 budget shortfall for GMT Urban, I note that GMT is not really transferring selling off to Franklin County, RCT and then DVT. That's transfer, both of them are going to

[Ross MacDonald]: be 07/01/1926. RCT has already taken on the demand response program from That Franklin should bend the cost curve down a little bit.

[Patricia McCoy]: So that's what so it's they're still projecting the 1,000,000 shortfall even with the sell off of these two.

[Ross MacDonald]: Yeah. And so what the expectation is at the FDA is that fifty three eleven rural funds and fifty three zero seven funds should not mix, and that they should be bifurcated, that fifty three eleven funds shouldn't be supporting urban systems, and that urban dollars shouldn't be otherwise supporting rural. And so they've had those two sets of books, and when we take out the rural side, it doesn't appreciably affect other than the fact that they were paying some of their admin with that split between urban and rural. So they'll have to right size and figure out what they can do just as an urban entity.

[Patricia McCoy]: Okay, refresh my memory. Are they collecting fares?

[Ross MacDonald]: They are. And that's all I believe at the last I had heard, and Clayton will be in here to confirm. I think they were hoping to get 10% of their operating costs from fares. Yeah, thank you. Sure. Representative Lalley, who's got a question?

[Kate Lalley]: To go back to the slide showing the 24%, 25% changes, that doesn't reflect the impacts of the changes that we're just discussing on GMT Urban. So that, for example, ridership down, operating costs up, trip costs way up. So do you have Is there a way to just sort of speculate about what we might see with improvements we've got with these changes, just in broad strokes, because of course we don't have a

[Ross MacDonald]: crystal ball? I would ask for some time representative to work with GMT and their budget folks to ensure that I'm not misstating and that I have the information that we can all agree on. But if we're looking at a 10% ridership decrease and operating costs going up by 5%, and they're still a million short, we could probably see another percentage of ridership decline that should result in a little bit of an operational savings as well. But overall, and based on all their other costs, I'm not in a position to say at this time.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II]: Because that number kind of

[Kate Lalley]: reflects some of the loss leaders that we're sort of cleaning up.

[Patricia McCoy]: Yeah. So, And these

[Ross MacDonald]: are twenty twenty five members representatives. So, you know, when they made those changes as of January, that's like only six months, right, of of that snapshot. And so we'll have the full benefit of this 26 performance in the books this time next year. We'll see what they're planning. Dan and Steve will make sure that any of those proposed cuts won't impact their stick factors. And if it's going to, then we're back having a different conversation. So now program adjustments. We already made $3,600,000 in cuts from this time last year to 2,000,000 GMT urban, 1.6 rural. Those have already been made. I want to make sure our budget committee saw those at the agency level. We'll see cost savings through those route performance metrics. We could look at and if things get too tight once we get those applications in April, We could reduce some program management, employer outreach, those types of things associated with the Go Vermont program that's just $100,000 or so. And then the big question is we have carbon reduction program funds that have been allotted to us through the legislature to spend on transportation management, demand management, our MTI program. And if we are at a point where we can't sustain services, are there any abilities for us to otherwise apply those carbon reduction program funds that we set aside for e sprinters or for the mobility and transportation innovation program to continue the operations of our core service, which is transit. We don't know what that's going to look like, but it's hard to see those dollars out there and funds we've received that haven't been spent or obligated if we're going to be forced to make other read adjustments. And so it's just a priority decision. And I just wanna put that on your radar. We'll be able to come back to you once we get those applications and see, are we able to make it without reprioritizing those carbon reduction program funds for the MTI and eSprinters. But those funds are out there that could be used for operations if we get painted into a corner. Would that require an administrative or is that administratively allowed? I'm not sure, mister mister chair. I think there could be some, certainly, legislative advice advice and consent. And if we need to move through legislation, we've got Michelle and and Patrick here who can help us move through any of those needs.

[Patricia McCoy]: Representative McCoy is representative Thomas here. Sense of what is remaining in the carbon reduction program funds. I think

[Ross MacDonald]: we have about $900,000 set aside for the mobility and transportation innovation program, and maybe a little less than that for our e sprinters, depending on when they come in and what those actual costs come in. Okay. Thank you. So let's get to the numbers here.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II]: One more clarification. That possible change in application of those funds, are you talking about that for FY 'twenty seven or 'twenty eight?

