Louisville has a big decision to make about what kind of public transportation system it wants.

Transit Authority of River City, better known as TARC, is facing a "fiscal cliff" as a result of several factors, including covid-era stimulus funding running out. We talked about the issues with TARC executive director Ozzy Gibson on a bonus episode of the Access Louisville podcast this week.

Gibson and others want to hear from the community about what they want out of the agency. And it's collecting input via an online survey, which you can take part in here. The deadline for the survey is Sept. 20.

Lots of people around town, and on social media, have voiced support for a robust transit system, complete with rail and bus offerings. But, as Smith explains on the show, it's most certainly a financial issue.

"Everybody tells me, you need to look at what Cincinnati's doing, Indy. They tell me to look at Richmond [Virginia] — all three of those raised taxes to get the good service they have."

For Louisville to do that it would require the support of 14 Metro Council members to bring fourth a referendum, which would then be decided on by the voters.

A few of the aforementioned cities raised taxes in 2017 or 2018, so when they got money from Covid-era stimulus packages, they were able to make upgrades and add new busses, Gibson said. Louisville, had to use its stimulus money to keep service running — and now that's running out.

"If we wanna be the best, it's gonna cost money to get there," Gibson said. "Otherwise, we're just going to be little ol' TARC. We will be cut [by] 50%. And how long will it take us to get back to where we were? Maybe not in my lifetime. If people don't take the survey and reach out to the powers that be, we can't be anything."

Service cuts are already the first of a three-pronged strategy to address the operational budget gap projected to be as much as $30 million by July 2026 without cuts, additional revenue or some combination of the two. Those strategies include:

• The January 2025 service reductions.
• A community-focused network redesign process called TARC 2025 that launches this summer and will result in a full plan for an updated TARC network within the reality of available funding by February 2025.
• Comprehensive efforts to identify new sources of revenue to support service from local, state, and federal sources.

Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. It's available on popular podcast services, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, which are linked above. You can also listen in the player above. Since this is a bonus episode, look for us to drop another episode later this week.