Monterey-Salinas Transit, headquartered at Ryan Ranch in Monterey and with a large bus yard in Salinas, is making a move to South County.
The MST board voted unanimously May 9 to approve the purchase of a 4.8-acre lot in King City, owned by the city's former redevelopment agency. MST has been talking about the $470,500 deal in closed-session meetings for months. (For its part, the King City City Council approved selling the property to MST back in February.)
MST, which has for years been looking for a way to house its bus fleet, will buy the property using state funding.
The remaining expenses are much larger, and remain a question mark, but they're looking to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's community facilities program for up to $8 million in no-interest loans.
"We’re still attempting to line up the financing to actually construct the facility, either through the USDA and/or grant funds," MST General Manager Carl Sedoryk says. "Now it’s just a matter of us working out funding: Does it make financial sense to do 100-percent financing?"
Sedoryk credits Mary Ann Leffel, president of the Monterey County Business Council, for pointing MST to the USDA as an unusual funding source.
Last year, Leffel convened a group, including a USDA rural development rep, to talk about expanding broadband service in rural Monterey County—which MST supports, because its long-range routes (to as far as Paso Robles and the San Jose airport) offer Wi-Fi, and broadband would be cheaper than satellite, which is currently used on buses.
(2) comments
This strikes me as a bad idea. The majority of passenger miles seem to be in North Monterey County (Salinas area and Monterey Peninsula) -- and now the buses will be driven to King City every night?!
This is going to reduce potential revenue production capability by about about 2 hours per bus per day. Meanwhile, drivers will need to be paid for those hours (while not generating revenue) and 2 hours and approximately 100 additional miles of wear and tear will be added to each bus on a daily basis, adding significant additional cost.
Fares will soon go up and ridership will erode further . . . and the public will be told "it is difficult to operate bus service in a rural county."
Just wait for it.
I find it very difficult to believe a workable deal could not have been made somewhere in or close to Salinas.
MST currently operates out of three bus garages - one in Ryan Ranch and two in Salinas. For MST's nine routes that serve "South County" communities, Fort Hunter Liggett and Paso Robles, many buses have to travel empty from the Monterey and Salinas bus garages down to their starting points in the morning and then return to the garages empty at the end of their service days. Because of this situation, MST is planning on constructing a bus garage in King City so that these vehicles that serve South County are closer to their starting and ending points, thereby reducing the number of hours a day they are traveling empty and racking up additional mileage and "wear and tear." Contrary to Mr. Bachofner's comment letter, this strategy will actually save money and resources compared to how we currently operate. To that end, MST staff has preliminarily estimated that approximately $150,000 in labor and fuel costs could be saved annually by having some of its buses parked, maintained and dispatched from a South County location. With this in mind, MST anticipates being able to better serve its passengers in the South County communities as they grow in the coming decades.
Hunter Harvath,
Assistant General Manager
Finance & Administration, Monterey-Salinas Transit
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