HAMMOND | If city officials prevail and the state doesn't step to the plate, the Hammond Transit System will reach the end of the line this December when it is expected to lose the municipal portion of its funding.
"That's absolutely a possibility," City Council President Dan Repay said last week. "At the end of the day, we still need to reduce our budget by $1.3 million."
Hammond Transit Department figures reflect less, but city officials estimate the bus service's cost to the city at about $1 million.
Also at issue, however, has been the transit's ridership with critics saying they often see only one person to a bus.
Yet for the year ending in 2007, transit officials showed ridership at more than 400,000, which is defined as the number of one-way fares.
The bus service is not free as in East Chicago. The fare structure starts at a base of $1.25 for adults and lower fares for children, seniors and the disabled. The service also offers a variety of passes.
Transfers are free, but can be used only one time within a two-hour period. Commuters waiting for buses at the Dan Rabin Transit Plaza last week said they travel two or three routes a day.
Records show the vast bulk of last year's ridership -- 235,945 of the 403,258 in one-way fares -- traveled only one of six available routes. That is Route 1, which includes the Horseshoe Casino and the Hammond Marina as destinations. The route begins at 106th and Ewing in Chicago, zigzagging through Hammond and Whiting before heading back to downtown Hammond to pick up southbound Calumet Avenue and ending at the Hammond Clinic and the Target in Munster.
Even the transit official who runs the service acknowledges the system is cumbersome, chaotic, inconvenient and used only by travelers who have no alternative.
"A service evaluation done back in 2004 or 2005 shows the majority of our riders are people with absolutely no other access to rides," Transit Director Keith Matasovsky said. "We appeal to the lowest socioeconomic group in the city."
Matasovsky said an analysis showed 60 percent of passengers earn $40,000 or less. The remaining 40 percent earn $20,000 or less.
Whether a good omen or bad isn't clear, but ridership had been increasing by an average 30,000 fares a year since 2002 -- until last year when it dropped from 437,985 to 403,258. This year's figures are unclear as yet, in part because any slide will include the loss of a lucrative School City contract in March, which in turn will reduce the federal and state subsidies received by the transit system, adding to its fiscal hurt.
Matasovsky said it isn't hard to figure out why the system isn't being used by anyone with a choice. He tried taking the bus himself.
"Most of Hammond's routes run on an hourly basis," he said. "After a hard day at work, I'm not going to wait an hour for a bus."
Then there's the reality of people's lives when people most often don't shop, eat and work in the same community, he said.
"No person today lives their lives bounded by geographical boundaries," said Matasovsky, who also serves on the Regional Bus Authority, the body attempting to regionalize bus service.
"The only people who put up with that are those who are forced to," RBA President Dennis Rittenmeyer said of Hammond's chaotic bus routes.
But Rittenmeyer held out little hope of help to the ridership in need of even Hammond's limited services.
"We're having those discussions now," he said of meeting with Hammond officials.
A short-term fix may assist Hammond with only a single route on Indianapolis Boulevard and only through the end of 2009. That's when the RBA itself runs out of money unless someone steps to the plate.
