New Braunfels City Council votes to extend agreement with AACOG's Alamo Regional Transit

The interlocal agreement (ILA) with the Alamo Area Council of Governments (AACOG) for its demand response transit services was discussed during Monday’s City Council meeting in order to consider amendments and authorize the city manager to execute all contract documents associated with the agreement.

“Today, we’re asking you to continue the current ILA that we have between the city of New Braunfels and the Alamo Area Council of Governments for one more additional year, ”AACOG Transportation Director Sean Scott said. “Alamo Regional Transit (ART) is pleased to have this opportunity to continue serving the city of New Braunfels. We’ve had a really successful partnership providing demand response public transportation for over 10 years.”

Scott reviewed statistics from the service report that contained a year’s worth of data.

“The way we come up with our … operating costs, we come up with our total cost, and then we take our passenger fare and revenue across our entire ART system, that’s the rural and New Braunfels, and we reduce the operating cost down to that level,” Scott said. “Then, according to the agreement, we use ridership to dictate what percentage of costs are attributed to the city of New Braunfels.”

According to Scott, 16% of the operating costs are allocated to New Braunfels based on the ridership in fiscal year 2023. ART’s total operating expenses in 2023 were around $5,716,000, with New Braunfels’ 16% totaling about $914,680.

Additionally, ART did 131,650 trips in 2023 — a 15% increase in ridership compared to 2022. According to Scott, New Braunfels also saw a 15% increase in ridership.

Scott explained that revenue miles and hours help determine the system’s efficiency, and that ART reduced its revenue miles in 2023 while maintaining the same amount of revenue hours.

Regarding total system costs for 2023, ART clocked in at $44.58 per trip, $4.52 per revenue mile and $88.19 per revenue hour.

“These numbers are comparable across the state,” Scott said. “In fact, we had a meeting with TxDOT … this last week, and they’re probably going to use these very similar numbers that, if there’s any available special funding that comes out, this is going to be right in line with the amounts that are going to be awarded based upon expanded service or anything like that.”

When looking at total costs in New Braunfels, the cost per trip and revenue mile are slightly lower, while the costs per revenue mile are higher at $92.70.

Lastly, Scott went over demographics, stating that in New Braunfels, a lot of the services are used to get to medical services and to get to school, with the primary pair of age demographics being over 60 and 18-59.

Councilmember Lawrence Spradley moved approval, with Councilmember Andres Campos seconding the motion.

The item was approved unanimously.