& Albany County Post - The Altamont Enterprise

The Altamont Enterprise – Thursday, September 27, 2012 7
CDTA cuts back on bus runs as some object
By Zach Simeone
ALTAMONT — As the Capital
District Transportation Authority
cuts and combines bus routes
in the wake of the statewide
economic crunch, the routes that
bring riders from Altamont and
Voorheesville to Albany will be
changing on Nov. 12.
“What we presented to the public
was basically putting together
two routes: the morning commuter
buses to
Altamont and
Voorheesville,
and back in,”
said Jonathan
Scherzer, CD-
TA’s director of
marketing. “We
took those two
routes, which
had varying degrees
of ridership — certainly not
efficient ones — and combined
them into one.”
Riders getting off the evening
bus, which arrives at the intersection
of Main Street and Maple
Avenue in Altamont at 5:15 p.m.,
said last week that they were
unsure if and how the changes
would be affecting them, since
CDTA has not yet released the
new schedule.
Scherzer said last week that
the planned route change would
add close to 10 minutes to the
trip for Altamont riders, but correspondence
between Scherzer
and an Altamont bus rider in
the days that followed suggest
further changes.
“We had put our proposal out
By Tyler Murphy
NEW SCOTLAND –– Town
board members are poised to sell
a 14-passenger senior van to the
town of Berne and have told dozens
of concerned senior citizens
at last week’s board meeting the
sale would not affect service.
“Some seniors in the town of
New Scotland, in my opinion,
have been unnecessarily aggravated
into a concern that (the
town board) is going to sell one
of the buses,” said Councilman
Doug LaGrange.
“Last year, we used it 20 times
and it sat out there for 340 days
without use. They’re still going
to have trips, still going to have
the bus,” New Scotland Supervisor
Thomas
Dolin said to
the crowd as
it pelted board
members with
questions for
more than an
hour at last
week’s meeting.
“Tell me what the objection
is.”
One of the citizens at the meeting,
Bill Kerr, was skeptical of
how available the van would be to
New Scotland seniors if another
municipality owned it. He noted
the cost of the bus was less than
1 percent of the budget and the
projected savings even smaller.
He asked board members for a
guarantee the sale would not
impact local seniors.
The board has scheduled a
special meeting for Today at 6:30
p.m., at the Wyman Osterhout
Community Center to vote on
the issue, and Dolin, who endorses
the sale, believes enough
members support the move to
pass it.
Berne residents recently lost
their hill town bus services from
the Capital District Transportation
Authority in August.
“Revenues are declining, business
is in downfall, it’s no different
for government than private
business,” Berne Supervisor
Kevin Crosier told the crowd at
the New Scotland meeting. Crosier
said the CDTA canceled its
to the public, and some of our
more vocal constituents came
out to the meeting,” Scherzer
said. “They had their opinions
of how public transit should be
doled out, and they did provide
us with some alternate routings,
which I think we are going to
try to incorporate into the final
plan.”
Scherzer refers to a couple, one
of whom rides the Altamont bus.
“What we presented to the public was basically putting
together two routes: the morning commuter buses to
Altamont and Voorheesville, and back in”
They provided The Enterprise
with an e-mail from Scherzer,
which he wrote in response to a
letter suggesting alternatives to
CDTA’s proposal.
In his response, Scherzer wrote:
“We appreciate the time both you
and your husband have put into
finding the best plan and, to that
end, we will be implementing the
routing from Route 20 to Route
146 to Altamont, and then Route
156 through Voorheesville into
Delmar.”
Still, other concerns remain;
some drive to the 20 Mall on
Western Avenue, and catch
the bus from the 20 Mall into
Albany.
“The people who get on at 20
Mall are being affected the most,”
one rider said after getting off
the Altamont bus last week.
“Because they get on our bus,
and then we get on the highway,
so their commute is only about,
15, 20 minutes. They’re going to
have to take this other bus, the
63, and that’s like a 40-minute
bus ride.”
Scherzer suggests these riders
simply take another bus.
“People at 20 Mall have, I think,
five bus routes
there,” he said.
“If someone really
wants to
connect there,
they can [take
route] 763, or
one of the others.”
Some have
expressed the
fear that, with the bus trip’s
duration becoming longer, more
people will choose to drive,
thereby increasing congestion
and the effect on the environment.
Scherzer disagrees.
“If you take public transportation
to begin with, you probably
have the expectation that it’s
going to take longer than driving
a car,” he said. “This isn’t
something that’s just for you, or
another individual, or a family
of individuals, or a household.
It’s set up for the masses. Would
I want a shorter ride Of course,
but if I knew the best way to get
the services I’m used to was taking
a bus for an extra eight or
nine minutes, that’s something
I’d have to think about.”
Seniors protest
Berne asks to buy New Scotland’s back-up bus
routes, citing a lack of riders and
a $50,000 fiscal shortfall. “What
separates us in the hill towns is
miles,” he said.
“It’s less than 1 percent of the
town’s total income. Yes, it’ll
save money, it’ll help Berne but
we’re taxpayers here,” said Kerr.
“I know what happens once you
give something away; I know
government. That’s the way it
goes.”
Berne asked New Scotland to
sell one of its two vans. The town
operates two cars and two vans
as part of the New Scotland Senior
Outreach program, though
Dolin said one of the cars was
in bad shape and needed to be
replaced.
“Revenues are declining, business is in downfall,
it’s no different for government than private business”
The purpose of the outreach
program was to connect New
Scotland seniors with aid offered
by the county and state,
LaGrange said at the meeting.
The vehicles are used to take
seniors to medical appointments
and grocery shopping free of
charge, since many are unable
to drive or can’t afford a car,
he said.
The buses are also used in partnership
with the New Scotland
Seniors club, a private, not-forprofit
group. The club organizes
dozens of recreational trips for
seniors and it often uses a town
bus for the trips. Since January
the buses had been on 71 trips
for the group, said Dolin.
An agreement with Berne
would sell the bus for $2,500,
which is less than its estimated
value, but the deal would allow
New Scotland to continue using
the bus when needed, said Dolin.
The town only used the back-up
bus about 20 days of the year
when the first bus was full during
trips for the seniors club. He
also said the back-up bus had
originally been purchased accidentally
after the town surprisingly
received a grant it thought
was going to be denied.
“In 2008, when I took office, we
had no vehicles and now we have
three and a half –– I considered
the fly car barely road worthy.
In my opinion, we need two cars
and one bus,” said Dolin. The supervisor
said one of the reasons
the town was selling the bus was
because it never really needed it
in the first place. Dolin said the
cars are often more efficient for
transporting seniors, since most
of the transport involves small
groups going for medical appointments
or shopping.
“In the time we had only
one bus, I never recall a great
outcry to get
another,” added
LaGrange.
“I know there
are some worries
out there, people
are worried
the van will go
and never come
back–– we’ll never get to use it
–– that’s not true,” said Crosier.
The supervisors told the seniors
at the meeting, that the two
towns would enter into a shared
services contract stipulating the
agreement in writing.
“We would use the bus up there
on day leave –– have a shared
services agreement with the
town so that, when you need the
bus for a trip to the flower show
or wherever you want to go, we’ll
make sure it’s clean and fueled,
ready to go and sitting in the
parking lot. You’d never know it
was gone,” said Crosier.
Though he didn’t say if he
supported the sale, Councilman
Daniel Mackay pointed out that
the proposed agreement stated
Berne would only be using the
bus once a week, on Wednesdays.
“What Berne is proposing is
a specific day of the week, a
specific time,” he said. “People
in the community obviously
know not to schedule intensive
events for Wednesday because
that day we’ll only have one bus
available.”
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