NE: Real-world impact of budget cuts: Public transit services have critical role in rural areas

For many, public transportation is more than just transportation — it’s a lifeline. Especially in the Panhandle, if that lifeline gets reduced or goes away completely, it could be life or death.

Recent Nebraska Department of Transportation budget cuts have forced local public transportation programs to trim their programs by 30% across the board. In Scotts Bluff, Kimball and Box Butte counties, leaders say the majority of public transit riders use the services in their respective counties for health care appointments or because they can’t drive for a variety of reasons.

Scotts Bluff County Public Transit Director Curt Richter said many people don’t realize how vital public transit is, especially in rural Nebraska.

“It’s dialysis patients,” he said of the types of people riding Scotts Bluff County’s transit system, call the Tri-City Roadrunner. “It’s so many people going to medical appointments, work and critical health care.”

The money crunch stems from a reduction of funding at the federal level, according to public transit directors in the aforementioned counties.

According to NDOT transit program manager Sarah Soula, Nebraska’s rural transit providers traveled over 5 million miles with over 620,000 passenger boardings in 2024, connecting people across the state to essential medical care, education, employment opportunities and freedom of mobility in their day-to-day lives.

Soula said that budget cuts affected the entire state, not just a handful of transit programs.

“For fiscal year 2025, Nebraska’s apportionment was roughly $11.5 million; the applications for fiscal year 2026-27 assistance ($18.8 million in federal funds) far exceeded what the state received,” Soula said.

NDOT had to adjust subrecipient awards given the vast difference in the federal transit administration apportionment and funds requested.

The Nebraska Section 5311 Rural Formula Program is a reimbursement program rural areas, defined as communities with fewer than 50,000 people. The 5311 helps cover costs like fuel, driver wages and vehicle maintenance.

“We understand that the reduction is difficult,” Soula said. “However, NDOT is committed to the 5311 rural formula program as we know that many Nebraskans depend on it.”

Jonnie Kusek, public transit director of Open Plains Transit in Alliance, said the Nebraska public transit programs were supplemented by CARES Act funds, given out due to the pandemic, which eventually ran out.

That isn’t to say that public transit has only been around for about five years, however, Richter said that need doesn’t go away just because that boost of funds from programs like the the CARES Act goes away.

“It’s a tremendous impact to more than half the state,” Kusek said.

Richter said that NDOT usually has carryover funds from the previous fiscal year to give out. It’s hoped that will be the case for this year to lessen some of the impact.

“They just paid the last invoice for fiscal year 2024 a few weeks ago, so they can close out that and maybe have some carryover funds to come to 2025, and then when they get all 2025 closed out, anything that’s left will carry over to 2026 and on down the road.”

The problem is that public transit departments in counties across the state have to close out their fiscal years, and the state hasn’t been able to get to each county individually yet. Richter said the state wants to give everybody the opportunity to go through all 52 transit budgets line-by-line, but the deadline is here.

“So they just said, ‘We’ve got to get agreements in place,’” he said, “because we have to have agreements in place by July 1 to be able to get us reimbursed.”

If Richter only gets $200,000, as projected right now, “then we got to scramble,” he said. “That’s when we have to make those tough decisions as to what we’re gonna do.”

He’s not sure what his department will do if NDOT comes back.

A 30% cut is about $620,000 for Richter’s department out of a total budget of just over $2 million. It’s an amount that he may get back — or not — after the state gets to his fiscal year 2024 paperwork.

“We’re trying to offset as much of our portion as we can with additional revenue,” he said. “We’ve got more Medicaid trips, we’re working with the schools more and DOVES (a non-profit organization that provides services to victims of domestic violence.)

“All that money is called sponsored fare, which can be used as local match. And local match is that amount that comes off the county’s portion each month and reduces tax asking.”

Richter hasn’t had to pause services completely yet, but Kusek had to shut services in Alliance for a brief time late last year.

“We had to shut down for five weeks in December due to costs,” she said. “I was able to keep one staff person on with me, and I finally had to tell her we needed to quit answering the phone, because we had people calling, crying, wondering how they were going to get to their cancer treatments, how they were going to get to dialysis.”

Kusek stressed that transit services aren’t about shopping for fun or even making shuttle trips to other transportation services like buses that go from North Platte to Lincoln and Omaha.

“We were talking about life-support services,” she said. “It’s very heartbreaking. It’s important when you talk about quality of life, and we want to keep our people in our region.”

Cuts also hit Kimball County Transit Services, which runs 5311 programs with local services as well as intercity programs that take riders to and from cities such as Denver.

“We took a $1.2 million cut,” Kimball County Transit Service Administrator Christy Warner said.

To save on costs, KCTS changed its intercity program to a flex route by reservation.

“(We) were going to lose way more funding under the intercity bus route,” she said. “So all of our routes have been moved over to the straight 5311.”

This simply means that the services won’t run unless someone makes a reservation.

“We definitely aren’t closing our doors,” Warner said. “I think sometimes people, when they hear $1.2 million budget cut, they assume we’re just closing up shop and calling it a day.”

KCTS’s normal annual budget is $4.2 million, now down to about $3 million.

“It’s still quite a bit of money to run our service,” Warner said.

KCTS has inner-city services, but also has shuttle services to the Denver airport as well as north to Scottsbluff, making stops at smaller towns along the way. When KCTS customers arrive in Scottsbluff, Warner said she encourages use of the Tri-City Roadrunner when her customers need to travel within Scottsbluff city limits, such as going from the hospital to Walmart.

“We just want to continue our services,” Warner said. “I feel like it is a pretty key service, because we connect all of the other services.”

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