Cornell, TCAT amend contract reducing risk of financial penalties for bus company

Cornell, TCAT amend contract reducing risk of financial penalties for bus company

ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell University agreed to amend a contract with Tompkins County Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT) for the university’s bus pass program, reducing the risk of the bus company running into contractual financial penalties. 

It’s an apparent shift in what has occasionally been a tense relationship between Cornell and TCAT, which has struggled to restore service levels to pre-pandemic levels as a result of staffing and maintenance challenges.

Cornell gives bus passes to all new students, as well as some faculty and staff, and pays TCAT about $3.3 million a year through monthly payments to service its bus pass program. 

It’s a lucrative contract for TCAT, a nonprofit transit organization that’s financially supported mostly through state aid, as well as the City of Ithaca, Tompkins County and Cornell University.

Cornell previously refused to increase its payments to TCAT for the bus pass program, citing declines in TCAT’s reliability and service levels on campus. It was a position the university made as inflationary pressures drove up TCAT’s budget.

In 2023, Cornell negotiated a condition into its bus pass program contract that TCAT would trigger financial penalties if it failed to meet its target service threshold. If TCAT exceeded the required service levels, it would receive an additional payment. 

Penalties, and extra payments, would be issued according to the percent difference between the target and actual service levels. If TCAT were to provide 10% less than the target service set in the contract, Cornell would pay TCAT 10% less under the bus pass program agreement.

Under the previous bus pass program agreement, TCAT was required to provide up to 1,100 hours of bus service a week throughout the fall and spring semesters, and 800 hours of service throughout the summer. The total hours were counted based on all the hours buses provided transit service on five specified routes, the 10, 30, 81, 82, and 90.

Under the amended agreement, TCAT must provide 990 hours of bus service a week through the fall and spring semesters, or 10% less than the previous agreement. TCAT must provide 890 hours of weekly service in the summer, or about an 11% increase. Buses running along three additional routes that heavily serve Cornell will now count towards the required weekly service hours: the 51, 83, and the 92.

TCAT General Manager Matt Rosenbloom-Jones said meeting the contract’s previous threshold was not “realistic.” He said that TCAT’s management team was able to approach Cornell and request that the required service levels be reduced given TCAT’s continued staffing and maintenance challenges.

Rosenbloom-Jones called the amended agreement a “great outcome for both parties.”

“I think it demonstrates Cornell’s willingness to work with TCAT as a partner, and it emphasizes the fact that Cornell and TCAT have a lot of mutual goals that we’re going to collaborate on,” Rosenbloom-Jones said.

The agreement was approved by the TCAT Board of Directors on June 25.

Deborah Dawson, Chair of the TCAT Board of Directors and member of the Tompkins County Legislature, thanked Rosenbloom-Jones and other TCAT staff before approving the contract amendment for “forging a much more cooperative relationship with Cornell.”

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