Burlington’s city council has selected a new contractor to take over the driver’s seat of the city’s Link Transit bus system.
The council formally approved an agreement on Tuesday that will allow WeDriveU to take over the bus system’s maintenance and operations from Transdev, which currently provides these same services on the city’s behalf.
Mike Nunn, the city’s transportation director, recommended this San Francisco-based firm to the council a day earlier based on the company’s track record as an operator of mass transit.
“We’ve had five submittals, and we’ve asked other communities to help us review this,” he added during a city council work session on Monday. “We felt that WeDriveU put together the best packet. They answered the questions the best, and they provided the most experience as far as what they’re doing in other communities.”
Nunn nevertheless conceded that WeDriveU’s proposed fees amount to a 20 percent increase over what Transdev presently receives to run and maintain the city’s nine-year-old bus system.
Nunn informed the council that he and his colleagues didn’t receive a proposal from the bus system’s current operator. He added that, of the five submissions that were tendered, the city automatically rejected one from the Alamance County Transportation Authority that failed to meet one or more contract requirements.
Meanwhile, the other four contenders for the bus system’s contract were evaluated by a panel that included representatives from several other mass transit networks in North Carolina. According to information that Nunn shared with the council, this panel graded each candidate on a point system that emphasized factors like “qualifications” and “key personnel” – with the cost of the contract accounting for a fifth of the overall score.
Nunn’s summary of these submissions indicated that WeDriveU actually submitted the highest quote of the four – with a proposed cost of $15,748,966 over a five-year period. The city also received bids in excess of $15 million from MTM Transit and MTI Transportation, while a firm called RTW Management sent in the lowest proposed bid of $13,658,180.
WeDriveU nevertheless defeated the other contenders on overall points thanks, in part, to its existing relationships with other bus systems in North Carolina. Nunn noted, for instance, that the company currently handles the operations of Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation – a regional bus service that was represented on the review panel for Link Transit’s contract.
On Nunn’s recommendation, the council approved a three year contract with WeDriveU that includes the option to renew for another two years. The city’s elected leaders ultimately rubberstamped this agreement as part of a so-called “consent agenda” of supposedly routine and non-controversial items that were adopted en bloc on Tuesday.
Yet, the potential cost of this contract wasn’t entirely glossed over by the city’s decision makers.
The council did, in fact, broach this matter during Nunn’s presentation at Monday’s work session. In response, the city’s transportation director acknowledged that he’s been haggling with WeDriveU to reduce the contractor’s original fee of more than $3 million a year.
“We’ve worked over the last two and a half weeks to get it down to $2.8 million a year,” he added, “and we believe we’re going to get a little bit more off of that.”
Nunn went on to assure the council that the final price of WeDriveU’s services shouldn’t exceed $15.1 million over five years. He also reminded the council that federal subsidies will ultimately cover half of the contract’s expense – with the remainder coming from passenger fares, an annual tax that the city has imposed on vehicle registrations, and contributions from the five local government entities that have joined the Burlington-based bus system.
The federal government’s primacy in the bus system’s budget raised some misgivings for Burlington’s mayor Jim Butler, who alluded to the recent reprioritization of funds by the current Presidential administration. Butler went on to assure himself that these changes are unlikely to affect transportation-related outlays.
“It’s such an integrated part of society that I don’t understand how in any way, shape, or form, it could change,” he speculated. “Worst case scenario,” he added, “we’ll have this contract for three years, and if we don’t get funding, we’ll have to fund the match piece ourselves…which gives us an exit strategy.”
Read the newspaper’s editorial page opinion on the continued escalation in costs for Link Transit system: https://alamancenews.com/which-pocket-would-burlington-taxpayers-rather-have-picked-to-finance-wasteful-link-transit-spending/
