Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 21, 1994                   TAG: 9407210088
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DATA ON ROANOKE'S BUS SYSTEM DISPUTED

While Valley Metro is cheaper to operate than most transit systems in the country, it's a poor people mover because its buses are spread too thinly over a comparatively huge area, said David Hartgen, a transportation studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

But a Valley Metro executive said Hartgen's numbers are skewed by bad data and that he's comparing Roanoke to cities that have far worse traffic congestion. Traffic jams are a big incentive for people to use public transportation, said Stephen A. Mancuso, Valley Metro's general manager.

"You can't compare apples to oranges, I don't care what you try to do," Mancuso said. "We compare ourselves to ourselves, not to anybody else. How did we do this year compared to the year before?"

Hartgen ranked 102 of the nation's largest urban bus systems in terms of costs and performance using data transit companies reported to the Federal Transit Administration between 1988 and 1991.

He specifically looked at systems operating in cities that don't meet federal clean air standards.

The bus system in Tuscon, Ariz., came out on top because its operating costs were far below the national average and its ridership was far above. Richmond's bus system ranked seventh in the nation; Norfolk's ranked 71st; and the system in Greenville, S.C., came in 102nd.

Valley Metro wasn't on the list because the Roanoke Valley has relatively clean air. But had it been ranked, it would have come out 93rd - near the bottom, Hartgen said.

The data shows Valley Metro's costs are generally low. Its cost per resident comes out at $15.60 per year, far below the average of $58.22 in the bus systems Hartgen studied.

In 1991, 70.9 percent of the company's annual budget came in the form of government subsidies, below the average of 72.6 percent. Mancuso noted the total subsidy has dropped to 65 percent in the current fiscal year.

Valley Metro's operating costs were $38.61 per bus per hour, compared to an average of $53.46 in the other bus systems.

The data in dispute concerns Valley Metro's service area. The federal government lists it as 309 square miles that contains just over 200,000 people. Hartgen said those numbers would have been reported to the Federal Transit Administration by Valley Metro.

Mancuso said that number surely didn't come from the transit agency. The actual service area is 50 square miles and contains about 100,000 people, he said. The company stays within city limits except for a route to Salem, another to Vinton and a third that stops at Tanglewood Mall, just beyond the city's border.

With the higher number, Hartgen estimates there's only one bus ride taken per 119 people in the Roanoke area, compared to one ride for every 63 residents in the other cities. He also estimates that each Valley Metro bus is covering 8.83 square miles per hour, compared to an average of 2.65 square miles for the other cities studied.

What it means is "they're spread out so thin they can't serve anybody ... . Wherever they're going, there's nobody there," Hartgen said.

Mancuso said those calculations reflect in the transit system's favor if the actual service area size is figured in. He conceded that ridership - currently at 5,300 people per day - is low for a city the size of Roanoke. But he attributed that to a lack of traffic congestion, pollution and government action, which encourage the use of buses here.

"Other cities have so many more transportation problems that pretty much force people to use transit systems," he said.