PRTC fares to rise; Will Prince William give $6 million?

The bad news: Bus fares for riders in Prince William County, Manassas, and Manassas Park will increase 5% next year.

Also, services like the Capitol Hill OmniRide route will be discontinued, and select trips and some neighborhood OmniRide routing on OmniRide routes will be eliminated. And trips on Manassas-area OmniLink service will be reduced by 25 percent.

The good news: it’s not as worse as some county transit officials feared. In January, officials painted a dire picture for the Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Board of Commissioners, warning that a $9.2 million budget shortfall could end commuter bus service in the county as we know it. Instead of Washington, D.C., buses would take passengers only to Metro stations if the agency couldn’t find the operating cash in its 2017 budget.

A proposal from the Prince William County Budget Office provides $6 million to help close the funding gap. It also removes commuter railroad Virginia Railway Express from competing with PRTC for funds.

While the Prince William County Board of Supervisors must approve the funding in April, if it does pass, PRTC will have closed its5 $9.2 million budget gap for the upcoming year.

States PRTC in a press release:

These service cuts, fare increases, and other administrative modifications will result in a net savings to Prince William County of $1.7 million. Those savings, along with the $6 million in proposed funding from the county, would prevent further cuts to PRTC services in FY17, if the county budget is adopted as proposed. However, PRTC would still face a deficit of $2.2 million per year beyond FY17. If adequate funding isn’t found, PRTC will be forced to make even more drastic cuts, possibly including eliminating all OmniLink local bus service and operating OmniRide commuter buses only to and from Metro stations.

Prince William County stopped providing supplemental funding to PRTC in 2008. Instead, officials allowed the agency to rely solely on the region’s 2.1 percent motor fuels tax surplus reserve for its funding needs. It had built up during previous years when fuel prices topped $4 a gallon.

Gas tax floor fails in Richmond

Today, gas prices in the region are below $2 a gallon. That has lessened the amount of cash collected by the region’s fuel’s tax. An effort to push legislators in Richmond to establish as gas tax floor — a mechanism that would fund PRTC based on fuel prices in 2013, when drivers paid an average of $3.36 a gallon.

Richmond leaders balked at the idea and deferred until next year a bill from Virginia Beach Senator Frank Wagner that would have established such a floor.

“Deferred to next year… that’s a polite way of saying [the bill] can be taken up again next year, said Tracy Gordon, a lobbyist for Prince William County.

Language is important here. Just because the bill can be taken up next year doesn’t mean it will be.

Richmond legislators passed landmark transportation reform in 2013. The bill, HB2313, raised the state’s sales tax in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, and the state’s gas tax that had gone untouched since 1986.

Local leaders are kicking themselves now, because, if a gas tax floor had been included back then in HB2313, we’d probably have it today.

“If anyone had thought of this back in 2013, it would have made it into the bill, and we would just have it,” explained Gordon.

Hampton Roads Legislators remain interested in a gas tax floor, explained Gordon. That region uses its motor fuels tax funds to build roads while Northern Virginia jurisdictions use the money to fund transit.