Concerns with funding for Campus Bus

The Red-Hot ticket was the only one in the IU Student Association election to raise the problem of a lack of funding for the IU Campus Bus Service. Although they naively hinted that an expedient solution was possible, merely bringing up the issue is helpful for awareness.

Students complain that there aren’t enough buses or routes.

In 2005, the mandatory student transportation fee was extended to the IU Campus Bus Service – eliminating the sale of bus passes and cash fares – as the way to cover operating expenses. According to the 2007 Campus Bus Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats analysis, “to date Campus Bus has obtained no federal or state financial assistance to support its operating expenses,” and therefore is “almost exclusively dependent on the student transportation fees.”  

On its Web site, Red-Hot asked the rhetorical question: “Did you know that there is nearly $2 million per year of state transportation funds that would be available to Campus Bus if IU would just apply for them?” To put that in perspective, the Campus Bus Service currently has an operating budget of only $3.6 million.

Admittedly, that sounded very suspicious to me when I first heard it – surely there must be a reason why Campus Bus isn’t just taking this “free” money.

After talking to Kirk White, who helps coordinate the partnership between Bloomington Transit and Campus Bus to eliminate inefficiencies, I found that Red-Hot is technically right. Campus Bus could just apply for funding from the state’s Public Mass Transportation Fund.

However, it is difficult politically.   

The annual amount of state money allocated to the fund is fixed. For each public transit system in a city, a formula based on the criteria of ridership, total vehicle miles and locally derived income is used to determine how much funding each city will receive.  

However, the size of the Public Mass Transportation Fund is fixed. So if one city increases its portion of funding received from the fund, other cities’ portions decrease.  
If Campus Bus were to apply for funding with Bloomington Transit for Bloomington, then other cities around Indiana would lose funding. Although Campus Bus could get an additional $2 million, that’s $2 million less for the rest of the state.

Obviously, until Campus Bus applies for funding, Bloomington will not receive its fair share, because a large portion of our ridership will remain unaccounted for when determining funding.

Other Indiana cities, like Lafayette, have coupled college transits with city transits. However, Bloomington still has to consider the other cities’ welfare before incorporating Campus Bus, if not because we’re generous, then because we could upset other municipalities. Their congressmen could cut into our appropriations at next year’s budget proposal to make up for the $2 million.  

Awareness is low on this issue, and for bringing it up Red-Hot should be commended. But even hinting that we can just charge in there and apply for funds could backfire on IU.  

Campus Bus is aware of the reliance on the student transportation fee and since fall 2007 has been working appropriately to get the much-needed additional aid without taking away from the rest of the state.