ORANGE – As the Orange County Transportation Authority prepares to roll out the final set of route changes under its massive bus service overhaul, come October, staff members have begun to forecast the agency’s financial future.

Even with service changes directing resources to more productive routes in an attempt to reverse declining ridership, operations are “unsustainable over a period of time,” Andrew Oftelie, OCTA’s executive director of finance and administration, told the OCTA board on Monday.

“If we keep doing this exactly the way we’re doing today, which includes the amount of service, continuing the fleet plan, eventually we will go negative,” Oftelie said. “We really do not have a cash crisis at this time but we do have a long-term funding problem.”

OCTA board members in March voted to use a more conservative growth rate, by MuniServices, to determine its projections, resulting in a drop from $15.6 billion to $14.3 billion in projected sales tax revenue available for the bus program over the next 20 years.

Since 2006, OCTA had used Cal State Fullerton, Chapman University and UCLA for projections on its Measure M and Transportation Development Act sales taxes, but they proved to be overly optimistic, transportation authority spokesman Eric Carpenter said.

On Monday, Oftelie presented a forecast showing the agency’s revenue increasing to above $175 million from 2019 through 2021, then taking a dip in 2024 and going into the red by 2029.

The OC Bus 360 program the board approved in February, with service changes last June and next month, aims to draw 1.3 million new riders over three years.

But OCTA board member Shawn Nelson said he suspects ridership will continue to decline instead of increase due to Orange County’s “demographic reality” that mostly blue collar workers ride buses.

“There’s this idea that we’re going to get people on a bus when we’re not. It ain’t going to happen,” Nelson said.

Oftelie presented three options drawn up by OCTA staff to address the projected sales tax shortfall. The first would involve decreasing service hours by 180,000, about 11 percent of total service hours annually.

A second option would use capital reserves to backfill revenue loss. While doing so would allow OCTA to maintain existing bus service levels through fiscal year 2028, it would result in a loss of capital replacement funds and then severe service reductions once funds are exhausted.

The third option would involve a combination of changes that include reducing the service area to the most productive routes, rethinking express and feeder services, extending the useful life of larger buses to 18 years, contracting out additional service hours, increasing the use of local Measure M funds and implementing zone-based ACCESS fares. While this option would preserve the most heavily used routes and reduce operation costs, it could deplete ridership and lead to more vehicle service calls, Oftelie said.

“I’m not going to be voting to cut anybody’s service this year,” OCTA board member Frank Ury said. “Because as much as we’d like to see stability, there are so many pieces going into this that I really think we’re way, way ahead.”

Contact the writer: 714-796-7762 or jkwong@ocregister.com or on Twitter: @JessicaGKwong