Rising fuel costs strain bus system's budget

With prices 46 cents higher than anticipated, officials look for ways to save. A fare increase isn't planned.

By ADRIENNE P. SAMUELS
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 28, 2003

Think you spend a lot on gas?

Try owning a bus.

It's $172.80 per fillup.

And that cost, up from $117 per tank just last month, is burning the budget of the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority.

The agency is telling bus drivers to conserve fuel by turning their engines off if they are stationary for a long period of time.

Luckily for riders, it's not hot, so the agency doesn't need to consider doing without air conditioning.

"We're paying $1.28 per gallon for gas as opposed to 82 cents we budgeted," said Roger Sweeney, the PSTA's executive director. "Each penny (over 82 cents) represents $20,000 a year. . . . We will be going over budget very shortly."

PSTA runs an average of 139 buses each day. Each vehicle holds 135 gallons of diesel fuel and averages 6 miles per gallon.

Buses aren't the only rapid transit vehicles affected by rising fuel prices.

The agency's popular beach trolley system runs on compressed natural gas piped to Florida from Texas. Though the gas is produced in the United States, the prices more than doubled when war talk started, Sweeney said.

"It's an alternative fuel that does burn cleaner than diesel fuel, but it's far more expensive," Sweeney said.

PSTA doesn't plan to raise fares or cut back services. But new routes and route extensions scheduled to start in December were pushed back to an April start date.

In early February, Sweeney asked drivers to stop idling their engines. And the agency is stepping up preventive engine maintenance to promote better fuel economy.

Hillsborough County's transit authority doesn't have the same budget woes. It buys fuel on the futures market, locking in prices year to year.

HARTline pays 67 cents per gallon for diesel fuel in a contract signed in November.

"That makes us pretty unusual in the transit business," said spokesman Ed Crawford. "Our fuel costs right now are 57 percent of the current market rate for untaxed diesel fuel."

Some PSTA board members said they didn't know fuel prices could be contracted.

"Why we weren't in a lock-in . . . I don't know that," said Deborah Kynes, a Dunedin commissioner who sits on the PSTA board.

It's worth looking into, she said.

Board member John Bryan agreed.

"I've never heard it discussed, but it needs to be," said Bryan, a St. Petersburg City Council member. "It's too late right now because you wouldn't want to lock it in at the high number. But it's a lesson to be learned."

Sweeney said contracts guaranteed fuel availability and didn't always lock in prices. In recent months, that would have come in handy, he acknowledged.

Often the agency finds that its four suppliers have no diesel to sell, and the PSTA has to dip into its dwindling fuel reserves.

"It's still too early to make a decision on that (contract purchases)," Sweeney said. "Each day we get the prices. You can buy it daily, weekly, monthly . . . We've decided to do it daily."

-- Adrienne P. Samuels can be reached at 445-4157 or samuels@sptimes.com .

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