ALBANY COUNTY — Ridership on CDTA buses is down about 40 percent from pre-pandemic levels, according to Ross Farrell, director of planning for the Capital District Transportation Authority.

One of the casualties is Route 719, which used to serve Voorheesville and Altamont with three or four runs a day.

Marie Irving, who had gathered 241 signatures on a petition calling for the route to be reinstated, said she was “extremely disappointed” in the outcome.

“I was hopeful they would keep at least one run,” she told The Enterprise. “I think it was sneaky that they used the pandemic to end the route,” said Irving, who had been a regular rider on Route 719.

Jaime Watson, the CDTA’s director of corporate communications, said there were many more names on Irving’s petition than there were riders on Route 719. “If there were 241 riders, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” she said.

“We can’t build service for people who are interested,” said Farrell, as opposed to being regular riders of a route. The CDTA can’t provide routes for people who may want it “just in case,” he said. “We’re a steward of the public dollar.”

As the CDTA sees it, the Capital Region is now entering “the third wave” of the pandemic, Farrell said. On Monday, with the state workers being asked to return to their posts, the CDTA put on an additional route to Albany, he said.

Even before the pandemic, Route 719 was “one of the lowest performing routes,” Farrell said.

Watson noted that the viability of Route 719 was not a new issue.

The route was developed in 2012, Farrell said, when two earlier routes were combined. The CDTA, he explained, uses a rider-per-hour metric to calculate the use of any particular route.

The “productivity target” for a commuter route, like 719, is over 12 riders per hour, Farrell said. Of 50 bus routes, Route 719 was in the bottom five, with just six or seven riders per hour, he said.

The pandemic made bus ridership plummet, Farrell said, as “people with automobiles were less likely to jump on a bus.” 

In the depth of the pandemic, in March 2020, when nonessential businesses were closed, Watson told The Enterprise that the normal weekday ridership of 60,000 was down between 66 and 75 percent.

On Monday, Farrell said the express route dropped 80 to 90 percent.

“We came back to around 60 percent of what it used to be,” Farrell said. He noted that the BusPlus lines, CDTA’s version of Bus Rapid Transit, making limited stops, are “doing quite well.” The red line runs from Albany to Schenectady and the blue line goes from Troy to Albany.

Commuter routes and some express routes took the biggest hit, he said.

Farrell also said that, sometime in September, the CDTA plans to return service from downtown Albany to the Elm Avenue Park and Ride in Bethlehem; the route number will be changed to 519. Route 719 used to stop at Elm Avenue as well as making stops in Guilderland Center, Altamont, and Voorheesville.

Asked if just one run to Voorheesville and Altamont could be restored, Farrell said, “One run would make the ridership even worse.” He cited single runs from years ago that went to Hoosick Falls and to Castleton-on-Hudson and said that one trip is not enough to generate service.

Before the pandemic, Farrell said, roughly 50 percent of the riders on Route 719 were from the Elm Avenue Park and Ride so the creation of Route 519 that will run from there to Albany “satisfies a lot of the ridership,” he said.

Route 519 will make nearly a direct run to the Empire State Plaza concourse with perhaps one stop at Route 9W, Farrell said.

Irving said that, while not reinstating the route to Voorheesville and Altamont was described to her in an email from Watson as a “minor” change, for her and some of the other riders it is life-changing.

​​Irving works as an associate in teacher education and, before working remotely during the pandemic, used to ride the bus to the State Education Building in Albany. Her husband works in Albany, too. He has multiple sclerosis, she said, and “telecommutes from noon to the end of the day.”

The family has just one car. “He needed the car to keep his schedule,” she told The Enterprise earlier.

This week, since getting the news that Route 719 won’t be reinstated, Irving said she doesn’t know how she will get to her office, which will be expected in September. “I’ve been talking to my husband about how to do it,” she said.

Suggestions that she drive to nearby routes, like one that stops at Crossgates Mall in Guilderland or to the Elm Avenue Park and Ride in Bethlehem won’t work, she said, because getting there would require a car. “It all requires driving. They’re not close enough to walk to,” she said.

Irving went on, “It’s not just me.” She named regular riders who had similarly depended on the bus to get to work — “an older gentleman that lives in the apartments across from the gazebo in Altamont and works at the transportation department … a woman in Guilderland Center with disabilities who rode the bus to get to work.”

Irving said she also feels there are equity issues — not serving rural areas like the Hilltowns, and suburban areas — as well as environmental issues since individuals who don’t share a bus ride will instead be forced to drive.

Farrell responded, on the equity issue, that the CDTA complies with federal legislation, offering service for minority and low-income communities. “I don’t know how to respond for rural and suburban areas,” he said.

On the environment, he said that it is better to run one bus at another location that transports 200 people rather than keep running the bus to Voorheesville and Altamont that transports just six or seven people.

Irving concluded, “I’m sad and I’m angry …. It’s about more than the numbers.”