Where is $57 million going to come from?

From "How we Roll" blog:

Our goal is to reduce the average age of our bus fleet from 13 1/2 years to 8 by 2020, and to replace all remaining high-floor buses (those with steps at the door) with low-floor vehicles by 2013.

Lets look at some facts:

All low floor busses have air conditioning and about 33 non low floor busses (2100s) have air conditioning. This means about 200 buses are not low floor buses.

TriMet states that they will receive 55 new low floor air conditioned buses in fall of 2012. In 2013 they will receive another 14 buses making a total of 69 buses.

This leaves about 131 buses that are not low floors. At a price of $440,000.00 that would be a total of $57,640,000.00.

Where is TRIMET planning to get $57+ million dollars in the next two years?

And does anybody have any idea what this means:

That’s why, using grant funding and debt service, we’re replacing 55 of our oldest buses in 2012. (from "how we roll' blog)

Debt service? What in the world does that mean anyway?