[Ross MacDonald]: 'twenty seven. And that's fresh news because maybe '28. It depends on what we get for applications for MTI, what those costs are. And we have to play the long game. I know that we present one year budgets to you, but we have the five year plans, we have our long range plans, and our providers have three year capital plans and all of those things. So we're seeing more headwinds coming in '28, particularly at GMT Urban that we'll have to address at that time. Russ,

[Candice White]: could you remind us the mobility and transportation innovation program, is that the program where we are purchasing electric vehicles or what it needs? It

[Ross MacDonald]: really is to help folks get around without a single occupancy vehicle. And whether it's to help support more bus ridership, more efficient needs, helping the Berry Gopher program out to see if there's a better option or a lower cost option to help us do our own work while they provide more mobility services. We support CarShare Vermont, Locomotion, those types of activities. It's really nice. The return on investment, the greenhouse gas reductions aren't earth shattering, let's say. And if we were really looking at that eitheror, I just wanted to put that on your collective radar and see if there could be a request to these committees to redirect those funds for our operations, if not even in 'twenty seven, but possibly in 'twenty eight, Representative Tomlinson mentioned.

[Candice White]: And so that funding has allowed you to pilot some different types of transportation programs let go, for example. As you've been innovating and trying different, have you found that some of those programs are ones that you want to continue, and would those be funded by that same program? Or once you've had a proof of concept, does that go into your normal overall transportation plan and is no longer funded specifically by the MTI program?

[Ross MacDonald]: Sure. We started supporting transportation demand management organizations like CAPMA and the Upper Valley TMA when I was the government program manager so many years ago. And so that was part of an annual grant process through Bill Vermont for car share, for Locomotion, those TDM, TMA, Transportation Management Associations. We would like to continue to support those efforts. The expansion of the MTI program that was really founded in this committee room has allowed us to do more things with more folks, but we haven't stumbled on those silver bullets or projects. We'll say, oh, now we need to set up more of these folks so they can provide lower cost options to get folks where they need to go. We haven't seen that per se. The numbers and it's a lot at first, but if we look at the left hand column, we have the planning, CMEC routes, the carbon reduction program routes. We can look at those as fungible and combined program administration. That's what it costs VTrans to administer this program. We could trend upwards to 10% and it's less than 5%. So we're doing our part here. And then we get to the core operations, our transit agencies administration, the transit agency maintenance, operating costs. Our state match to help them with paying the non federal share for ops admin preventive maintenance, the OND program. And then RTAB is the World Technical Assistance Program or training. That's a formula fund that comes to us a bucket of funds specifically just for training. Recovery and Job Access Program, that's a new demand response program or newish. And we split the non federal match with the Department of Health for those in recovery or seeking job access. So Department of Labor and Higher Ability and Voc Rehab, they're all partners with this program. We speak with them often. And the government program continues to proceed. And then MTI is that TDM program we just talked about. And then we get down to the capital assistance. And I highlighted that $11,000,000 because those aren't new funds that we're spending. Those are those FTA competitive awards spending down the low no and other grants that we expect to be on the put forward for our local match, whether it's state and our providers providing their own local match. We would love to draw those funds down as soon as possible. That's the 27.1% increase that drives up the full number here. But if we look across the category, have our state funds, more state funds than most of rural states, our transfer from VD department of health. These FTA formula funds in many rural states, that would be the program. It may be some state funds mixed in there. But we also are using carbon reduction program funds and the big one, our flex. This is FHWA funds. We use the CMEK dollars where we can for operations, and the rest are STBG funds for the admin, the maintenance. Those programs, older adults and persons with disability. And then Dan works with FHWA to flex $350,000 over for that program. And all told, that's a $17,300,000 flex for our 5,311 program and another $4,700,000 for our urban partners. If you look So when then, as we look through, we have the total federal dollars, 27 combined with any state, compare that to the FY '26. And the difference, as you can see up top, is really not much one way or the other. Admin and maintenance used to be its own line item. And so those are rather fungible, and we are just trying to better reflect actual expenses every year as we project the following year between those two line items. It's really the difference in older adults and persons with disability. We saw that we needed more than 6,000,000 this year. Last year, we had a $4,500,000 budget. This year, are looking at increasing that to $5,000,000 and it's probably still going to be lower than necessary. So we'll have to pull from CMEC, carbon reduction, SDBG, or however, to try to maintain the level of services that are currently at the O and D program. The 3.89 projected spend down of our low note funds represents a big, big percentage of that total 4.434 increase of 9.1%. As I mentioned, if we take out the capital numbers, we're looking at a 3% increase to sustain services and take on those insurances and sustainable, those increased costs. GMT Direct Flex was capped at 3,000,000 for years and years and years, and we would always provide a little bit more once we got the applications. We increased that to $4,000,000 last year, and we still know it's not enough. We'd like to continue to do what we did this year and increase that to $4,750,000 on Flex, in addition to what we provide in other dollars for other activities. But we do want to highlight that to show that we are busting our sneakers, trying to keep up with the pace at GMT Urban, and that we're not letting them kind of suffer on their own and figure it out. We're trying to figure out what we can do with our budget dollars to further sustain those successful services. So all told, we're looking at an 18% increase for GMT, but it's really gonna be level funded going into '27 and adjusted as best we can. And that's the public transit story. This administration, this legislature has continued to support this program and prioritize this human service program for so many years and decades, and that hasn't changed. We don't expect too many cuts based on budget constraints because of what we're presenting to you today.

