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GREENSBORO — City officials plan to start a detailed study of Greensboro’s transit system to improve the on-time performance of buses carrying increasing numbers of riders.

The goal is a plan offering both short- and long-term solutions, said Libby James, Greensboro Transit Authority manager.

“We are concerned about the fact that the growth we are experiencing is affecting the quality of the service, specifically its on-time performance,” James said. “Folks are going to get tired of late buses and stop using them. ... We are not taking it lightly.”

Ultimately, transit administrators will present a series of recommendations to GTA’s supervisory board and to the City Council for approval, she said.

The problem of buses not keeping pace was highlighted in a recent GTA report.

Dan Boyle, a California-based transit consultant, found that, overall, GTA buses failed to run on schedule 40 percent of the time, based on an analysis of 400,000 separate time checks.

The upshot was a 20 percent drop in the overall system’s punctuality compared with a report Boyle prepared in 2003, shortly before the J. Douglas Galyon Depot opened as GTA’s main terminal.

Boyle attributed the problem to a spurt in ridership triggered by The Depot’s convenience and passenger comforts, significant investment by the city in newer buses and high fuel costs making mass transit more popular.

The consultant from San Diego said there is an obvious relationship between a bus driver’s ability to stay on schedule and how many passengers the bus is carrying. By definition, a full bus will make more stops, which add up to significant delay, he said.

James called Boyle’s findings an “eye opener.” GTA administrators knew their 63 percent increase in annual ridership — a gain of 1.4 million passengers since 2003 — had affected the system’s timeliness, she said.

But they did not anticipate that much decline, she said.

“We’re going to look at the entire system and ways to address this issue,” James said. “We’re going to do a detailed analysis of all 15 routes to determine what we can do.”

Short-term improvements might include one Boyle suggested: consolidating several bus stops into one wherever they are bunched closely together.

That type of change could be made relatively quickly and at low cost, James said.

But Boyle also raised the possibility of adding “connector” buses to GTA’s longer routes, splitting them in two with an additional bus to serve only the more remote sections.

That strategy would take more time and money to put into action, James said.

“When you start talking about adding connectors to shorten routes,” she said, “then you’re talking about needing additional funding to do it.”

Boyle’s report did not include cost projections. But in an unrelated assessment recently, the Greensboro Department of Transportation estimated the yearly cost of connector routes in several parts of the city at $280,000 each.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com