Public transportation faces service issues

Local bus service needs new funding sources,
a consultant says.

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — Public transportation in the Mahoning Valley is full of gaps in service, and the abolition of the Western Reserve Transit Authority’s evening bus runs has imposed a major hardship on riders, say those who need the rides.

“If the stores are busy, you can’t make that 6 o’clock bus sometimes, and you’re stuck. You’ve actually got to call for a ride or a cab, and cabs are expensive,” Althea Tobias of Youngstown said Wednesday afternoon at a public forum on regional transit.

Frances Gray, a Youngstown State University student, complained that she has been missing evening classes at the university because of the loss of evening bus service. Gray is vice chairwoman of the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority board of commissioners and a resident of the housing authority’s Victory Estates.

Elsie Dursi, a case manager at Beatitude House, which helps disadvantaged women re-enter the workforce, told of a client who has been forced by the elimination of the evening buses to walk to her home on the city’s South Side, sometimes in the dark, after she leaves work in a Boardman Plaza store.

“This just puts her in a terrible situation. This is a woman who was very lucky to get this job. She loves her job,” Dursi said.

Job loss, funding cuts

Many Beatitude House clients are in a similar predicament, Dursi said during the forum in the offices of the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, a regional planning agency for Mahoning and Trumbull counties.

“We know that people have suffered lost jobs as a result,” of service cutbacks, said James Ferraro, the transit authority’s executive director. The Youngstown-based WRTA was forced by federal and state funding cuts to eliminate its evening and Warren service this spring. Ferraro noted that local funding for the transit authority comes solely from the city of Youngstown, which has property tax levies supporting the bus service.

WRTA needs new funding sources, said Charles A. Nelson, president of Nelson Development Ltd. of Akron, meeting facilitator and WRTA consultant. “They just can’t continue to provide the level of service they used to provide,” with the existing budget, he said. “The local tax base isn’t sufficient. The federal funding is now being shared.”

Federal public transit funding for Mahoning, Trumbull and Mercer counties combined, which comprise the federally designated tri-county metropolitan area, is just over $3.3 million a year. Within the last six years, that pool of money has been shared by WRTA, the Niles-Trumbull Transit System and the Shenango Valley Shuttle Service, Nelson explained.

Coordination

Some regional coordination of transit services between those agencies is already occurring, said Richard Ginty of Youngstown. Ginty takes a WRTA bus to Giant Eagle on Belmont Avenue in Liberty Township, where he transfers to the Niles-Trumbull Transit System, which takes him to his job in Warren. “It’s already working pretty seamlessly,” he observed.

“We just need many more examples of that,” Nelson replied, emphasizing the advertised theme of the forum, which was regional coordination of public transportation.

“One of the major concerns that I’m finding is the lack of transportation in the outlying areas of Mahoning County. The services that are available don’t go that far,” said Kay Lavelle, senior services coordinator at the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Department and a retired sheriff’s deputy.

A similar forum was held in Warren on Wednesday morning. The final forum in the series will be at 10 a.m. today at the Mercer County Regional Council of Governments, 2945 Highland Road, Hermitage, Pa.

The public comment sessions are being held under an August 2005 Congressional mandate requiring coordination of federally funded public transit programs within metropolitan areas. The planning effort will focus on improving the mobility of elderly, disabled and low-income people.