PROVIDENCE – The R.I. Public Transit Authority’s base fare will go up 25 cents to $1.75 one way, under the rate plan unanimously approved last night by the authority’s board of directors. The plan’s across-the-board fare increases will take effect July 1.

The price of a monthly pass, now $45, will rise 22.2 percent to $55. The standard bus fare and the 10-trip RIPTIK price, now $1.50 and $15, will each rise 16.7 percent to $1.75 and $17.50, respectively. Cash bus transfers, now 10 cents, will rise 400 percent to 50 cents.

Off-peak bus fare for seniors and the disabled, now 75 cents, will rise 13.3 percent to 85 cents. Fares for the RIde Program’s handicapped-accessible vans, now $3, will rise 16.7 percent to $3.50.

Yet, as Alfred J. Moscola, RIPTA’s general manager, had said in April in announcing the rate-hike proposal, the increases “won’t absorb the full impact of the higher cost of fuel.” (READ MORE)

“Fuel costs have more than tripled since FY 2002, when we paid on average 87 cents for a gallon of fuel,” Moscola said at the time. “Now, we’re averaging close to $3 a gallon for the current fiscal year.”

The fare increase will bring in “$662,000 and some change,” Karen Mensel, the transit authority’s director of marketing and communications, told Providence Business News in a telephone interview this morning. Yet it still leaves RIPTA facing a projected budget gap of $1.5 million or so for this fiscal year alone, she said, plus another $4.8 million in fiscal 2009, which starts July 1.

“We would have been just fine – balanced books and everything – if these fuel prices hadn’t begun to skyrocket the way they have. And there’s no end in sight,” Mensel said.

“Yesterday, we were paying $4.13 per gallon for clean diesel,” she added. “When you use about 2.5 million gallons of clean diesel per year, that really hurts.”

It’s ironic, she said: With gasoline prices on the rise, and more people turning to public transit, “we have crowded buses, we have standing-room-only buses … yet revenue from the gas tax is down because people are on the bus.”

And with RIPTA already facing soaring expenses and declining financial support, the transit authority is unable to add more buses to accommodate the increase in passengers. “It’s very frustrating. We’re public servants. We’re here to put out a service – and we can’t. We can’t put out as much service as we need to.

“It’s sad for the people of Rhode Island,” Mensel said. “It’s not a good situation, and there’s no simple answer.”

R.I. Public Transportation Authority information, including RIPTA bus schedules and the free Google Transit trip-planning utility, is available at ripta.com. Schedule information also is available by calling 781-9400.