Maitland's FlexBus project permanently stalls

Economic flat tires and repeated legislative stalls may have finally sent FlexBus to the junkyard.

Letters mailed out to the connector bus program’s partner city managers and mayors last week from the system’s funding source informed officials that plans for what was to be the region’s first on-demand bus system were headed to the salvage yard, only to possibly be used for parts in the future.

“The FlexBus program right now is not moving ahead,” said Maitland City Manager Jim Williams. “We’re not sure what we’ll be proceeding with in terms of a future bus system.”

Assistant City Manager Sharon Anselmo said in a letter dated Aug. 11, the Federal Transit Administration informed each of the partner cities that the organization had pulled grant funding for the project due to lack of progress – leaving the bus without any wheels to turn.

That grant money, Anselmo said, had been the key to the ignition needed to get the on-demand bus service rolling.

In March the proposed FlexBus partner cities – Maitland, Longwood, Casselberry and Altamonte Springs – penned a letter to the FTA offering an ultimatum of jump starting the project or letting it die.

“We are informing you that we are at our wits end,” wrote the cities in the letter dated March 31. “We do not work this way. We cannot work this way.”

FlexBus was originally set to launch in December 2013 to be on the road in time for SunRail to start, serving as a flexible option to get commuters to and from rail stations. The system was set to be operated with no designated routes or schedules, instead being routed in real-time by ridership demands.

But in March 2013, LYNX, the planned system operator, dropped out and so did the bottom of the project. The four partner cities floundered until the Federal Transit Administration stepped in and recommended the cities partner with the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida to get the project moving. It had been nearly a year since then at the time the March letter was written, and the project was still no closer to reality, wrote the cities, despite CUTR having access to the federal grant funds secured to fuel the first year of the system.

After more than four months with no response to the ultimatum, despite having given a deadline of April 17, the partner cities finally got their answer when the FTA’s letter arrived at city hall this week.

“The concept of FlexBus … is dead in the water,” said Mayor Dale McDonald. “It doesn’t look like there’s anything substantive happening in the relatively near future.”

Anselmo said the city currently has $500,000 set aside in its budget to fund the first two phases of FlexBus. She said roughly $10,000 of that has been spent during the planning phase, and the remaining $489,000 will be returned to the city’s general fund for capital improvement projects. As the Maitland City Council works to finalize its fiscal year 2016 budget going into September, Anselmo said the Council will be able to reallocate those funds to any planned improvement project of their choosing.

For years City Council members had advocated that FlexBus was the key to spurring increased ridership at the city’s SunRail station, getting commuters where they need to go after they reach the station.

The Maitland station has frequently fallen near the bottom of all stops in ridership numbers since the commuter rail system launched in May of last year. In July, the Maitland stop, more than half a mile from the city’s stalled downtown project, carried just 4,039 riders. Skip one stop north or south and those numbers jump up, with 5,588 riders checking in at Altamonte Springs — despite being more than a mile from the city’s bustling downtown core. At the Winter Park stop along posh Park Avenue 11,052 riders hopped on in July.

As of now, the only option for rail riders looking to reach Maitland’s largest employment hub, Maitland Center, which is three miles from the station, is to catch a NeighborLink bus – run by Lynx – that runs every morning at 6:05, 7:05 and 8:05 and in the evenings at 5:15. 6:15 and 7 from the station to Maitland Center.

Without FlexBus, which would have provided more flexible pick up locations and time frames than NeighborLink, Mayor McDonald said there is, “a huge need that is effectively being ignored.”

Anselmo said that no possible alternatives to FlexBus were proposed in a joint meeting between the mayors and city managers from the FlexBus partner cities with Congressman John Mica last week.

“[The bus system] doesn’t appear to have any breath left in it at the moment,” McDonald said.