The District’s long-standing system of taking students to school on Metrobus would be prohibited under a federal proposal to tighten the rules that govern public transit agencies.
The stricter Federal Transit Administration rules, which just completed the public comment process, would apply to all transit systems that receive federal funds and could be in place as soon as August. Metro receives $200 million in federal funding annually.
The rule is designed to ensure that publicly funded transit systems don’t infringe on the private charter bus industry, but officials said it would leave the District scrambling to pull together transportation for students that likely would cost millions of dollars more than the school system has budgeted for the service.
“The timeline, between planning the routes, implementing them — and where is the money coming from?” District Department of Transportation Director Emeka Moneme said at a Metro board of directors meeting Thursday. “It’s frankly impractical for the current year.”
Metro currently schedules “tripper buses” — extra bus routes that run during school transportation hours — to move about 20,000 students to and from school.
Each student’s family pays Metro $26 a month for the service, and the District subsidizes the program by paying the transit agency an additional $26 a month per student, costing the city $5 million in fiscal 2007, a DDOT spokesman said.
By contrast, Arlington County Public Schools, which has less than half the numberof students as the District, budgeted $12 million for its private school bus service next year.
Fairfax County Public Schools pays $103 per student for private bus service — about four times as much as the District does for Metrobus service, according to budget records.
“If the [rule] is finalized before the start of the 2008-2009 school year and should [it] affect any existing Metrobus routes, we will not have sufficient time to make other arrangements and obtain the necessary funding,” D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso wrote in a public comment to the FTA.
The rule in question currently allows tripper service as long as it is regularly scheduled, open to the public and designed to accommodate school students using fare collection or subsidy systems.
The “tightened” version of the rule would prohibit tripper service that is primarily intended to accommodate students and only incidentally to serve the general public.
