CHARLESTON W.Va. – About 70 or more showed up to a public hearing at the Kanawha Valley Regional Transportation Authority out of concern over the elimination of nearly a dozen bus routes.
KRT officials met with the public Friday to discuss proposed eliminations of approximately 11 routes throughout the greater Kanawha Valley.
It’s part of a comprehensive analysis KRT is in the process of writing that looks at which routes are performing best and which are underperforming, as well as what transit changes they have in store to improve overall efficiency.
KRT CEO Sean Hill laid out some more details behind the new plan.
“What we are talking about is to look again at the routes that are working and improve the service there, instead of coming every hour they come every half hour, and the routes that have poor performance, see if there are alternatives such as -KRTplus model demand where people could be picked up at their house, at their door, on their schedule, not on our schedule but on their schedule, and taken to bus routes that help us maximize our efficiency,” Hill said.
A major proposed change would be to change bus services to operate from 6am to 11pm Monday to Saturday and 8am to 9pm on Sundays rather than having routes operate at various times and days as the system currently does. .
High-demand routes would operate every 30 minutes until 7 p.m. and every 60 minutes after Monday through Friday. On weekends all services will be every 60 minutes throughout the day.
The 11 routes proposed for discontinuation include:
. tyler mountain
. Elkview
. Campbells Creek
. Sissonville
. North Gate on Greenbrier Street
. Wertz Avenue
. beech avenue
. southern hills
. South Park
. strong hill
. and clendenine
Due to lower ridership on these routes, KRT proposes that they be replaced by the KRTplus service currently in the works, which will connect riders to the nearest transit line for the same cost as a public transportation trip via a KRT vehicle. It would also operate on the same schedule as the fixed route bus.
For a slightly higher cost than a transit trip, passengers can be picked up and dropped off anywhere within the same area.
However, residents throughout the Kanawha Valley who rely on bus routes in those areas expressed concern about the changes.
Willie Meadows, a resident of South Park Road in the Kanawha City area, said he lives near public housing and there are many elderly and disabled people who live there who depend on the bus for their daily sustenance.
He said eliminating the route would greatly affect those people and himself, since he also relies heavily on the bus.
“I live a little bit higher up from the housing complex, I live about 2 miles walking down the road, but further down in the housing complex, people get infected there every day, I get it more than five days to go to work,” Meadows told MetroNews.
Meadows said he works at a store in Marmet and is also a small business owner at Capital Flea Market, and said he relies on both transit lines that are now subject to elimination to get to both jobs.
He said he will feel totally lost if he can’t go to work.
“Three days a week, a store that I have run for over 9 years and they are looking to eliminate me, how am I supposed to get my personal small business?” Prados said. “I’ve depended on that bus every weekend to get there for 9 years, the people there love me, I’m a staple at that flea market, if my bus route is eliminated there what should I do?”
Meadows said not everyone has access to cell phones or internet services to be able to contact KRT and get rides on its proposed micro-transit service every day. He said this will put a lot of people in danger.
“Not only me, but also the elderly, the disabled, what are they going to do in this situation?” he said. “I fear for the citizens, I fear for commerce, business, I fear for the people, I fear for everything with this,” he stated.
Meadows said people need a fixed bus schedule like the one they have always relied on without needing to constantly communicate with KRT.
Cross Lanes-Tyler Mountain resident Maria Kylie said many in that area will have to resort to walking a few miles to catch another bus if the changes are implemented.
He said he was at Friday’s hearing to be a voice for everyone who depends on those bus routes.
“Not everyone can afford a car and I don’t think society understands that because they expect us to meet them where they are and they don’t always think of us as low-income people,” he said.
Kylie said buses potentially not running in her area will greatly affect her and her daily living situation as well.
“I depend on those buses every day to get where I need to go and I don’t always have people to take me or I don’t have a car, I can’t even afford a car because I’m on SSI,” Kylie said.
Hill said, however, that over time KRT officials hope people will be able to accept the new process of being picked up at their homes and taken to a bus route if the proposed changes are approved.
But he said it was enlightening to hear people’s concerns Friday.
“You know, I think the best part of the process is listening to our passengers and individuals who rely on our service every day to get their feedback. We expected this and, in some ways, there is a lot to learn, bring a change in terms of a new concept in general like this on-demand service,” he said.
He said they are in the second phase of the survey they launched at the beginning of the year and that this part they released Thursday is more specific about how the proposed changes will affect passengers.
Hill said they will conduct the survey during the month of June to gather as much feedback as possible.
He said the feedback will be shared with the KRT board of directors, who will ultimately make the decision on whether to make the changes or not.
Hill said he realized at Friday’s meeting that people are having a hard time understanding exactly what this new system means and that KRT is now tasked with communicating the details behind it as best they can moving forward.
“People hear rideshare, they think of Uber, Lyft, they think of Uber-Lyft pricing, we are not a for-profit entity and we are not out to make money, we are offering a public service, so we will continue to communicate with Friends , the exact cost of traveling by bus is exactly the same; they can pick them up and take them to the bus from home if they are in one of these areas,” Hill said.
KRT will hold a board meeting on June 27 where they plan to hear more public comments on the proposed changes.
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