Cities Worry Over Transit Shortfalls : Transportation: SCAT deficits force Ventura and Oxnard to study alternatives to providing bus service.

Faced with warnings of funding shortfalls for bus service, the city of Ventura may consider cutting a bus route, and Oxnard is studying a plan to fire its bus agency and start a city-run public transit program.

Both Ventura and Oxnard will soon face funding deficits for public transit, according to a five-year budget plan approved Wednesday by South Coast Area Transit, the largest provider of bus service in Ventura County.

Under budget estimates compiled by SCAT, next fiscal year, the state and federal funds that Ventura relies on to subsidize public transit will fall short of the cost of service by $187,000, a deficit that the agency predicts will grow to $624,000 by 1998.

Likewise, SCAT estimates that in the fiscal year beginning in 1996, Oxnard will face a $44,000 shortfall in funding for bus service and a deficit of $348,000 by 1998.

Oxnard City Councilman Michael A. Plisky, who questioned the soundness of the SCAT estimates, has asked the city’s traffic department to report to the council on alternate ways to provide bus service. The council will consider those options later this month.

“I have a strong feeling that the SCAT numbers are just gobbledygook,” Plisky said. “I’m tired of being led around by the nose. I think it’s time we take a close look at a city-run bus service.”

Data used in the five-year SCAT plan was reviewed by the Ventura County Transportation Commission and all the cities served by the agency before being sent to the SCAT board for approval.

The 21-year-old agency annually carries nearly 3 million passengers in Ventura, Oxnard, Port Hueneme, Ojai and unincorporated portions of west Ventura County.

Ventura Traffic Engineer Nazir Lalani said that while his city has no plans to withdraw from SCAT, it may be forced to consider eliminating its least-popular route, which provides service between Main Street and Ventura Harbor. Lalani said he will include that option in a report he is writing for the City Council.

“If the funding picture is as bleak as SCAT paints it, we are going to face some difficult choices,” Lalani said. “Cutting that bus route is a possibility.”

Ojai City Councilman Robert McKinney, who also serves on the SCAT board, blamed the funding shortages on the cost of Metrolink commuter train service.

This year, the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, which runs Metrolink, doubled the cost of service to Ventura County to $1.6 million. In its report, SCAT estimates that the cost for service in the 1995-96 fiscal year will run about $2 million.

The county and its 10 cities are each required to pay a share of the cost for Metrolink, which stops in Simi Valley, Moorpark, Camarillo and Oxnard.

“Ojai’s position has been very clear on the belief in the lack of benefit Ojai will ever get from Metrolink,” McKinney said. “I feel very strongly that SCAT agencies should not suffer because of Metrolink stops.”