Rural bus service to see changes

Demand-response model requires riders to schedule trips in advance

FAYETTEVILLE — Ozark Regional Transit will keep rural Washington County bus service after money was restored by the Quorum Court last week, but it’s going to look a lot different.

“What we’re going to do is dissolve the fixed route as we know it, but we’re still going to provide services to those areas in a demand-response model,” said Joel Gardner, executive director. “The demand-response model is the service that requires the individual to go ahead and schedule their trips. They can set up subscription service if they’re going to work or going to college if they know they’re going on a regular basis we can add them to the schedule.”

The Quorum Court voted Nov. 14 to pull money from Route 620. The move would have effectively killed the route serving West Fork, Greenland, Farmington, Prairie Grove and Lincoln. Justices who voted to cut ORT money said the public transit provider had failed to meet ridership expectations, complained about empty buses and several wanted to put the money in the road fund instead.

Justices subsequently allocated $122,970, the same amount as last year, to regional transit for this year. A requirement of providing the money was ORT would make changes to the route to make it more financially efficient.

The route started about two years ago and is meant to connect rural residents to larger cities. It has run five times a day during the week from 6:15 a.m. to 9:15 p.m. and represents about 2 percent of Ozark Regional Transit’s total ridership.

The new service will run from 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. and riders will need to call regional transit 24 hours in advance to schedule a trip. Repeat trips can be scheduled up to two weeks at a time. Service will be first-come, first-served based on space and availability.

Gardner said the vehicles will be smaller than buses used now on the route, but should still carry four or five passengers.

“If we know we’re going to be in Greenland every day for the next two weeks then anyone else who wants a ride during that period of time, we’ll build them into that schedule also,” Gardner said. “We can do bulk pick up at a certain time and place in a community.”

Gardner said he hopes the changes will add riders and eventually lead to expanded service for those rural areas.

“It will give us a little more flexibility, going off a standard route,” Gardner said. “We won’t be forced to stay on a particular road, we can deviate off the main trail and hopefully garner more ridership that way.”

The cost of a ride will go up from $1.50 to $2.50 per oneway trip, Gardner said.

“We’ll hopefully get it so we put people closer to their locations as opposed to forcing somebody on a fixed route to transfer at a pre-determined transfer point,” Gardner said. “We can set up additional transfer points because these vehicles are a bit more nimble and can get around traffic better, they can get into other areas better so they can get us as close to the curb-to-curb type service as possible.”

Gardner said different is better than non-existent when it comes to the route.

“It’s better than shutting it down, I can tell you that,” Gardner said. “It’s something that, hopefully, provides us with more growth and development opportunities and perhaps later on we can transition back to a fixed route once we garner more ridership.”