Durham city council is in the heart of budget season. With two meetings under their belt, members of council are starting to make difficult decisions about their budget priorities. The city council doesn’t always find consensus, but it seems council members agree that keeping the city’s bus fleet fare-free is a top priority.
Maintaining free bus fare will be even more of a challenge this year. The injection of federal funds deployed to state and local governments during the pandemic is starting to run out, and the current administration is unlikely to provide additional funding for transportation projects, especially those connected to DEI or climate initiatives. The city council will need to find other sources of revenue to operate the bus system, which could include bringing back bus fares. But council members have been steadfast in their desire to keep GoDurham buses free to not exclude Durham’s low-income riders, many of whom rely on public transit for basic needs.
“I think fare-free transit ticks the box of every single goal that we want to achieve as a city,” said council member Nate Baker during the city council’s February 28 budget retreat. “Even if we can’t do some of the other things that we’d like to do. I think this is crucial and I think that’s why it came out number one in prioritization.”
With all-time GoDurham ridership in 2024, the growing expenses of operating the bus system overall and a lack of options for increasing revenue has put city transportation staff in a bind.
“Like our peer transit systems, we now face a fiscal cliff but with fewer options to balance the budget without painful cuts to services,” Transportation Director Sean Egan told council, laying out potential paths forward for the city’s bus system and the feasibility of keeping buses free-of-charge.
In 2019, the last year that GoDurham collected fares, the city brought in $2.4 million in revenue. Returning to fares would bring GoDurham’s farebox recovery—the percentage of the system’s operating expenses covered by fares—to 15 percent, which would still be six points below the industry average. If city council considers bringing back fares, Egan suggests a $2 per-ride fare for fixed-route and ACCESS service, a paratransit option that is required under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
But Egan says that restoring fares to their pre-pandemic rate of $1 per-ride would incur its own cost: city staff time, new equipment, and additional time it takes to actually collect the fares, estimated at up to 3,900 hours per year. Those costs nearly offset the potential gains from reintroducing the $1 rate.
Disputes over fare collection could also lead to an increased risk of bus operator assaults, Egan said, which would put driver’s safety in jeopardy and make it harder to recruit new bus drivers in the future.
Making the bus cost-prohibitive for “fare-sensitive” riders is also on the list of drawbacks. Egan said that 87 percent of the riders who paid fares in 2019 made less than $35,000 a year.
Last month, bus riders, cyclists, and other transportation enthusiasts rallied to keep GoDurham buses free in honor of Transit Equity Day, which is celebrated each year to honor civil rights icon Rosa Parks, whose birthday is February 4, 1913.
A collection of advocacy groups—Bike Durham, Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, People’s Alliance, Durham Congregations in Action, and Coalition for Affordable Housing and Transit—known collectively as the Transit Equity Campaign partners, organized the event to engage with bus riders at the station and spread their message to the folks who are most likely to be impacted by any changes to bus fares.
Many of Durham’s transit users rely on the bus system for basic travel needs to school, work and health care facilities, Breana Van Velzen, executive director of Durham Congregations in Action said at the Transit Equity Day rally. Van Velzen said that the buses also provide vital access to Durham’s third spaces like libraries and public parks, which are important resources for what Van Velzen and others call the “loneliness epidemic.”
Similarly, at a celebration last year, Williams said fare free bus service allowed residents to easily visit family members in need, access vital health care centers like Duke Regional and the Veterans Affairs hospital, and connect youth with their friends as well as recreational opportunities.
“This underscores the interconnectedness and importance of a robust, accessible transit system that reaches beyond our immediate view,” Williams said.
But financing the need for bus services, including raising bus operator pay, means the city will have to consider further increases in property taxes for Durham residents. For mayor pro tem Mark-Anthony Middleton, that’s where the rubber meets the road.
One-time federal funding was used during the pandemic to increase bus operator wages by 35 percent, making it the highest in the region. Starting pay in FY2025 for bus operators is $20.63 per hour, while top hourly pay is $31.43. This growth in wages occurred without revenue from bus fare or an increase in the transit fund’s property tax allocation, which remained at 3.75 cents.
“If we’re going to keep [free bus service], and I support it, we’re going to have to have a serious conversation about and be prepared to defend a tax increase,” Middleton said. “I was amazed that, when we were going through the pay raise debate, the number of folk who came and said, treat our city employees right. And then after we passed it, some of those same people were attacking us for raising taxes.”
During the budget presentation last month, Christina Riordan, director of budget and management services, said that a 0.01 cent increase in the property tax rate would yield about $6.8 million in additional revenue for the city.
“I think long-term, asking our residents to look at an increase in the property tax beyond the 3.75 to pay for transit is absolutely a winner in terms of accessibility, the wages for our workers and our climate goals,” said councilor Carl Rist.
With cuts to federal funding, council member Chelsea Cook says the county and other partners like Duke University can do more to support the community’s transit needs. There have been ongoing discussions about GoDurham buses transporting Durham Public Schools students, and Cook says that when she hops on the bus, she regularly notices Duke students taking trips as well.
Last December, city and county officials joined other local partners in celebrating the groundbreaking for a $26 million dollar renovation to the downtown Durham transportation hub. The investment signifies that local officials are committed to improving the public transportation network to make it more enticing for Durham residents to choose alternative transit options.
“I don’t know if and when or how we return to fares, but I think the only way we win in the future is if we get folks to use the bus,” said council member Javiera Caballero. “That means reliable transit, clean buses, comfortable experience, and changing culture and practices.”
The first public hearing for the FY2025-26 budget and FY2026-31 Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) is during the city council meeting on Monday, March 17.