Pace budget problems may result in fewer Kane routes

Randall Road commuters and shoppers hoping for improved public transportation to ease their travels may end up with no public transportation at all.

The thoroughfare is one of the busiest in Kane County. Long stretches of Randall are replete with shopping centers, hospitals and some of Kane County's largest employers. Because of that, the county began a study about how to optimize bus transportation along the thoroughfare.

But on Monday, Pace officials told the county that it's facing a $6.5 million budget deficit on the suburban bus side of its ledgers.

Doug Sullivan, a marketing manager for Pace, told county officials that there will be no new tax or budget answer coming from the state legislature like the one it received in 2008 when Pace also had budget problems. A fare increase also doesn't seem possible because Pace just raised fares at the beginning of 2009.

Sullivan said the budget deficit "Will not be balanced solely on the backs of our riders. We don't feel that's the way to go at this time."

That leaves two options. Pace will slash $2.7 million from its administrative budget through furloughs for its employees, increasing insurance costs for its employees and scaling back on marketing. The remaining $3.8 million will be found with bus service reductions.

The cuts include eliminating all Saturday bus runs on Route 529, which runs along Randall Road. Also on the chopping block is Route 535, the Fox Valley Shuttle, which would vanish entirely. There would also be no Saturday bus runs on Route 528, which runs from the Aurora Transportation Center to Rush Copley Medical Center. Finally, there will be reduced service hours on Route 747, the DuPage Connection. The service hour cut on that route would include the elimination of Saturday service.

"I realize the touchiness of this subject, and I can assure you that every cut that we're looking to make here is based purely on performance," Sullivan said. "These are the routes with the fewest number of riders and lowest productivity."

Kane County officials believe the reason for the low ridership is because there are some significant problems with the bus routes. Those include lack of bus stop shelters, lack of sidewalks for riders to get to and from the bus stops and poor bus turn-ins to pick up passengers. County Board Member Jerry Jones said the Randall Road route is particularly poor for shoppers because the bus only comes every hour at best.

"You can't have ridership if you don't have the quality of service," Jones said. "I just hope at some point in time folks wake up and realize there has to be a significant investment in the system."

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