[Phil Pouech]: Back to my question on Medicaid, where's that shown in here? Is it absorbed in one of these lines?

[Ross MacDonald]: It is and it's separate and distinct. And if you looked at the cost allocation plans that our providers, they would have another column of those costs, the percentage of their vehicles that need to be covered by the Medicaid dollars, their admin, their call center, those items. The only place that we do pick it up is on ridership because we would always provide, while we did 300,000 trips in our demand response, oh, and 500,000 more with the Medicaid program. So we do capture them in ridership, but not in operation costs and trip costs in those that are separate and reported out to Diva and through the community service.

[Phil Pouech]: Okay, but combining both public transit and that service does reduce the overall overhead

[Ross MacDonald]: of those programs. It does. And this is why we don't have a Medicaid bus following a O and D bus with our respective and this happens all over the place. And I've been in conferences with people saying, well, human services won't return our phone calls. Or human services saying, says they don't do demand response. We've leapfrogged that so many years ago, and now there's this National Coordination on Mobility Management trying to work with federal rules to allow for that type of graded service. So that's why we're so involved in those discussions, bringing our model forward. But that's 17,000,000 to $19,000,000 more that absolutely, if without those helping us, we'd have a lot more vehicles than we wouldn't need, and we would have average costs going up because of the inabilities to amortize those costs around those different programs. Absolutely, I recommend.

[Phil Pouech]: As you know,

[Patricia McCoy]: it's big concern of mine.

[Ross MacDonald]: Ours as well. But we still have been working with DIVA on our legislative studies, section 25, seven, and eight. And we see them in meetings all the time and try to be as good faith partners as possible to try to maintain the system that we have in place. Thank you.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II]: So I just wanted to make sure I understood correctly. Were you saying earlier that state or T fund dollars have actually decreased towards public transit this year over the last?

[Ross MacDonald]: So the 9.947 last year was 10.06 something. And so just 0.6% reduction. And part of that doesn't really affect us because I was baking in some state dollars that we would need for that competitive award that we didn't get. I said, oh, if we have $3,000,000 in ice, that's gonna cost us about 300,000 on our eighty-ten-ten split, 80 Fed, 10 state, 10 local. Without that, we may not need so many state funds on the capital side. It does allow us to provide that match for the ops admin PM as we see those costs going up 40%, those local shares, and we ask for 20% from our locals in addition to this to contribute to their budgets. That 20% is no longer a million dollars, but 1.6. And they're having a hard time keeping the towns and their partners generating those increases. And so where the state funds aren't an issue at this time, but that is subject to change depending on the increased pressures that we see.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II]: So it's great to understand that we're using fewer T fund dollars, but able to leverage, it sounds like, a significant amount of federal funding because of our top performing transit agency that is performing well in stick factors and getting a competitive grant for capital costs. While we're using fewer state dollars, we're leveraging significant federal funding to maintain our service.

