Why a Bus Fee Increase is Needed Texas States current bus contract expires the end of fiscal year 2014 (August 2014). – 10 year bus contract plus one extension year

Texas State currently pays $72.42/hour for the cost of service to the contractor. This does not include cost of: – diesel – Texas State staff to monitor the service (one full time manager, 50% for a Director, 50% for Administrative Assistant, student wages) – NextBus system – administrative fee collected by Texas State on every auxiliary account The student fee is currently $78.00

The Board of Regents tuition and fee policy precluded any increases in fees for fiscal year 2014 which covers 9/1/2013-8/31/2014. This resulted in: – A May 2012 motion to increase the bus fee from $78 to $95 for fall 2014, pending a successful student referendum. The legislative cap is $100. – The proposed $95 fee is based on a report from the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M. It is believed the best rate per hour we can expect to receive in a new contract will be 20% higher. ($72.42 x 1.2 = $86.90).

A Request for Proposals (RFP) process is needed to occur to obtain a new contract. – The tuition and fee policy was not announced in time to allow for responses to an RFP to be returned and analyzed by the May 2012 Board of Regents meeting – It would not have been fair to the students to hold a referendum in the summer. – The RFP process began in February 2013 with proposals returned in March 2013 – The new contract will go to the May 2013 Board of Regents meeting for approval – The new contract goes into affect August 2014 – Companies need one year lead time to purchase, outfit and paint the bus fleet

The tuition and fee policy also resulted in a one year extension of the current bus contract (August 2013-August 2014) because of the timing. The minimum increase for the contract extension will be 3.25%. The extension rate is estimated to be $74.77/hour

Many of the current service level problems resulted because: – The age of the current fleet - leading to excessive down time for maintenance and repair (have exceeded their useful life in years), (are at 75% of their useful life in years), (are at 50% of their useful life in years), (used for BTI, in one year have used 12% of useful life in miles, will exceed their useful life in 8 years instead of 12 if the BTI was continued) – Lack of sufficient number of trained drivers (bus contractor penalized $112,500 for missed laps due to no drivers from August thru November)

– The loss of a years service on one of the BTI buses (owned by Texas State) as a result of an accident in November Contractor brought in 3 MCIs for the BTI route that were no longer under contract in Minneapolis. No contractor will purchase additional buses at the end of a contract because they cannot recoup their expense Cost of a bus for in town use is $325,000 Cost of a bus for highway use is $680,000 – Construction on and around the campus (having to reroute the buses south of campus)

What can you expect to get under a new contract with a fee increase? New fleet (fleet costing approximately $13M) 60,000 service hours (current contract is at 51,000 service hours excluding the BTI, resulting in 9,000 more local service hours, or 17.5% increase, or 5 more buses) Point-to-point service from the Quad to the Mill Street Lot and back (no stops) Restoration to the Campus Loop route of service to the Speck Street Lot and Speck Garage

If a fee increase is not approved, what can you expect? Drop in service hours Elimination of Saturday routes 0.1% passenger boardings at $24.49 cost per passenger boarding Elimination of night routes 0.8% passenger boardings at $4.45 cost per passenger boarding Elimination of the Wonder World route 271,143 passenger boardings as opposed to the average of 395,385 of the routes Elimination of the new point-to-point service to Mill Street Lot Elimination of the restored service on the Campus Loop route to the Speck Lot and Speck Garage Modification to other routes (fewer buses per route and/or less frequent service)