开云体育

Appreciate your advocacy?

On Wed, Mar 6, 2024 at 10:26?AM steve herr via <groundhogsteve=[email protected]> wrote:

Curt/Ravi-

I encouraged ESTA to try raising the fare on the Bishop Creek shuttle, did a quickie facebook poll and found that most people were willing to pay $20, so I suggested that rate and that was what was adopted in 2022.? Looking at the reported 2022 ridership numbers I did the math, and dividing total Bishop Creek Shuttle fares collected ($5150) by the reported number of passengers (155) yields an average $32.80 fare/passenger, when the maximum fare charged in 2022 was $20. Obviously something was off.? I expressed my concern that the ESTA board was making a decision based on possibly spurious numbers, but only one board member voted to continue the service.? My other big concern was that the bus left each morning before a bus from Mammoth arrived in Bishop.

By all measures of bus productivity (riders per hour, revenue per hour) the Bishop Creek Shuttle would be in the lower quartile of ESTA services, but it is comparable or better to some services that they operate because they consider them to be essential transportation.? The BCS was not considered essential.? The cost to operate the BCS in 2022 was ~ $35,000.

However, the reality is a subsidy is required.? I think one possible interesting way to help out the service financially would be for it to bring hiker resupply boxes to the trailheads for a $20 fee and stuff it into bear boxes at the trailhead, but as I understand it, that is not allowed because of the exclusivity clauses in the packer's leases/commercial services permits.

I will be trying to work with ESTA and Inyo to get FLAP money for town-to-trailhead services, but that is a couple years down the road.

Steve