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Advisory Board Passes BRTA Service Changes
By Brittany Polito, iBerkshires Staff
05:20AM / Monday, May 02, 2022
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PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Berkshire Regional Transit Authority service changes for the upcoming fiscal year were approved at Thursday's advisory board meeting.

A number of adjustments were made to the proposal after seeking input from the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission and the general public. The planning commission wanted to ensure that the changes do not impact the environmental justice population and continue to connect residents to essential locations.

Per BRPC's recommendations, there are no longer routing changes along East and Newell Streets and micro-transit pilot program fares will be between $3 and $4 per person for a one-way trip.

"The goals of the service changes haven't changed," Administrator Robert Malnati said.

"We're trying to maintain some of the successful pilot programs that we had in place, we knew that grant funding was expiring at the end of the year, we listened to our customers in the customer survey that was sent out in January and some of the responses that came back we've incorporated into the goals, one of them was 'fix what you have before you go looking to expand,' it's what they said and also, 'we like the evening service,' so we kept as much of that as possible."

Malnati added there was an effort to facilitate future electric vehicle locations and connections to other areas.  The technology for electric vehicles isn't quite there yet for the BRTA, he said, but there are hopes that it will be in the next two years.

The proposal for Route 1 from Pittsfield to North Adams was changed to transform Allendale Plaza into a micro-hub with connections available between Routes 1, 4, 12, and 14 so that customers can travel in multiple directions.

"Route 1 we're going to continue to do the evening service there we also are using Allendale as a transfer point like a micro hub, that's where the Ashuwillticook Trail extension goes to," Malnati explained.

"This proposal had four vehicles going there to transfer folks so if you came down from North Adams and wanted to go to Dalton, you can transfer there you don't have to come to the ITC to go all the way back out to Allendale to go to Dalton.

"We also took the recommendations from the planning commission and said, 'if the mall comes back and becomes more viable, we can certainly change from our demand service that we proposed in the proposal.'"

Route 5B from Pittsfield to Lanesborough center will travel in a new pattern as a replacement for Berkshire Medical Center and Crane Avenue customers coming to and from Pittsfield Intermodal Transportation Center (ITC) and Lanesborough. This route will travel through Center Street, Seymour Street, Berkshire Medical Center, and North Street to and from Lanesborough center.

On Route 21 through Lee, Stockbridge, and Great Barrington the stops for Brookside Manor and the Senior Center were combined at the existing stop location on the Brookside Manor side of the senior center to maintain hourly service to both locations.

On Route 22, the Great Barrington loop, a pilot evening route was discontinued because pilot funding expires on June 30 and there is no other funding source to continue the service.

Micro-transit pilot service areas were added along North Street between Springside Avenue and Waconah Street and along Crane Avenue between North Street and Dalton Avenue.

"We were trying to, like I said earlier, dip our toe into the micro-transit arena," Malnati said.

"So we're going to have it confined right now until we can see what the demand is, we have a paratransit fleet and paratransit workers that have capacity so we will be using their call center, we will be using their drivers and their dispatchers for this so that's why we're limiting days of the hours and where people can go, work or medical appointment."

The BRTA collaborated with BRPC in late February to review the service changes and there were public meeting sessions in March. There was a 45-day public comment period that ended in mid-April and final plans will be published on June 1 for an effective date of July 1.

Jon Gould from state Sen. Adam Hinds' office observed that the changes are the result of staffing shortages and financial constraints and asked what the BRTA's goals are for the fiscal 2023 budget.

Malnati said a goal would be for the state to fund the request of $101 million for all 15 regional transit authorities rather than $94 million because that number is flat from the previous year.

He explained that the RTAs are looking at a $94 million base with $3.5 million for consumer price index (CPI) and $3.5 million for workforce retention. This was in a House of Representatives amendment.

"Our costs have gone up just like everybody else's ... if your costs go up, and you're trying to do the same amount of service, how can you do that?" he said.

"It's a simple math that everything goes up, but this is the same and your funding is the same, then something has to go and you need to cut service to balance your budget and that's not the way to go."

Rene Wood of Sheffield spoke about the injustices that RTAs face over the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) when it comes to funding.

"I think this now falls to the Senate to correct the injustice is to the RTA budget, I think it's important to note that the MBTA budget got a CPI increase and the RTA budget didn't, so the RTAs are definitely being considered second-class citizens, when in fact, the transportation here is probably more important than it is in the MBTA area as it was shown during COVID, people just abandoned that service like crazy and the city and environs continued," She said.

"I think also, [Malnati] and the House are being very modest in a CPI index, because $3 1/2 million on a $94 million budget does not even begin to equate to the January stated inflation rate of 9.5 percent, so that's not enough, it's good but it's not enough."

State Rep. Tricia Farley Bouvier was on the call and agreed with Wood's sentiment.

"I'm completely on board with how unfair the RTAs are treated compared to the MBTA, there's just example after example of that," she said.

"The win in the House budget was the House Ways and Means budgets did do better than the governor and the loss is that we didn't get our amendments asked, so we're gonna keep working on that and certainly with our Senate partners, which is our next quote-unquote, bite at the apple."

She also thanked Malnati for the new stop at Callahan Drive in Pittsfield to accommodate employers' recruitment of workers.

There was some question over whether the service changes did pass with seven members voting in favor and four members voting against. Representatives from Great Barrington, Lenox, Sheffield, and Stockbridge voted against it.

There was also a discussion about the transparency of BRTA's Finance Committee after it made a recommendation for a 4 percent increase in salary for the director going back to April 1.

"I'd like to know if the finance committee meetings are posted and open to not only other members of the BRTA advisory committee but the general public," Wood asked.

"I don't believe they are and I bring this up because I think it's a severe violation of the Open Meeting Law as I believe our meetings have been for some time, since the linkage has not been posted, you have to send in acknowledgment that you're going to attend and then the link is sent to you, I discussed this with [Malnati] recently, that's not the way the Open Meeting Law works."

Wood said she will file a complaint every time meetings are not posted where the public and advisory board members have access to the login information without having to respond.

Two other members supported her comments.

Sheila Irvin of Pittsfield said, in her experience, it has been over time a "fairly informal situation."

Douglas McNally of Windsor explained the process that lead to a proposal for a 4 percent rise in the salary.

"The annual reviews have been in discussion among the members of the Finance Committee, and a discussion with [Malnati] taking into account several things, number one is usually, prior to the Finance Committee meeting, there's a discussion with the legislative delegation where we get a sense of what they feel the RTA, BRTA should be going in a direction," he said.

"That's where a lot of the pressure to get some more data-driven decision making came from because they felt that they needed more of that and (Malnati) had to be more transparent with that if they were going to advocate for finances, so generally, what happens is we take that input, we take performance, we take a look at what Bob's response to the directions that have been given the prior year,"

"For instance, the year before last the direction was to find some way to expand evening service and to use a more diligent, deeper dig into not overall passenger usage and so on, but to dig deep to where people were actually getting on and off stops and in what hour the day and so on, and the fact that he followed through and did that in discussion was rounds for a positive review."

Inflation was also taken into consideration for the raise.

The Finance Committee will likely take up this issue at its next meeting.

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