Bus fares may edge up in Amador County, but so will service for people who'd like to leave their cars at home.

That was the consensus Wednesday night at the Amador County Transportation Commission meeting, after an extensive review of alternatives in the new Transit Development Plan.

Gordon Shaw of LSC Transportation Consultants Inc. gave the commission a detailed look at whom transit serves and how it is financed in Amador County, as well as plans for the next five years.

Transit in Amador County is a $1.5 million-a-year business, Shaw said, and needs to reflect the area it serves. The population of Amador County, he noted, has increased from about 35,000 in the year 2000 to about 38,000 now, and 18 percent of that population is in the senior citizen category, with 2.4 percent having mobility issues. While 6,400 seniors lived in the county in 2000, that number will reach more than 15,000 by 2030, he said, having a big impact on transit needs.

Also, Shaw said, 8 percent of the population is below the poverty level, and about 5 percent of the households don't have a vehicle of their own, and must try to get by in a rural county without easy access to a car. With much of the county's development slated to occur in the Jackson, Sutter Hill, Martell, Sutter Creek area, he said, that is where transit development will serve the most people.

Another important component, Shaw said, is where people work. While a big proportion of the residents of Placer or El Dorado County work in Sacramento or some other county, only about 10 percent of Amador County residents commute to Sacramento, and another 4.4 percent commute to San Joaquin County. "It is striking to me," he said, "how big a proportion actually work in the county."

A big part of the transit system's financing - $931,000 - comes from local transportation funds, which Shaw identified as essentially being the sales tax. And while that sales tax "has been good to us for many a long year," it has dropped a bit in the last year or two. Overall, he said, the commission must expect it to continue to decline over the next few years.

"We are really in a zero-sum game," he said. "If we add services, we need to add revenue."

And of the more than 100,000 bus passengers each year, 30 percent are students, 25 percent are elderly or disabled, 25 percent are the general public, and 20 percent are "contract passengers," like clients of the Amador Regional Center.

The average operating cost per passenger trip was $8.21, but that ranged from a high of $24.25 on rural routes to a low of $5.69 on the kindergarten route and $6.23 on the Sutter Hill/Pine Grove/Volcano route. The ratio of dollars recovered through fares to those spent is a critical number, Shaw said, because the state requires the transit district to get 10 percent of what it spends back through fares.

Shaw also detailed future transit demands, noting that while demand for commuter buses is growing, "it's not going out the roof." In places like Colfax, he said, two or three buses are filled up every morning and "they are still leaving people at the curb."

Safety is one area where the Amador Regional Transit System is doing particularly well, Shaw said, with one-third the accident rate of other areas. Put another way, he said, "You are three times safer than the typical transit system."

The Jackson-Sutter Creek route, he said, is doing well. It is designed for door-to-door service for elderly and disabled passengers along the busy corridor that includes shops and doctors' offices. But, he said, it takes an hour and 45 minutes roundtrip, which means an average speed of only 3 miles per hour. "You can almost walk that fast," Shaw noted. While it is a necessary service, he said, it does not serve the general public. It might be reasonable, he said, to designate a "fast route" bus along the same route that would take half an hour in each direction. That change could make it possible to serve tourists or working people as well as the elderly, he said, and might mean picking up another 17,000 riders at the "surprisingly little" cost of about $73,000 a year.

Shaw said other changes that can be made would be to drop the experiment with the Kirkwood Skier Service or add commuter service to Stockton.

The Kirkwood bus runs only when 12 people are signed up, at a cost of $10 each. The service costs $1.02 per mile and $37.73 per hour, and the driver is paid for a total of eight hours of "wait time." The high cost of the service and the lower than expected ridership have made the route less financially successful than expected, he said, suggesting that one more year might be enough for the experiment.

Adding service to Stockton, he said, would be likely to garner an average of 17 riders per day, or 4,220 riders a year. It would not be as convenient as the commuter service to Sacramento, he pointed out, because Sacramento has hundreds of thousands of jobs within a few-block area, whereas jobs in Stockton are more spread out.

Patrick Ireland, general manager of ARTS, told the commission that "the core of what he is saying to you is that after all these years … we have been able to meet unmet needs without having to cut services anyplace else. Those days have come to an end."

When pressed for his own opinions, Shaw conceded that he didn't see commuter service to Stockton as viable, but he did see increased service along the Sutter Creek to Jackson corridor as being useful. "I would suggest we start moving that way, but let's not leave behind the disabled and elderly," he said.

Shaw suggested that fares might be increased from $1 to $1.25 for one-way service.

"I would love to ride anywhere for $1.25," said Commissioner Greg Baldwin. "I don't think it's going to hurt your ridership. We are talking a quarter. You tell me what you can buy today for a quarter."

Although it was not on the agenda as an action item, the commission voted unanimously to move toward expanding service along the Sutter Creek to Jackson corridor.