C&TSRR Bus Costs

Much has been made of how much the bus transfer costs. The last years (2000-2001) that financial data is available(Since the fire restricted year and beyond financial data has been basically unavailable as far as I can tell) the bus expenses were $139,525 and $164,430 with ridership in those years of 45,500 and 56,044. Those years were pretty much the last 'normal' years. So bus costs were pretty small in comparison to other expenses. Other operating expenses of note in 2001 for example were payroll-$1,457,338, Restoration and Maintenance-$633,124, Outside services-$382,445, Advertising-$257,681, fuel-$149,802 and numerous smaller costs like comm, credit card fees, vehicle expenses, insurance, utilities and others. Revenues for those years were $2.0 million and $2.4 million respectively. RGRPC had great hopes at the end of 2001, but then disaster hit and it never really recovered. Ridership since then has been poor with around 22,000 in 2002, 16,829 in 2003 and I think in the 30's the last two years. My studies have always show the break even point to be around 50,000 riders. Hopefully the Commission and whoever operates it in the future will do a better job of promotion and advertising to bring ridership up.