HUNTINGTON - A lack of state and federal funding may discontinue bus service that transports approximately 13,000 riders annually between Huntington and Charleston.
Members of both the Kanawha Valley Regional Transportation Authority and Tri-State Transportation Authority met Tuesday in Huntington to discuss the six-year-old route between the two cities. Members of the public also were in attendance.
Founded in 2009 by a three-year Federal Congestion Mitigation Air Quality demonstration grant, the services were awarded with $400,000 to fund reliable transportation between the two cities.
After the program expired on Jan. 5, 2012, the West Virginia Division of Public Transit offered to fund one-third of the net operating costs to continue the services for the remainder of January through June 30, 2012 until other funding was secured.
Both the Kanawha Valley Regional Transportation Authority and the Tri-State Transportation Authority covered a third of the half-year contract, but neither systems were able to accommodate the costly operation.
By the time the funding ended, the TTA began testing a new method to accrue cash in 2012: raising the Huntington-Charleston fare from $3 to $4.
The move, while cost-efficient, was rejected by a number of riders, said Paul Davis, general manager and CEO of TTA.
The annual ridership rates increased from a record of 15,594 in 2011 and gradually dwindled to 13,543 by the end of 2013. The transit authorities have since reached out to state representatives.
"I think we're headed in the right direction by asking Sen. (Joe) Manchin for the bus since he started this, and he seized the value and connected the two cities and I think that if anyone can help us find money through federal grants, it's him," Davis said.
An estimated $240,000 would be required to operate the bus route, Davis said, suggesting the bus, however, provided both economic and environmental advantages for riders and the state.
"If I have 30 people in seats and an additional 20 standing, that's 30 to 50 cars that are off the road," Davis said.
Additional funds through Job Access and Reverse Commute grants and state funds filled holes in the shortages, allowing TTA and KRT to continue funding a third of the cost for the routes through August of this year.
Davis said without the assistance of additional state and federal funding, the bus service would vanish after August 28.
But ending the service may have devastating consequences for many riders, including Danika Brown, who rides the bus daily from the Crooked Creek station in Teays Valley to her job at the Division of Corrections.
If Brown loses the dependable transportation, she may have to sacrifice the position she was promoted to in October and return to a janitorial job closer to home.
"I like being able to have a little bit of a weekend like I do now to spend with my family," Brown said. "If I go back to uniform, you know, there's always overtime. There's always people who don't want to come to work and the ones who do get burnt out quickly. I don't want to return to that."
Several members proposed advertisement as a potential source of revenue.
"A lot of people don't know unless they know us. This particular guy worked for the Department of Tax Revenue in downtown Charleston and he said, 'are you kidding me? I would've been on that bus every single day,'" said Missy Anthony, who works in the Secretary of State's Office at the Capitol in Charleston.
Anthony stiffened her shoulders as if to brag.
"And actually, I saw him on it yesterday," she said, grinning.
Sometimes, 15 or 16 riders will board at her station, she said.
"We have a petition here," Anthony said, holding a collection of unstapled signatures.
One rider suggested raising the fare to $10 in order to salvage the system.
"You may be willing to pay it, but when we raised the fare from 75 cents to a dollar, it took us almost two years to recover because people are price sensitive. We lost a big number of people with just a dollar's increase," Davis explained.
The bus line, which departs from Pullman Square in Huntington at 6:40 a.m. each morning, makes a few stops before arriving in Charleston, stopping first Barboursville, then Milton and Crooked Creek.
Around 8 a.m., riders arrive at the Transit Station or the Capitol itself; just in time to report for work. After one stop around 5:30 p.m., the fellow riders embark on their journey back home.
"We feel that it's a minimum service now," Davis said. "You've just got the one bus going up and one coming back. If we were really going out after dollars, the idea would be to add a couple mid-day trips."
But possible funding from the federal air quality grant program, managed by the Department of Highways, could potentially fund the Huntington-Charleston route if they chose to invest, Davis said.
Though he was uncertain about the funds' availability at this time, he confirmed that the federal air quality grant would cover 80 percent of the funds, leaving 20 percent to be sponsored by local contributors. Without other donors, the 20 percent would be sponsored by KRT and the TTA.
But hope still lingers for the faithful few.
"We're out there determined to find the money somehow," Anthony said.
"All we need is a good grant writer and if someone can write a good enough grant then we can keep our bus line," Brown interjected. "There are people out there with money to fund these grants to we just need to establish that need with them."
Although Anthony appeared triumphant after the meeting, she waited behind to express concern for her fellow rider, a cancer patient, who travels weekly to and from her chemotherapy on board the Huntington to Charleston route.
"There are just so many different stories on here," Anthony said.
Contact writer Lexi Browning at 304-348-7917 or lexi.browning@dailymailwv.com. Follow her at www.twitter.com/_galexi.