Liberty busing system to change soon

The possibility of severing ties with GLTC has Liberty University considering increasing the amount of service that it self-operates.

According to Director of Auxiliary Services Lee Beaumont, Liberty is still looking to purchase roughly 20,000 hours of service from GLTC next fall. However, the majority of bus transportation provided to students will either be from a self-operated busing system by the university, or a private company will move into Lynchburg to provide its services, according to Vice President of Financial Research and Analysis Richard Martin.

“Regardless of what this decision is about, who operates what, there are a couple of things that will remain,” Martin said. “Our focus is to be efficiently moving people within the campus, but primarily focusing on getting commuters and employees to campus and reducing the mandatory dependency on a single occupancy vehicle.”

Vice Chancellor Ron Godwin said that one of the reasons Liberty has decided to begin siphoning off the hours it purchases from GLTC is because of costs.

“All of those factors play some part in the decisions that are being made,” Godwin said. “It is absolutely true that providing the best possible, most timely service is a very significant expense. So managing the costs and at the same time balancing our concerns of rising costs and continuing to provide the best service is part of the challenge.”

According to Martin, a decent amount of GLTC’s operating hours, roughly one third, comes from Liberty. This year, GLTC received 1.1 million passengers from Liberty, with an expected 1.25 to 1.3 million riders next year, Beaumont said.

With so much ridership originating from Liberty students, costs to keep students satisfied and to meet ridership needs have been rising. According to a report released by the GLTC earlier in the year, the actual annual operating expenses for Liberty averaged out to be $1.4 million. And the price was expected to continue growing.

This is a decent rate in terms of the service that Liberty is receiving, Martin said.

To understand the reasons behind the split, then, becomes tricky. According to Martin, the GLTC receives public funding from the federal and state government that is used for various routes run by the transit company. Despite this, Liberty still has to pay a certain rate for service, Martin said.

“That top line cost before grants is going up fast,” Martin said. “And we wouldn’t have too much of a problem with that if the type of service that GLTC currently provides was the only way of providing transit services to a large campus. But we’ve been studying other colleges and bigger schools. There’s a lot of different ways that are much more cost effective.”

After meeting with GLTC again, Martin said that the school has had another opportunity to address its concerns. The main concern was that regardless of what Liberty did, the cost of services was dependent on third party factors either not in control of the GLTC or that were decisions of GLTC board members that impacted the school.

“If the city does not increase funding for the GLTC, they either have to cut more routes or increase Liberty’s cost so that money can be used to fund those routes,” Martin said. “And our concern was that we really needed a scenario where the Liberty University community was held harmless to that.”

According to Martin, that scenario was possibly expanding its own transit system within the Liberty community, since the university already operates half of the services.

“There are some private folks we can pull into Lynchburg that will be able to help,” Martin said. “We’re also confident that if it came down to us, we would be able to operate the system by ourselves.”

Currently, Liberty operates between 44,000 and 45,000 bus hours, Martin said. Of that number, roughly 22,000 are already being run independently of GLTC and completely by Liberty, he said.

Most of those self-operating hours provide late night services around Liberty’s campus and from the university to various apartment complexes.

University administrators are trying to help make it easier for students and faculty to get back and forth from campus without needing to use a vehicle, Martin said.

Students that rely on the GLTC to get them back and forth from campus will not need to worry about their transportation next fall, according to Martin.

“Regardless of what happens with GLTC, it’s our intention that the students can continue to ride the city GLTC routes to and from Liberty for free next year,” Martin said.

Liberty is planning to expand service to commuters in several areas, according to Martin. Route 86 — service to Old Mill, Forestbrook, Walden Pond and Park Place apartments — will be extended to 9 p.m. The existing Old Forest Road Wal-Mart park and ride route will be converted into a commuter/apartment/park-and-ride lot that will operate hourly from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Liberty is also designing “innovative” park-and-ride/apartment route solutions to Wards Road and Fort Avenue to use the new tunnel and bridge.

Martin said they are working with apartments that have “expressed interest” in supporting the new routes. He expects them to be beneficial to many students.

“We’re going to do our best to continue those services,” Godwin said. “We’re certainly not sitting here plotting and scheming on how to deprive students of transportation.”