By James Pilcher
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Faced with a budget shortfall of $4.3 million next year, Metro officials are now openly talking about the possibility of what they call "the last resorts" - potential bus service reductions and fare increases.

"In the transit service, service and cost are always sensitive public issues, and to balance them will be the difficult part," Metro general manager and chief executive officer Paul Jablonski said Tuesday.

"But we've cut $1.1 million out of our budget, and our administrative staff is down 13 positions, or almost 9 percent. We've done this to ride this storm out, but it's been perpetuated much longer than we thought."

The agency, which provides public bus service to Hamilton County and some rush-hour trips to Butler and Warren counties, is seeing revenue decrease on several fronts.

Federal funding will be down, especially since Metro lost $2.2 million when some outlying counties were reclassified in the recent census and were able to claim that transit money for themselves.

Ridership is on pace to drop for the third straight year.

Last year's 22.9 million trips was down nearly 7 percent from the high set in 2000. Metro relies on fares for 30 percent of its $72.9 million budget.

And the Cincinnati city earnings tax is dropping as well. Metro gets half of its budget from the tax (0.3 percent of that tax goes to Metro).

So Jablonski says Metro needs to make some hard decisions, including service cuts and a fare increase, which would be the first for the agency since 1993. The possibilities have been discussed for several months.

But he said that the agency would be studying what to do over the next few months, and not making quick decisions.

He added that the study will include not only suggestions for redundant routes that could be cut, but could also be used as a way to reshape Metro's entire system.

"We're putting the entire system under a microscope," Jablonski said.

"It might be that we can cut some routes but increase ridership and change the system, but that is a very difficult task, especially in six months."

As for a fare increase, Jablonski would not get into specifics on how high it would go from Metro's base fare of 80 cents during rush hour.

But in Northern Kentucky, the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky (TANK) is raising its fare a quarter to $1.25, while other cities in the Midwest have raised fares that now routinely top $1.

"We probably wouldn't be looking at a big one, especially since Cincinnati is very sensitive to a fare hike," Jablonski said.

He pointed out that ridership dropped 10 percent in the year after the last increase.

E-mail jpilcher@enquirer.com