[Ross MacDonald]: We leave no federal funds on the table, and we are able to match all of the flex funds as appropriate between that state and federal grant agreements that we have in place. When we provide the grant agreement, we say, hey, based on this, you're going have to contribute $2,000,000 Here's our shot. Here's our awards. Please respond and let us know and confirm that you have those dollars so that we don't leave those federal dollars on the table.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II]: Okay, that's great. Well, I'm just really encouraged that without increasing our T fund spending towards public transit, we're maintaining our service level, which seems really critical since we're seeing more folks using public transit for return to office. And also, as we're having these conversations about changes to our health care and education system, we might see an increased need for transportation services. We

[Ross MacDonald]: remain concerned about the impacts on all of those elements that we just discussed. But for 'twenty seven, we should be okay. That tepid assessment is probably about the best you're going hear from any of these programs on the road. Representative Burke?

[Mollie S. Burke]: Yeah, back to the MTI program, I just want to be clear. So you said that you felt that the payoff from the projects did not really match what you had hoped or, I mean, and does other programs actually do people better? Know, just because, I mean, just looking here on the website for the, there's just so many different things, like I wonder if we just adjusted what are eligible projects instead of getting rid of

[Ross MacDonald]: the whole program. We certainly aren't proposing to get rid of the whole program. Go Vermont at 03:50 with the MTI program at 03:15 is not getting rid of it. It's just not investing a million dollars in MTI projects. Dan set up a carbon reduction calculator for everybody who's awarded funds to assess what are you doing to reduce greenhouse gases, to improve transit ridership, to provide more mobility services, those types of things. Those are nice projects and these partners are operating on shoestring budgets. And it's one of the more rewarding parts of our program, but it isn't the priority of the program. And right now, if we had a $315,000 awards with MTI and reduce Gobermont, then we should be able to maintain those project supports for those most meaningful programs that you're looking at right now?

[Mollie S. Burke]: Just trying to understand what would be a better use of the funds. It could sustain our operations. The paying of

[Ross MacDonald]: us, right? Well, adjust, right? Absolutely, it's becoming no small item.

[Mollie S. Burke]: In other words, when things are getting very tight, we had that great money in the MTA program a couple years ago, from the IOTG, I think it was, yeah. Hopefully we can keep that going, because it's also inspiring, you know, it inspires, it's about community, building sort of relationships with community, and people thinking innovatively about transit.

[Ross MacDonald]: And as Representative White mentioned, we're very keen to look for a different, better way to provide our services. Testing the waters with these types of investments absolutely is a big part of why we're spending a lot of admin time on so many of these projects for just a certain amount of dollars. We still need the oversight, the audits, the grant agreements, calculations, the payments. But we haven't revealed the big item other than let's say CarShare Vermont. That's been around for years and years. We've been supporting them for years and years, and they take a lot of cars off the streets. We certainly wouldn't want to end those types of partnerships.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II]: Thank you.

[Ross MacDonald]: Representative White?

[Candice White]: Russell, I've a question on ridership. So I'm looking at slide three, which looks like a very good storm. When we look at 2021, 2,400,000 riders, and then 2025, 4.4. Even though we decreased a little bit from last year, Vermont did not increase its population to that degree. What was ridership ten years ago? Is that a COVID fluke that I'm looking at?

[Ross MacDonald]: You are. Unfortunately, right before COVID, we were 4.9 something where we could say we hit the five million mark. We did that one other time in maybe 2014 or 'twelve, and there was a strike, and then those numbers went down. And then they got back up to just about five million. COVID hit, and they cratered down to that two point four. And then we're wondering, as we build back up, most of our routes have built back up to 100% or more. It's the commuter routes that are still 30% off, and that's the number. When you look at and if you'll have us back to talk about MTI or the response report, we'll go through the narrative. But this year, we did see a little bit more improvement on the commuter routes, but it was the GMT Urban that represents 50% of our entire ridership that made that 9% decrease really reflected here. But that's why I wanna share that around the state, we're not looking at huge decreases in ridership or huge increases in operating costs. They're kind of post COVID, post inflation numbers, which I was really hoping to get to by this time, because we've been talking about these headwinds for four or five years. Thank you. Are there any other questions? Any other risks? Obviously, transportation is a big issue and concern throughout the entire committee. We've had you here before, you're here now. I suspect we're going to see you again before the end of this session. Dan, Ross, thank you very much for coming in this morning. Appreciate all the interaction and the healthy question and answer feeds, and I appreciate you being available to continue to go through that. Thank you. Thank you very much, and we are adjourned.