Council Looks To Expanding Transit System With TXST Bobcat Shuttle Partnership

By Terra Rivers | Managing Editor

On Tuesday, the San Marcos City Council received an update on the city’s Five Year Transit Strategic Plan, a multi-agency initiative of the City, Texas State University, and Texas Department of Transportation – Public Transportation Division.

The plan’s purpose is to provide recommendations to coordinate the city’s transit system and Texas State University’s Bobcat Shuttle.

In a memo to council, City Manager, Bert Lumbreras, said one of the key priorities of the plan is to create a seamless transit system from the coordination of the City’s transit service and the Texas State University Bobcat Shuttle system.

Lee Hitchcock, director of general services, presented an update to allow council to review its recommendations and provide directions to staff on the key elements that will allow Nelson-Nygaard, transportation planning consulting agency, to finalize the plan recommendations.

The key elements council considered was:

• Service Expansion Plan
• Downtown Transit Plaza
• Paratransit Policy
• Zero Fare Policy
• Transit Center
• Interlocal Agreement

Hitchcock said the initiative will allow the city to apply for additional federal funding, which has eligible uses of capital, operations, planning, engineering, designs, etcetera; it will also expand transit access for the entire community and improve multimodal connectivity particularly with downtown.

According to Hitchcock, there are three main challenges with the coordination including cost and ridership implications of COVID-19, infrequent local service, and coordinating two vastly different systems.

The city of San Marcos has 7 routes, 13 vehicles, 118 bus stops, and an average daily ridership of 350. Texas State’s bobcat shuttle system has 11 routes, 48 vehicles, 40 bus stops, and an average daily ridership of 17,000.

Hitchcock said public feedback showed residents were most interested in more frequent and later city service, more bus stop shelters, and a downtown hub and elimination of fees.

“Fortunately, we are not leading the pack here,” Hitchcock said. “Many, many cities over the last decade have gone to no-fare collection, and what we’ve found is that it increases ridership from 20 to 40 percent. Most importantly, it opens up the possibility for all citizens to ride when even a $1, $2 or $4 fee would be a significant barrier for them.”

According to Hitchcock, the city is looking at doing a phased development and implementation of the service plan.

Phase 1 is projected to include revising city routes, expanding senior shuttle from 2 to 4 days per week, introduce new coordinated branding and information, and eliminate on-board fare collection.

Staff expects it to take anywhere from 9 to 12 months to establish a downtown transit plaza. Phase 2 would add Saturday service on city routes.

Phase 3 would extend the weekday evening span on city routes.

Phase 4 would increase frequency during morning and evening periods.

Phase 5 would increase frequency on Route 1 to every 15 minutes.

“As you know when you receive federal funds for a fixed route service, it requires by law a paratransit service,” Hitchcock said. “Paratransit by definition is door-to-door and has a minimum cost.”

The Federal Transit Administration requires the city to provide paratransit service to persons with a disability traveling within ¾ mile of a fixed route. However, the city of San Marcos’s current policy includes seniors age 65 and older and encompasses the entire city limits.

Hitchcock provided the council with two proposals; scenario 1 would reduce the service area to ¾ mile of fixed routes and would be cost-neutral to the city.

Scenario 2 would maintain the existing service area policy, require one additional vehicle, and 2,000 additional hours.

Staff is proposing using $3.8 million of the $6.4 million in CARES Act funding to help cover operating costs through 2021 and expending awarded FTA 5339 funds ($500,000) to purchase 5 new paratransit vehicles.

FTA 5307 Small Transit Intensive Cities funding has been calculated at $2.6 million for the fiscal year 2019 and FY 2020.

“We are in gratitude to the university for that because those funds are based on the combined performance of both the university and city systems,” Hitchcock said. “And our intention is to establish through an ILA a reasonable and equable share between both entities.”

According to Hitchcock, the city currently only makes $50,000 from regular bus fares, which primarily eaten up by the costs of collecting it.

The council provided the following direction and support:

• Move forward with the service expansion plan
• Move forward with the downtown transit plaza proposal
• Move forward with the paratransit policy with council’s support on scenario 1 for the time being
• Move forward with Zero Fare Policy to eliminate fees
• Look to future consideration of a transit center (not necessarily to be completed in the next five years.)
• Move forward with the formation of an interlocal agreement with the university (Council Member Ed Mihalkanin recused himself)

According to Hitchcock, the next steps for the city will be to finalize an interlocal agreement with Texas State University, finalize the transit plan report, and present final recommendations to City Council in August 2020.

In other news, Hitchcock said the city was recently informed their application for the $6.4 million in CARES funding has been approved; the council will consider a resolution on June 16, which will enable staff to take the administrative steps to accept the funding.