Doris Jairala has been a Pierce Transit rider for five years, relying on the Route 53 bus almost every day to get to housekeeping jobs.

Driving isn’t an option for the 62-year-old University Place resident. She suffers from seizures and isn’t allowed to get behind the wheel.

But from the bus stop outside her apartment complex, it’s just a short walk and bus ride to Tacoma Community College, then on to her work sites in places such as University Place, Lakewood and Steilacoom.

Jairala is one of the thousands of riders who will have to find a new bus route, if not another means of transportation entirely, by July 12.

Pierce Transit, squeezed by the economic downturn, will start its slimmed-down bus schedule on that date. It won’t affect heavily used routes, but service on less popular routes will be reduced or consolidated, and certain segments of routes will be eliminated.

In all, the service reductions will affect 300,000 passenger boardings this year. That amounts to 33,000 service hours – about 5 percent of total fixed-route bus service hours.

All this comes as gas prices are back on the rise, and some commuters have looked to save money by switching to mass transit. Ridership is up 3 percent to 5 percent this year, according to the agency.

But more riders doesn’t equal more income. Of Pierce Transit’s $121 million operating budget this year, 60 percent of it will come from sales tax revenue. Fares will generate only 13 percent.

“It’s the perfect storm,” said Kelly Hayden, Pierce Transit’s director of planning. “What can I do? It’s something that a transportation planner never wants to do.”

“The demand is up, but the resources to pay for it are going down,” he added.

Jairala’s bus route on Cirque Drive West in University Place is targeted for elimination. She said the closest stop under the new schedule is more than a mile east, near Bridgeport Way West.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said this week. “I will have to walk up the hill, and at my age, I’ll probably have a heart attack.”

Hayden said the agency wanted to affect as few riders as possible but realized the cuts will hurt some people.

The transit agency is hurting in its own right, the victim of lagging sales tax revenue that left a $10 million hole in this year’s $121 million operating budget.

Pierce Transit dipped into reserves and eliminated 51 positions before making the route changes, Hayden said. It also raised adult fares by 25 cents.

Lakewood City Councilwoman Claudia Thomas, who serves on the Pierce Transit Board of Directors, said the service adjustments aren’t a knee-jerk reaction in the struggling economy.

The transit agency studied routes and listened to residents to determine which buses had the lowest ridership. Other transit agencies, such as Sound Transit, are going through the same exercises, Thomas said.

It’s part of efficient stewardship of public resources, she said, noting that residents have called Pierce Transit in the past to ask why it was operating a bus with a handful of passengers during peak hours.

“You cannot run a bus with five people,” Thomas said. “The ridership drives the service on all the buses.”

The transit agency might have made the right decision to cut Route 53 where Jairala lives, judging by the ridership one morning last week between 8 and 11 a.m. The stretch along Cirque Drive West had only a handful of riders, with many stops along the route unoccupied.

It was busier during the school year when Tacoma Community College students would often ride the bus. For Jairala, it’s hard to accept that her main mode of transportation will be gone.

She pointed to a News Tribune story in March about a $35 million radio and computer communication system that Pierce Transit installed on its fleet. The agency had been looking at replacing the system for years.

“I think it’s a bunch of bull if you ask me,” Jairala said. “They’ve got it in the paper that they have all these fancy gadgets. How can they afford all that?”

Brent Champaco: 253-597-8653
brent.champaco@thenewstribune.com