Lynn Walsh

A story produced for Texas Watchdog:

Metro outpaces HISD on transportation costs; Metro says trend is true nationally
Thu Jul 22 18:47:00 2010 CST
By Lynn Walsh

Metro spends more than $270,000 per bus in its fleet, more than seven times the roughly $37,000 per bus that HISD spends, according to a Houston Independent School District analysis that was produced this month.
“I know the cost per bus number difference is quite huge, but to be fair to Metro, they run more routes than we do so that probably explains a good portion of the difference,” said HISD Government Relations Director Rebecca Flores, who produced the analysis. Flores said she included capital costs for both HISD and Metro.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority took issue with the numbers underpinning Flores’ analysis, and said its buses have more amenities, travel more miles and require maintenance that school buses don’t require.

The HISD report said it costs Metro more than $371 million to operate annually, more than nine times the amount of money HISD spends on transportation, just over $41 million annually, the report says.

But according to Andy Skabowski, acting senior vice president of operations for Metro, the operating figure should not have included costs such as rail and the MetroLift service to transport people with disabilities. The more comparable figure is $195 million to operate Metro’s fleet of more than 1,232 buses, he said.

“The operating cost utilized in the HISD report was incorrect,” Skabowski said.

Skabowski questioned the figure HISD used to calculate how many miles per year its buses travel, saying they travel 49 million miles per year. HISD used a figure of 55 million miles, which Metro lists in its 2009 Annual Report.

Still, HISD was right about its overall thesis. According to the report, HISD does spend less money on transportation costs than Metro.

Even using Metro’s figures, the cost per bus would be about $158,000, still higher than HISD’s.

Skabowski said that nationwide the cost to maintain a transit bus is higher than the cost to maintain a school bus.

Why? Skabowski provided the following reasons in an e-mail:

* School buses are not designed for the type of service a transit bus operates. No air conditioning, they have a very basic suspension and minimal interior amenities.
* The mileage a transit bus runs in its 12 year life, (over 500,000 miles), the power plant (engine and transmission will require to be rebuilt in its lifetime. School buses never reach that mileage threshold in the 10 yr design life due to the low miles they are operated (around 100,000 miles).

Flores compiled the report after a comment at an HISD board workshop back in April:

Hisd says they have more buses than Metro and travel more miles than Metro BUT spend less money on transportation than Metro #Hisdless than a minute ago via Ping.fmLynn Walsh
lwalsh

HISD trustees requested more details and received the analysis three months later. HISD used Metro data from the beginning of October 2008 through the end of September 2009; the HISD figures are from the beginning of July 2008 until the end of June 2009.

Contact Lynn Walsh at at 713-228-2850 or lynn@texaswatchdog.org. Follow news about the Houston Independent School District on Twitter, #HISD.

Photo of a school bus by flickr user Michael (mx5tx), used via a Creative Commons license.