PROVIDENCE — The state transit authority board yesterday adopted a budget for the next year that includes a gaping $12-million deficit.

The board, which runs the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority, hasn’t said what it will do to close the gap, which amounts to more than 12 percent of its annual budget.

The choices on the table include making major service cuts and asking for a large infusion of money from the state government, which is struggling with its own budget problems.

The board, meanwhile, is already coming under pressure from those who might be affected by service cuts. A group from the northwest corner of the state came to yesterday’s meeting to defend the 9 Bus, which runs from Kennedy Plaza to Zambarano Hospital in Burrillville.

That route would be shortened under a plan put together by RIPTA administrators that would eliminate or reduce service on more than 160 bus lines or sections of lines across the state. Agency planners have said they ranked routes by ridership per trip, per hour and per mile, and the amount of fares collected. The plan also targets duplicative service first, and attempts to preserve trips to work and to hospitals and medical centers, officials have said.

That set of cuts, however, would save only an estimated $9.7 million per year. Another suggestion has been to make elderly and disabled people who now ride free pay half-fare, to collect another $1.9 million. The governor and legislature would have to approve that. The board had already voted to ask for another $4 million in revenue from the state gasoline tax.

As gasoline prices have risen, drivers have switched to RIPTA, crowding buses when the authority says it can’t afford to increase service. Yesterday, some board members said flatly that they oppose cuts in service. Member Thomas Deller said he opposes “taking a system that works and cutting it.”

“Transit is economic development,” Deller said. “Transit shouldn’t be cut — it needs to grow.”

The authority, meanwhile, has been trying to scrape up more revenue and is now selling lottery tickets at Kennedy Plaza, its main hub, and selling advertising on its Web site, officials said yesterday.

Mostly because of the rising cost of diesel fuel for its buses, RIPTA has since March gone from what it thought was a balanced budget to a large deficit. It ran up a $2-million deficit by June 30, the end of the last fiscal year, and has carried it over to the current fiscal year. It is expecting another, $10.3-million deficit this fiscal year.

The authority is predicting $92.9 million in revenue this year, with the biggest source being the state gasoline tax. The budget passed yesterday includes $101.1 million in spending, plus $2 million to pay off last year’s deficit.

Also at the meeting:

•The board approved, over the longtime opposition of Chairman Robert D. Batting, the agency’s $38.7-million plan to build a maintenance and administration facility on Elmwood Avenue for its paratransit program’s 136 vans. He suggested that the facility isn’t needed, and that a transit study about to begin might show that it should be built somewhere else.

However, the construction money is already approved by both state and federal governments, RIPTA has already spent $4.9 million on the project in design and other costs, and it’s been approved in various capital-spending plans. Supporters also argued that if the authority doesn’t use the federal money, it will go back to the Federal Transit Administration. In the end, it passed, with Batting and board member John Rupp abstaining.

•Prompted by pointed questions from board members, RIPTA administrators said they are trying to end months of problems in the scheduling and dispatching of vans in the authority’s paratransit system, which serves disabled and elderly persons who cannot use regular bus service.

Staff members said the months of problems come from new computer software that has suffered from what they called “glitches.” Batting said the problems date back to May and that the system “should show improvements.”

•The board heard a demand from a student group, Students for a Democratic Society, that it drop consideration of service cuts to balance its budget and roll back a fare increase that took effect July 1, which is expected to produce $662,000 in additional revenue.

Brown University student Vale Cofer-Shabica said the group has interviewed more than 200 RIPTA riders in Kennedy Plaza and found most of them didn’t know about the possible service cuts. He accused RIPTA of considering the cuts “without involving the people who would be affected most.”

blandis@projo.com