Tulsa Transit buses were less busy than expected last month.
The agency projected 262,000 fixed-route rides for July but only had 216,000. That’s an 18 percent difference, and it represents a 16 percent drop from last July.
Transit board Chairman Marquay Baul said the situation is not dire.
"They were down much lower than we would have hoped for them to be, particularly starting our fiscal year out, but it's not a situation where it's too out of control where we're panicking, if you will," Baul said. "So, we're still serving a great number of individuals in our community, and I think that's the more positive note."
Baul said Tulsa Transit will do their best to keep what’s believed to be a temporary drop from affecting budget discussions in the near future.
"If we take permanent measures to decrease some of the funding, when the economy and some of these other factors we can't control pan right back out and upward, then we're going to be left with a less amount of services that we can provide," Baul said.
Tulsa Transit CFO Scott Bosen said transit ridership is down nationwide, and the likely culprit is low gas prices.
"But there's other things that have happened. Social service agencies, their funding has been cut, so vouchers that we sell to these agencies, our sales have dropped significantly, like, 31 percent from April through July 2016 compared to the same four months in 2015," Bosen said.
Bosen said higher unemployment and competition from services like Uber and Lyft may factor in as well.
