The deficiency affected 12% of expenditures for the so-called “Transportation Disadvantaged” (TD) riders, a category of riders that increased by 26% in just one fiscal year before a it was revealed that TD ridership numbers were being inflated due to abuse. In its Comprehensive Annual Financial Review (CAFR) for its last fiscal year, PSTA staff reported just last week that its auditors had found one “Significant Deficiency in Internal Control over Compliance.” The auditors found that PSTA “did not follow their document retention policy,” resulting in people receiving free monthly passes who should not have received them. Having problems properly accounting for ridership is nothing new for PSTA. Many federal transit grants are awarded on the basis of ridership. The same metric was also overstated in the March report by 2.7%. PSTA staff thus had more than one opportunity to examine its own report for accuracy, and failed at that task. The draft report showed the same inaccurate YTD ridership numbers as in the official report. It is dated May 19th, two days before the official report. Through a public records request, the Guardian obtained this draft ridership report for April. Our review also revealed that it isn’t just the route network ridership numbers year to date that are incorrect – many other YTD numbers are also incorrect. The Guardian’s review of previous monthly reports found that this key ridership metric has been misreported 6 out of 7 times for the current fiscal year. That’s an overstatement of ridership by almost almost 878,000 trips, or 15%. “The ridership numbers look good to me, Larry.” All you have to do to arrive at accurate numbers is take the monthly numbers for each month…and add them up.Īdd the 467,043 trips reported in April to that last number through March and the year to date total is 5,862,527. But that number is also overstated, in this case by 2.7%. Halfway through its fiscal year, PSTA’s March report showed 5,541,228 trips taken on PSTA’s network of routes. While it is possible that a count can decline 51.5% in a month, and still be up for the year, that is not the case here. PSTA’s own report thus shows a 51.5% decline in ridership for the month of April, yet they also claim a 2.3% increase year to date (YTD). The first line shows “Total Bus Passenger Trips – APC”, where “APC” means Automatic Passenger Counter. On May 21st, PSTA issued its “Operating Statistics” report for April. PSTA CEO Brad Miller today wrote in a mass e-mail that “PSTA ridership in March and April 2020 has dropped by about 31% compared to 2019.” Then why is Miller’s staff providing rosy and inaccurate data? PSTA is well aware of the decline in ridership. This should have alerted PSTA staff that something was amiss. Seven months in to its current fiscal year, PSTA’s official report for April shows a 52% decline in ridership on PSTA’s network of routes compared to last year, yet the same document reports ridership increased 2.3% for the year. PSTA staff have provided its board with inflated year to date bus ridership data two months in a row.
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