This story by Jason Starr was first published by the Williston Observer on March 28.
A $2.7 million budget deficit looms over Green Mountain Transit that, if not solved by November, will have leaders of the region’s public transit provider looking to eliminate about 30% of local bus service.
In a Monday meeting, GMT’s General Manager Clayton Clark and Finance Director Nick Foss explained to a group of municipal administrators and state legislators that the organization has plugged its fiscal hole with federal pandemic relief grants for the past three years. After the upcoming fiscal year, which begins in July, those funds will run dry.
“Our Covid relief funds will be totally exhausted by 2025,” Foss said, estimating that the organization’s covid relief grants have totaled $16 million.
Despite a pandemic-era decision to stop collecting fares from riders (fare collection is set to resume this spring), ridership has dropped in recent years. According to GMT’s count, ridership dipped as low as 60% of pre-pandemic levels in 2021 before rebounding to 85% of pre-pandemic levels in 2023.
On its commuter buses from Burlington to Montpelier and Burlington to St. Albans, ridership is about half of what it was pre-pandemic, Foss said. The route between Williston and Burlington remains the organization’s best performing route with about 1,500 riders a day.
GMT leaders expect a resumption of fare collections will bolster the budget; they hope it will eventually account for about 10% of GMT’s annual revenue. But pre-pandemic, fare collections made up as much as 20% of the organization’s revenue. The bulk of GMT’s revenue comes from federal, state and municipal contributions. The town of Williston, for example, contributes roughly $280,000 annually — the fourth biggest contributor in Chittenden County behind Burlington, South Burlington and Essex, according to Foss.
GMT is lobbying for a recurring state-level funding source to stabilize its finances into the future.
“This is a problem that a majority of transit agencies are facing right now,” said General Manager Clark. “It’s an industry-wide problem.”
Sen. Thomas Chittenden, who represents Williston in the Chittenden Southeast Senate District and serves on the Senate Transportation Committee, said sustainable transit funding could come from a new tax on electric vehicle charging. With about 12,000 electric vehicles on the road in Vermont, he said, that tax could bring in about $3 million annually — mimicking the gas tax that gas motorists pay. A study commissioned by GMT identified other potential sources of recurring revenue for public transportation, such as a fee on car registrations, a tax on car rentals, a fee on utility bills and a fee on online shopping deliveries.
“I really like the idea of car registration fees subsidizing public transit,” Chittenden said.
Absent a new state revenue source, GMT administrators will begin the process of eliminating routes in November, Clark said, as a cost-saving measure for the fiscal year 2026 budget. They’ll work with GMT’s volunteer board of commissioners to set criteria for which routes to cut and take public comment before finalizing decisions.
Meanwhile, when fares do resume this spring, they will come back at $2 a ride, an increase of 50 cents from pre-pandemic fares. Half-price fares will be offered to riders under 18 and over 60, and daily and monthly caps will keep expenses predictable for frequent users.
The resumption of fares was originally planned for January but has been delayed as GMT awaits a contractor’s completion of a smartphone app that will allow riders to pay online. GMT will also sell pass cards that can be preloaded and scanned on the bus. Cash will continue to be accepted.
