Last week, around a dozen Louisvillians trickled into United Crescent Hill Ministries’ building in the Clifton neighborhood, part of a network of nonprofits providing social services.
They arrived to learn more about a resource used millions of times a year: public buses. The Transit Authority of River City (TARC) hosted an open house at the site for residents to learn more about potential changes to the local bus system, part of a weekslong outreach campaign.
Kris Vance, who attended the meeting with his brother and a neighbor, said he takes TARC’s Cardinal Shuttle while working at the University of Louisville and sometimes uses other routes when his car isn’t available.
He spoke highly of transit, saying he hopes Amtrak will one day return to Louisville.
“I'm all about moving TARC and our public transportation forward in a positive fashion,” Vance said.
TARC is facing a $30 million shortfall that its leaders have said was delayed as the agency used capital funds — meant for long-term investments — and COVID-19 relief funds to fill its operating budget over the past 20 years.
The agency’s operating expenses, largely spent on labor costs, have outpaced its heavily tax-dependent operating revenues since the mid-’90s, according to a recent TARC report.
The agency now plans to rework its bus network in Jefferson County and Southern Indiana. The federally-funded process, known as TARC 2025, involves taking residents’ feedback until Friday on changes the agency looks to begin implementing as early as next August.
Those changes will likely scale back existing bus services in a dramatic way, unless a significant and steady new funding source appears.
Ozzy Gibson, who was appointed TARC’s executive director in June, said the agency is in a “tough situation” and would prefer to keep and improve its routes.
“Going backwards and cutting service … is not going to end well, and it'll take you forever to get back because there are so many little pieces to run in public transit,” Gibson said.
To reduce costs, TARC considered laying off bus drivers earlier this year. Instead, they announced a deal in June with Jefferson County Public Schools, allowing the district to train and use up to 70 drivers. JCPS spokesperson Carolyn Callahan said last week that 24 of those drivers have already received their certifications to run routes, and another 10 were testing to become certified.
But that deal is only active for one year. Alex Posorske, TARC’s director of marketing and communications, said if TARC 2025 reduces service, further staffing cuts would need to be made across the board.
The agency’s bus network redesign won’t just affect its staffing and financial outlook, but also thousands of frequent riders. Lower-income residents, disabled community members and people without reliable alternative travel options stand to gain or lose the most from any changes made.
Fewer residents on board
The authors of one of TARC 2025’s reports identified a few issues contributing to TARC’s fiscal cliff, including relatively low state funding and COVID-19’s impact on transit agencies.
They also pointed to TARC’s collection of local taxes, which has been a focal point. The agency collects 0.2% of taxable income in Jefferson County through the occupational license tax. That rate hasn’t changed since TARC was founded in 1974, which its previous executive director criticized as inadequate.
Gibson said he plans to speak with politicians about funding opportunities once the agency has proposals for Louisville’s future bus network.
“There’s nobody that has that kind of money sitting around, so there has to be another way to create that funding,” Gibson said. “And we’ve just got to make sure that there's not an unintended consequence if you go out there and raise a tax.”
TARC has also been suffering from falling ridership. While fares are only a small portion of the agency’s operating revenues, fewer passengers could make getting more funding a harder ask.
According to the National Transit Database, TARC buses carried more than 16 million riders in 2012, higher than any of the 10 previous years. But ridership gradually dipped year after year, before bottoming out during the height of the pandemic.
Bus ridership has slowly recovered, as the agency says there were more than 6.5 million users on dedicated, numbered routes from July 2023 to June 2024. However, that figure is well below that of a decade ago.
And despite having much fewer riders, TARC hasn’t significantly changed how long bus drivers are on the road compared to a decade ago when ridership had just peaked, according to an agency report.
Gibson attributes the ridership decline to factors like online shopping and remote work, and said TARC needs the public’s feedback for help.
“We've had some conversations with other cities,” he said. “They didn't have the routes where people wanted them, the stop times [weren’t] what people wanted. And when they made some of the adjustments, they saw an increase in ridership.”
The agency has eliminated or reduced the frequency of bus routes multiple times since 2020, including major weekday changes this summer. But TARC 2025 cuts could be even steeper.
Gibson noted that if TARC slashes any of its fixed routes, that would also likely impact riders who rely on the TARC3 paratransit service.
The Americans with Disabilities Act, signed into law in 1990, requires TARC to serve eligible disabled residents and visitors by allowing them to make trips starting and ending within three-quarters of a mile of a non-express TARC route.
That means bus line cuts would make it harder for people who rely on TARC3 to get guaranteed access around Louisville, especially if the vehicles aren’t required to reach as many homes.
“We're going to have to make a tough decision,” Gibson said. “What do we do? We already know we’ve got to cut $30 million out of our budget, and to continue to do something that you don't have money for, I can't sell that.”
The road ahead
As part of the redesign process, TARC has shared three concepts of what its bus network could look like in the next 5-10 years.
Two of the concepts called “coverage” and “ridership” assume the agency will be forced to scale back, cutting service to around 50% of what it looked like this past spring. However, a third “growth” concept proposes how TARC could instead expand its network if it secured more funding.
The “coverage” concept explores what Louisville’s bus system would offer if the agency focused on preserving as many of its current routes as possible. Many buses that run through the outer edges of Jefferson County and cross to Southern Indiana would be kept. But most routes would have midday buses arriving at a stop at most once every hour, increasing many wait times by at least 15 to 30 minutes..
The “ridership” concept focuses on serving roads where there are more people and jobs. Buses would show up more frequently on major corridors like Dixie Highway, Preston Highway and Bardstown Road compared to the “coverage” concept. But many routes would be cut in the farthest parts of Jefferson County and Southern Indiana, and TARC3’s service area would be reduced.
TARC’s “growth” model would allow the agency to avoid making tough cuts, but would require more public transit funding.
The concepts aren’t exact plans, but show how TARC could prioritize different needs.
The next step for TARC 2025 is to create proposals showing two network plans: one that reduces service due to the funding gap, and another that expands it if more money is available. In a press release this week, the agency said those drafts will be shared with the public “early next year.”
Asked what he hopes Louisville’s bus system ends up looking like, Vance, the TARC rider, didn’t name either concept but focused on an outcome.
“Whatever is the best way forward to move the most people and to get the maximum for the minimum,” he said, while also noting that TARC should “stay more in the urban core.”
Patrick Piuma is the director of the Urban Design Studio, based out of the University of Louisville. He’s also a part of the TARC 2025 stakeholder advisory committee comprising local business and community leaders.
Piuma said his group focuses on transforming public spaces to meet community needs. Part of that work has included repurposing old Cardinal Stadium seats by placing them alongside TARC bus stops.
“I think it was successful. I would like to see more things, but that was kind of just a way to inject a little bit of joy into the streetscape,” Piuma said.
Sizing up TARC’s bus network concepts, he said that a redesign should prioritize having frequent and reliable buses, more so than focusing on inefficient routes.
“If it takes more than 60 minutes for each bus to come, it almost makes it not usable, especially if you're using it to get to jobs and things like that, or you have to make connections,” Piuma said.
But Piuma also acknowledged the cost of disconnecting more residents from travel options. Regardless of which direction TARC takes, he said there needs to be a push to add more density and amenities near bus stops used by lots of people.
He said this transit-oriented development would serve as a model for future TARC growth if more funding became available. And having a solid transit system is necessary, Piuma said, for Louisville to stay relevant with competing cities.
“I think a big part of the problem is that people just view transit — and this is not just Louisville, it's a lot of places — as kind of the last resort, and only for people who don't have a lot of money and just are forced to take it.”
Jess Clark contributed reporting.
