City budget part 2: The RydeFreeRT saga
Updated: Jul 12
TL;DR: Sacramento City Manager - and all around disappointment - Howard Chan attempted to remove funding for the RydeFreeRT program (a program that costs the City $1M...by contrast, this budgeting cycle we gave the police a $30M raise), but thanks in large part to community mobilization, this program will remain funded for another year! Unfortunately the City only covered $250,000 of the cost, with the remaining $750,000 being split between Sac RT and the Sacramento, Natomas, Elk Grove, and Twin Rivers Unified school districts. Permanent funding for this program will continue to be fought for.
Highlights from this article:
"Launched in 2019, RydeFreeRT was the first unrestricted youth fare-free ride program in the country. The program allows all 265,000 youth living in Sac RT’s service area, from transitional kindergarten to 12th grade, including home-schooled students, foster and unhoused youth to ride all buses and light rail trains for free, all day, any day of the year" - Sacramento Regional Transit article
This program has been hugely successful!
After Howard Chan's proposal to cut funding, Mayor Steinberg proposed a solution to keep the program by splitting the cost between the City, Sac RT, and Sacramento, Natomas, Elk Grove & Twin Rivers school districts - this was the final funding outcome
Parents, teachers & advocates have pointed out not only how important this program is, but that it felt as though school districts weren't given much of choice in regard to funding it, since the program would cease to exist if they chose not to
New cards are available and valid from June 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025 for grades TK through 12th - scroll to the bottom for instructions on how to get a card!
Keeping the nonsense (see our previous article for more info) around City Manager Howard Chan’s attempt to illegally push through a raise for himself - while the City faces a $66M deficit - let’s talk about Sacramento’s RydeFreeRT program.
ICYMI: the City Manager in charge of managing the City’s budget
The RydeFreeRT program allows children k-12 to ride Regional Transit for free, and is funded using Measure U dollars.
ICYMI: Measure U is a sales tax passed in 2012 (as a half cent tax) and increased in 2018 to a full cent.
In April of 2024, Howard Chan released his proposed $1.6B City budget, which included entirely removing funding for the RydeFreeRT program. Funding this program costs about $1M per year.
Let’s take a closer look at the RydeFreeRT program
The following description of RydeFreeRT is pulled from a Sacramento Regional Transit article:
Launched in 2019, RydeFreeRT was the first unrestricted youth fare-free ride program in the country. The program allows all 265,000 youth living in Sac RT’s service area, from transitional kindergarten to 12th grade, including home-schooled students, foster and unhoused youth to ride all buses and light rail trains for free, all day, any day of the year
Former Sacramento City Councilmember Jay Schenirer proposed this program in 2019, and it has been hugely successful since its implementation. Not only does this program serve some of Sacramento’s most in-need student populations, but it also helps Sacramento to move towards reaching its climate goals by reducing reliance on car transit.
As stated by Schenirer in his Sac Bee op-ed advocating for continued funding to RydeFreeRT, the proposed decision to cut the program would be “in stark contrast to our city’s ambitious 2040 General Plan and Climate Adaptation Action Plan, which aims for an 11% transit mode share by 2030.”
He also elaborated on some of the successes that have come out of the program, including the following statements:
Since its inception in 2019, this program…has more than doubled its ridership, increasing from 1.5 million rides by local youth to an anticipated 4.2 million across the entire service district this fiscal year
75% of these rides were taken by young people within our city, translating to a mere 34 cents per ride in terms of the city’s investment
This program has reduced traffic congestion around schools, lessened environmental pollution and provided many young people with their only reliable means of getting to school and educational activities, as well as internships and jobs
It has also been instrumental in reducing absenteeism, increasing state funding linked to school attendance and alleviating economic pressures on families — goals that clearly align with the city’s equity goals
As pointed out in another Sac Bee piece, Sacramento kids will ride free on RydeFreeRT for at least another year:
Black students and students from lower-income families were especially frequent users and significantly more students overall were using RT to get to and from school, work and after-school activities. More than one in three students at some Sacramento City Unified schools use Regional Transit’s buses and light rail
The University of Texas even conducted a study of RydeFreeRT, with findings including:
A statistically significant increase in the share of students reporting RT use to get to and from school as well as a corresponding statistically significant decrease in the share of students reporting automobile use
Students using RydeFreeRT had an easier time accessing non-school destinations because of the program
A letter submitted to the Sacramento City Council from Climate Plan outlines the necessity of this program and urges the council to continue to fund it. The letter pointed out how choosing to cancel the RydeFreeRT program would mean making a budgeting decision that would run counter to the City’s stated climate goals and priorities, and to the youth input recommendations (pictured below) from the Mayor’s Climate Commission report.
So, what happened?
On May 20th, Mayor Steinberg submitted a letter to the City Council suggesting funding restorations to the City Manager’s proposed budget. Among these suggestions was a way to keep the RydeFreeRT program funded. Steinberg proposed - with that proposal ultimately becoming the final decision - for Sacramento City to contribute $250,000 to the program, Sacramento Regional Transit and Sacramento Unified School District to each contribute another $250,000, with the final $250,000 contribution being split between Natomas, Elk Grove, and Twin Rivers Unified school districts. These contributions will only fund the program from July 2024 through the following school year.
What’s the problem with this?
Parents and teachers called out that this proposal didn’t leave a lot of room for school districts to say no, and that it placed an undue burden on school districts to fund this program. But, since RydeFreeRT is crucial to supporting and empowering their students, it felt like a deal they couldn’t say no to. The following quotes are pulled from this article: Sacramento kids will ride free on RydeFreeRT for at least another year.
Ybarra and Cudabec have also pointed out that this a temporary solution, and that SCUSD should be given a seat at the Sacramento Regional Transit table in order to work with Sac RT to make improvements to transit issues facing students in Sacramento.
Our school districts shouldn’t be forced to cut resources from our classrooms to fix the city’s budget shortfalls
-As said by Mara Harvey and Nikki Milevsky in their op-ed to the Sac Bee on this issue
The [proposal to eliminate the RydeFreeRT program] shows that the city is no longer prioritizing school aged kids in the region by eliminating their sole responsibility for the program they originated in 2019. The [saga around funding for RydeFreeRT] shows that [the City of Sacramento] doesn’t prioritize safe and equitable transit in the city and instead wants to continue to allocate the city funds to things like the police department budget
-Anonymous community member
In conclusion
Ultimately the most important outcome from this saga is that the program will remain operational for at least another year, and that’s due in large part to the community that rallied around it to prevent the city from entirely removing its funding. Our community recognized how crucial this program is to providing equitable access to services, programming, opportunities and activities for Sacramento youth - and we saved it! It is also true that cutting this program should never have been proposed - and that the City should be responsible for fully funding it - but this is still a victory for young people, and for the health of our community.
Side eye: It sucks that community has to expend energy on saving something that costs so little and has been proven to have big impact to our youth. Le Sigh
Last but not least!
How to get a RydeFreeRT pass (pulled from Sac RT website):
New cards for the 2024-2025 school year are distributed by schools. The new card is valid from June 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025 for grades TK through 12th
Youth who are experiencing homelessness or taking part in foster programs are also allowed to participate in the program, regardless of current residence or school address
Students and youth that do not have a RydeFreeRT card, can visit Sac RT’s Customer Service and Sales Center located at 1225 R Street (adjacent to the 13th Street Light Rail Station) or Sacramento County Public Libraries
Note: The RydeFreeRT program does not apply to those over 18 years old that are pursuing their GED
