MOOver ANNOUNCES FUNDING AND ROUTE CUTS
Release Date: March 20, 2025
WILMINGTON: Southeast Vermont Transit (SEVT aka the MOOver) announces $225,845 in route cuts in response to the Vermont Agency of Transportation’s (VTrans’) request to cut $1.5 million statewide in public transit funding from all seven of the state’s transit operators.
The reason for these cuts is that operating costs have risen higher than state and federal funding can keep up with them. Such funding is flat and, in several cases, has been cut from last year’s level. VTrans granted SEVT $3,886,000 in federal and $800,000 in state funds for the current year, exclusive of $3,000,000 in Medicaid funds.
“We made internal cuts first before resorting to route cuts,” said Randy Schoonmaker, SEVT CEO. “The route cuts we made were based on the lowest ridership and the financial efficiency of each route.”
The changes were: eliminating the second bus on the Mount Snow Base Area winter weekend route (leaving one bus still operating) effective November 28th, cutting the second bus on the Wilmington to Mount Snow winter weekends route (leaving one bus every hour still operating) effective December 26th, ending the Brattleboro Microtransit system on June 13th, cutting the first of five Monday-Friday trips from Wilmington to Brattleboro at 7:00 am effective May 5th, eliminating weekend service from Wilmington to Brattleboro effective May 3rd, ending the Wilmington to Bennington service effective June 13th, and cutting two of the four monthly shopping trips in Brattleboro for seniors effective April 21st.
Apart from the Brattleboro microtransit and Wilmington-Bennington routes, all towns and stops on these routes served before these changes will still be served. Medicaid, ADA, and the Olders & Disabled services are 99% unaffected at this time. Town appropriations, as well as the rest of SEVT’s local funding, are key to keeping the remaining services going and limiting the size of the cuts that have to be made. All Vermont public transit providers are being asked to do their share of cost cutting.
“These are very difficult decisions to make, and we do not take lightly the impact these changes have on the affected riders. All possible cost savings have been looked at and implemented besides route cuts. We have no other options at this point,” said Schoonmaker.
It is underdetermined if the state will require further changes. “These are challenging times for all entities and people relying on state and federal funding. We thank everyone for their ridership and support, and we’re sorry to all those riders who are negatively impacted by these changes,” Schoonmaker said.
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