PROVIDENCE — A longtime transit advocate Thursday denounced a fare increase sought by the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority and said the agency should take better care of its riders and that the state should take better care of its transit system.

Barry Schiller, a former RIPTA board member and now a Sierra Club spokesman on transit issues, said a fare hike will harm the working poor and damage the state’s economy. State government should be encouraging people to ride the bus system, he said, not driving them away with a fare hike.

Schiller spoke at the first of a series of hearings the authority is holding on a fare increase aimed at closing a budget deficit in the fiscal year beginning July 1.

RIPTA officials said they expect that the fare hike will generate $662,000 in revenue, but that it will probably drive away 5 percent of its riders because they can’t afford to pay the higher fares.

RIPTA already has relatively expensive fares. A consulting study commissioned by the General Assembly reported last year that the authority’s fares were the second highest among a group of 10 similar transit agencies.

The increase will raise the fare for a single ride 16 percent, from $1.50 to $1.75, and the price of a monthly pass 22 percent, from $45 to $55. It is planned to go into effect July 1.

It shouldn’t happen and it doesn’t have to, Schiller argued.

He said RIPTA’s board, which voted to pursue the fare hike, ought to “look after their passengers” instead of imposing higher fares, which he said will fall “on the mostly low-income working people who actually pay them.”

He was referring indirectly to the large number of riders who pay either reduced fares or none at all. The authority, he said, should make everybody riding the buses pay something, if only 25 cents per ride.

RIPTA board Chairman Robert Batting has questioned who is actually paying for bus service, saying he was appalled when he discovered recently that only about 10 percent of the riders pay full fare with their own money. (A RIPTA official said that the General Assembly wrote into state law free or reduced fares for elderly and disabled persons, so legislators would have to make the politically difficult change.)

Fewer than a dozen people, not counting RIPTA staffers, came to the hearing Thursday afternoon at the University of Rhode Island’s Providence campus. Schiller suggested that was because members of the well-organized transit advocacy groups, representing the elderly and handicapped, pay either no fare or reduced fares and thus don’t have much to lose in a fare hike.

By contrast, “the fare-paying bus riders have no organization at all,” he said. “They’re not here.”

When the RIPTA board proposed broad service cutbacks during a budget crisis in 2003, many opponents turned out for public hearings and there was heavy opposition from the legislature and from Providence. Governor Carcieri, who had tried to hold the line on transit spending, eventually gave up on the service cuts.

Thursday, Schiller called for what he said is a long-overdue step to increase the revenue RIPTA gets from a major financing source, the state gasoline tax. The legislature, he said, should make the gasoline tax work like the sales tax, which is set at a percent of sales. That means it generates more tax revenue as more dollars are spent on taxable goods.

The gasoline tax doesn’t work that way. A flat 30 cents per gallon, the tax generates no more revenue when the price of fuel rises. In fact, it can actually produce less revenue because drivers buy fewer gallons of gasoline.

Because of that arrangement, RIPTA’s gas tax revenue has stayed relatively flat while its costs, mostly employee pay and fuel, have risen. The result has been a series of deficits, or threatened deficits, as RIPTA’s expenses rise and the gas tax revenue doesn’t.

While the state’s transportation plans and the report of a legislative commission last year all urge more transit use, he said, a fare increase will certainly have the opposite effect.

And although RIPTA expects to gain money this time, Schiller reminded officials of a fare hike in 2001 when RIPTA actually ended up with less revenue because the higher fares drove so many riders away.

He also said the authority should go back to a zoned fare system, where fares are higher for longer trips, particularly when RIPTA’s costs are being driven upward by rising fuel costs.

“Obviously, someone riding 30 miles uses much more fuel than someone riding 2 miles,” he said.

At current fuel prices, he said, it’s cheaper to drive a short distance than to pay for a $3.50 round trip under the higher fare structure.

On the other hand, he said, the same high fuel costs mean that a higher bus fare would be cheaper than driving for a longer trip.

Schiller, a regular bus rider, also made several suggestions for ways RIPTA could cut its own expenses:

•Consider eliminating trolley routes serving the State House and Atwells Avenue in Providence, which he said aren’t heavily used and duplicate regular bus routes.

•Follow up on a management audit last year that suggested a problem with employee sick leave and resulting overtime.

•Consider cutting back service or shutting the system down entirely on Christmas and Thanksgiving Day, when ridership is low.

blandis@projo.com