As the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority holds hearings about proposed service cuts that would be the most severe in the agency’s history, advocates and riders are urging Gov. Dan McKee to find funding for the state’s bus system.

The Save RIPTA campaign, a coalition of riders, advocates, labor representatives, and elected officials, held a press conference Monday in Providence to urge the governor to plug a multimillion-dollar funding gap for RIPTA.

“There’s still time to act,” said Liza Burkin, board president of the Providence Streets Coalition. Burkin said the state has the option of flexing funding from other sources, such as the Department of Transportation, and a budget surplus from the end of debt service payments to a bond.

Of the 67 routes the RIPTA operates, the agency is proposing cuts or reductions in service to 58 lines.

Fourteen routes and two flex zones will be eliminated, and dozens of other lines will see segments of their routes eliminated, weekend service canceled, or diminished frequency, according to a RIPTA press release.

RIPTA CEO Chris Durand has said the agency will try to reduce and modify routes without laying off employees, but pay cuts could be on the table.

RIPTA is making cuts because of a $10 million budget deficit for the coming fiscal year.

Rep. David Morales, D-Providence, questioned how cuts to service would help serve the state’s goals of bringing business to Rhode Island and making it a place that people want to live. Morales cited Hasbro’s potential move out of state, and the lack of public transit that has been used as a reason for the relocation.

“The bus is turning, but it’s turning the wrong way,” he said. “Public transportation is not supplemental, it’s essential.”

Tommy Cute, a longtime RIPTA driver and the former president of the union that represents the authority’s workers, said the system will go from a statewide entity to a metro service as a result of the cuts.

He said 44% of the cuts are concentrated in Pawtucket, and service to the western part of the state is getting crunched. Of the few lines unaffected, service to Fall River will remain.

“Fall River is going to have better service than Pawtucket,” Cute said.

Rhode Island AFL-CIO president Patrick Crowley said the cuts amount to a tax increase on working-class residents, affecting the people who will have to spend more on transportation or quit their jobs because they can’t get to work under the new service constraints.

“Rhode Islanders are sick and tired of bearing the brunt of budget shortfalls,” he said.

Crowley, a member of RIPTA’s board of directors, said he was willing to work with anyone to try to fill in the budget difference.

“I think there are some places in the budget where we can be creative,” Crowley said to reporters after the press conference.

When asked about the potential to use RIDOT funds for RIPTA, Crowley said, “I haven’t spoken with the governor about it directly yet. I know [RIDOT] director [Peter] Alviti wants to be able to have a system that is complementary to his work at the Department of Transportation.

“He works for the governor, and I think we need to make our case to the governor as strongly as possible that there are options in front of us and let’s figure out the best on.”

Alviti, who is also chair of RIPTA’s board of directors, told ecoRI News after the agency’s board meeting July 24, at which the proposed cuts were announced via a press release, that he would be amenable to potentially reallocating funding to RIPTA from RIDOT.

“Everything is on the table here,” he said. “Those are all questions that will be entertained and vetted by [Durand] and his team.”

Durand said Monday he is in frequent communication with Alviti about the funding issue but has not spoken with the governor yet.

The governor’s office did not respond to questions about whether McKee would attend any of the hearings or was considering any of the temporary funding options suggested by advocates.

Instead, his spokesperson Olivia Darocha wrote in a statement to ecoRI News that the governor and General Assembly had already allocated $15 million to RIPTA “to help close the agency’s funding gap.”

“With ridership declining by more than 25% over the past decade, there is a shared understanding between the administration and the RIPTA board that underperforming services must be realigned to ensure taxpayer dollars are used effectively and responsibly,” Darocha wrote.

RIPTA’s ridership, like ridership on systems around the country, dipped after the pandemic and hasn’t fully recovered.

She noted that a recent efficiency study identified “high-cost, low-ridership routes that informed the agency’s proposed efficiency measures.” 

“The agency must establish a more stable financial foundation—operating within its means, ensuring taxpayer dollars are used responsibly and protecting core services like the RIde Program for individuals with disabilities,” she added.

Immediately following the press conference, RIPTA staff held the first public hearing on the cuts, at the Community of College of Rhode Island’s Knight Campus in Warwick, where riders pleaded for their lines to be spared.

About 50 people attended the public session, the first of several that will be held through Aug. 6, culminating with a RIPTA board meeting Aug. 7 to discuss the cuts. Several speakers said they had taken the day off from work to attend the hearing and speak about their experiences.

Miles Brawn-Husband, a member of RIPTA’s Accessible Transportation Advisory Commission and the Save RIPTA campaign, spoke about his frustration with the severity of the cuts.

“I have been fighting tirelessly at the Statehouse, but obviously it wasn’t enough,” Brawn-Husband said. “Unfortunately, I have to ask all you fine people to do the same.”

Brawn-Husband, an advocate for people with disabilities, has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair himself.

Although the RIde paratransit service will not be directly impacted by the cuts, two flex services that allow riders to call ahead for a ride are on the line.

“All these cuts are deplorable,” he said. “I feel like they are messing with people’s lives.”

Jeanelle Wheeler, a Providence resident who doesn’t have a car, said she will be one of the riders impacted by the cuts.

Wheeler estimated she uses about 20 routes per month. When service is dropped or delayed now, she often has to ask herself, “Can I afford the Uber?” she said, “and usually I cannot.”

The cuts will stop her from seeing friends, getting to work, and making it home safely at night.

“These budget cuts make me feel sick to my stomach,” she said.

While advocates and riders spoke passionately about the potential impacts of cuts after the July 24 board meeting, board members didn’t discuss the cuts during the meeting.

The board held a nearly hour-long executive discussion, citing collective bargaining and litigation, and investment of public funds as cause for the session on their agenda. The minutes of the executive session were sealed, but Alviti did say in a statement following the session that the board discussed the cuts while the public was out of the room.

“Transit agencies around the country are facing a similar kind of discussion that we’ve been having here today and will be having for the next couple weeks,” Alviti said, citing lower ridership in many systems post-pandemic.

“We, as an agency, need to adapt to the reality of those changes,” he said. “At the same time we need to balance the need for ridership and the people that we serve, and do the public good by allowing them to get where they need to get.”

Members of the public were not aware of the cuts until the tail end of the meeting, when RIPTA staff members handed out a list of the proposed changes.

“This is way worse than we expected,” said Dylan Giles, a Providence Streets Coalition operations manager, describing the cuts as devastating.

Cedric Ye, a Providence high school student, attended the July 24 board meeting and said that reduction of frequency on several routes would impact his ability to make transfers and move around the state.

“Something like every 40 minutes to every 50 minutes doesn’t seem like a big deal until you’re trying to transfer, where the 40 to 50 [minutes] can make you miss a bus and then it’s 50 minutes at Kennedy Plaza,” Ye said. “As a driver, you get mad if it takes 10 minutes to get out of the Providence Place Mall. Well, imagine spending 50 minutes at the Providence Place Mall.”

Ye theorized that the reductions of service on lines that take students to and from school would likely impact attendance come fall, when the changes would take effect, something that could work against McKee’s goals of reducing chronic absenteeism.

Correction: The graphic accompanying this story was updated on July 25 to show that 16 bus routes will be eliminated under the RIPTA proposal.