Bus ridership is up in the Rochester area and more than just soaring gas prices are the cause, says Mark Aesch, CEO of the Rochester Genesee Region Transportation Authority.

Nationally, public transportation ridership has increased 2.2 percent over the past year.  But ridership on RGRTA's RTS bus system was up 7.2 percent over last year as of March 31 - more than three times the national increase. In the first quarter of this fiscal year, which started on April 1, ridership was up another 6 percent - an increase of more than 13 percent in two years.

"Gas prices are up all across the country, so for us to be up three-and-a-half times the national average in a community where the population is stable is really exciting," Aesch says.

Local ridership increases started before the worst of the gas price spikes, however. Aesch attributes the increase to a fundamental business-model shift which put the focus on the customer. The authority added useful information like route maps to bus stop signs, put a trip planner on the RGRTA website, and added satellite tracking technology that will ultimatelyallow customers to check whether their buses are on time, among other changes.

The focus is on getting people interested in public transportation and keeping the customers who had already decided to give the bus system a try, Aesch says. 

In less than five years, RGRTA went from a $27.5-million deficit to a $19-million surplus, allowing RGRTA to reduce bus rates. Aesch says that he hopes the fare cut provides another incentive for people to take the bus.

In a recent interview with City Newspaper, Aesch talked about the bus system and its role in easing local residents' energy cost burden. Questions about Renaissance Square - specifically the traffic plan and the bus station operating plan - were referred to project spokesman Mike Power.

A traffic study was included with Ren Square's environmental review, which was submitted to the Federal Transit Administration, Power says. The study is not yet available to the public. And it's up to RGRTA to develop a bus station operating plan, Power has said in the past.

The following is an edited version of City's interview with Aesch:

CITY: Are gas prices driving the ridership increase?

Aesch: Gas prices are a motivating factor to get people to consider public transportation. It then becomes our responsibility to make that as customer-friendly an experience as possible. I'll be frank with you: If gas prices had gone through the roof four-and-a-half or five years ago, we were not in a position from a customer perspective to handle that. We were fortunate in that we've had a couple years head start to begin focusing on our customer-service initiatives, so when the price of fuel began to take off, we were well-prepared.

RGRTA has reduced bus fares from $1.25 to $1. Is that sustainable in the long run?

If you went to just about any person that lives in an apartment or owns a home and said, "Hey, we have the ability to cut your mortgage or cut your rent for the next couple of years and after that we may have to take your rent or take your mortgage back to the level it is today. You want to sign up for that?" I think most of us probably would.

Our hope is that we can get a couple of years out of this - of having cut fares. At some point in time, undoubtedly fares will have to return to their former levels.

If ridership increased, would you be able to hold the fare steady?

Quite honestly, we'd have to put about 900 people on every bus to be able to. The expense factors in public transportation can't possibly be offset by fares. The big expenses in public transportation are the employee, the fuel for the vehicle, the insurance for the vehicle, the health insurance for the employee. And those factors are all growing.

In terms of the routes RGRTA handles, are there any plans to expand suburban routes or routes to outlying areas?

One of the key elements that drives our organization is to put buses where people want to go when they want to go there. I'll give you an example: We're in discussions about new service to go from one of the suburban communities directly to the University of Rochester. Whenever we can put together a large number of people to move from one area of town to another area of town, that's what we're in the business of doing. Sometimes that means new routes to run on roads where buses don't run today. Sometimes it means adding service. We may have a bus every 20 minutes on a particular route; sometimes that means making a bus run every 15 minutes.

RGRTA has made some changes to and gotten rid of some underperforming routes.

If we're running a bus and we've got two people bouncing around in the back, it's pretty difficult to make the argument that that's service. We believe we have a responsibility to the taxpayer to provide that service as efficiently as possible. We're fortunate to be in a position where our phones are ringing.

How are route decisions made?

We have built a formula which is called our Trip Scoring Index. And the Trip Scoring Index essentially gives a score for each bus that's out on service based on the number of people that are on board the bus and the amount of money that the users generate toward the expense of the service, and we put those two numbers together and that's what gives you the score.

What the Trip Scoring Index does is provide us that intersection between very low and in some cases no ridership and very high taxpayer subsidy, and those are the routes that we begin to target to make changes.

In some cases, routes are subsidized by businesses or schools. Why is that?

Let's use the Bryant and Stratton example because that just recently made news. We went through this trip scoring model that I just described probably two-and-a-half years ago and saw that as an underutilized and high taxpayer subsidy service we were providing and said, "We've got to make some changes here. This can't continue to operate as it does today." So we literally sponsored a meeting with 10 or 12 businesses that were in the area and said "Look, we've got very few people riding the bus. This has got a high taxpayer subsidy; we need to make some changes here. So either you've got to get more of your employees to take advantage of the service or we're going to need you to partner with us to make this route financially viable."

In that particular case we were able to work with one of the businesses and they stepped up and have put together a wonderful program where it's kind of a hybrid of that; where they're getting more students to take advantage of the service and they're financially supporting the route.