Actual good news, you guys!
Yesterday, the City of Portland, TriMet, and the Portland Public School District threw the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass, shifting funding to save the YouthPass, a program many feared dead due to budget cuts.
Instead of running a yellow bus fleet to schools, since 2009, Portland Public Schools has worked with TriMet to offer free bus passes to all students. The passes were funded with $2.55 million a year that came indirectly from the state’s Business Energy Tax Credit (BETC). The BETC ran into some scandal over subsidies to wind farms and when the legislature reworked the tax, the money for the YouthPass was lost. The funding was slated to expire at the end of December, leaving many students without a reliable way to get to school. If the free TriMet passes had died, the cost of getting kids to school would have shifted more onto the shoulders of families.
In a plan announced yesterday, the YouthPass funding gap will be covered by $375,000 from TriMet, $75,000 from Portland Public Schools and $225,000 from the City of Portland.
Any way you slice it, putting students on TriMet buses instead of running a separate school fleet of buses is a long-term cost savings. Portland Afoot editor Michael Andersen crunched the numbers on the costs of providing free TriMet bus passes to students versus funding a yellow bus fleet:
•From the state’s perspective, the universal YouthPass costs $3.5 million, 20 percent less than limited yellow-bus service: a $700,000 savings.
• From the school district’s perspective, the BETC-funded universal YouthPass costs $800,000, 56 percent less than limited yellow-bus service: a $1 million savings.
• From a Portland taxpayer’s perspective, the combined cost of the BETC-funded YouthPass program is $4.3 million, 28 percent less than limited yellow-bus service: a $1.7 million savings.
Stop distracting us with stuff like this and get back to the important coverage of mayoral candidates crowing about the city’s lack of leadership and blog comments about how Sam Adams hasn’t done anything.
Sarah, is there somewhere we can see how far the average student rides on a bus to school?
I know it’s the old joke ‘back in my day, we had to….’
but I biked and walked – rain or shine, and it was nearly 2 miles.
Schools don’t seem very far away at all from most Portland locations, to me anyway.
This is great news for the thousands of folks who ride it, but don’t forget this is only funded through May! It’s a stopgap measure for which there isn’t continued funding.
Also, do I understand this right – that ALL students get free bus passes regardless of where they live?
(ie, whether or not they would have even used the yellow bus?)
If this is the case, then I would suggest this is something the taxpayers should look long and hard at.
Free passes for students lets them know we care about them. Also, they won’t be stranded somewhere and can get home as long as there’s bus service. This may discourage bike riding, but many students find it more convenient to bike than bus to school.
Keeping paying customers on Tri-Met helps them with their budget problems, and keeps them from having to lay off so many workers.
What a surprise: Frank hates kids, schools, and kids’ abilities to get to schools.
No, not at all.
I do hate stupid conclusions though.