Study group will weigh benefits of county takeover of public transportation

A transit authority has managed the day-to-day operations of Macon’s transportation system for nearly 40 years.

But who oversees the multimillion-dollar system could change as Macon-Bibb County officials consider whether control should be turned over to the local government.

The shake-up would require support from a majority of Macon-Bibb County commissioners — and from the state Legislature.

Macon-Bibb County will put together a seven-member committee to study whether the county should take control of the Macon-Bibb County Transit Authority.

Commissioner Gary Bechtel said the committee could get a better grasp of where the transit authority stands financially and the direction for the system after the June resignation of general manager and CEO Rick Jones.

Macon-Bibb has contributed about $2.6 million to the authority each of the last two fiscal years, according to budget officials. The authority’s budget gets an infusion of federal funding.

Bechtel said he thinks it’s wise for Macon-Bibb officials to put together the committee, but going into it he questions the benefit of the transit system’s becoming a county department.

“At this point I don’t think it’s in our best interest to wrap it into Macon-Bibb County,” he said. “Unless I see something otherwise, my (preference) may just be to let them work their way out of whatever issues they’re having. They have a very good (chief financial officer) in Danny (Thompson), who has a lot of governmental experience.”

One of the points of contention in recent years has been that the transit system needed extra money from local government. For fiscal 2016, for example, Macon-Bibb contributed $255,578 to meet the county’s dictate that the transit authority maintain enough funds to operate at least 45 days.

Macon-Bibb officials have discussed changing that policy.

“It’s worth a look to determine where they are and where they need to be and maybe put some thresholds in there to get these things looked at,” Bechtel said.

Craig Ross, the transit authority’s chairman, said he, along with authority board member Chuck Howard and attorney Brad Wilson, will likely serve on the study committee.

Ross said he believes the authority has done a good job of running a major operation.

The transit system has had to come back to the county for money at times because the original budgets submitted to Macon-Bibb were cut. The authority can also end up giving money back to local governments because the transit system had excess funds, Ross said.

“We don’t put a lot of fluff in there, virtually none,” he said. “This (submitted budget) is what our best guess is that it’s going to take us to run this transit authority for the next fiscal year. We turn that in and get it cut.”

Commissioner Mallory Jones said his “gut instinct” is that the transit authority should continue to run the system.

“I don’t think we need to micromanage the Macon Transit Authority,” he said. “They do a good job and know what they’re doing. I don’t think it should be under Macon-Bibb government.”

Commissioner Larry Schlesinger said he doesn’t have a strong feeling on whether its best for the authority to remain a separate entity from Macon-Bibb.

“I’d be interested to hear and participate in the discussions on how best we can move forward,” he said.

History of Macon public transportation

The buses that ran throughout Macon were once privately owned by prominent local businessman Emmett Barnes.

In 1973, Barnes sold the financially struggling operation to the city of Macon.

By early 1980, Macon officials faced a lack of federal funds for a system that was running a $700,000 deficit. The city had again been denied federal funds for the bus line because it did not recognize a bus drivers union.

Georgia law prohibited cities from recognizing a union at the time, so Macon officials pushed for forming a separate transit authority that could get those much-needed federal dollars. The transit authority was established through state legislation in 1980.

Today, there are about 100 employees working for a transit system that has 38 buses and runs 15 routes covering thousands of miles a month.

Along with bus routes, staffing and operating a bus terminal, the authority also has control of the historic Terminal Station. The grand 100,000-plus-square-foot building has seen an increase in events and in office space being leased in recent years, but it also has some high-price maintenance issues that have cropped up.

The transit authority continues searching for ways to become more efficient and improve the experience for riders, Ross said.

The authority is looking at getting an app that allows the public to see a real-time map showing where each bus is located at a given time. The authority is also examining if some routes can be changed during certain periods of the day in order to increase ridership.

Public transportation remains an integral part to Macon-Bibb and other cities across the nation. Even as recently as a few years ago, there were more than 10 billion trips taken on public transportation throughout the year, Ross said.

“That’s more bus riders, more bus trips than in the 1950s,” he said.

This story was originally published July 21, 2017 at 6:17 PM with the headline "Study group will weigh benefits of county takeover of public transportation."