No individual or business is invulnerable to the current recession and the North County Transit District (NCTD) of San Diego county is no exception. The NCTD which provides local and express bus and train service throughout all of Northern San Diego county has been bleeding millions of dollars for years.
People in southern California simply do not believe in mass transit contrary to whatever else they may say. It is not uncommon to see cars bumper to bumper on the south bound I-5 and I-15 into San Diego. One would think that the crowded highways would literally force the locals to use public transportation, but it hasn’t happened. At least, not in the numbers the NCTD needed. The NCTD will face a $20 million deficit next year despite serving 12 million customers this past year. So it came as no surprise that the NCTD board of directors voted to pay $178 million over the next seven years to outsource (re: contract out) the bus driving and maintenance operations for its fleet. This will save NCTD $10 million a year, literally cutting the deficit in half. Still, the other $10 million is a lot to make up based on the NCTD’s current marketing strategy. It simply may not be possible for them to make a profit without increasing routes and adding vehicles, something that they just don’t have the resources to do anymore after awarding this new contract. In North County, the Catch-22 has already started.