Wednesday, September 16, 2009
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EXPANDED SERVICES: James Ferraro, executive director of Western Reserve Transit Authority, speaks to elected officials and other guests at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at St. Elizabeth Health Center Boardman, marking the start of the transit authority’s countywide bus service.
By Denise Dick
The hospital chief said the expanded service will help patients, their families and hospital employees.
BOARDMAN — With expanded routes and a countywide door-to-door service, the Western Reserve Transit Authority has fulfilled the last piece of its promise to Mahoning County voters, the system’s executive director said.
“What we promise, we live up to,” James Ferraro said at an event Tuesday kicking off expanded services.
The event was conducted at St. Elizabeth Boardman Health Center. Ferraro said the routes provide transportation to health-care services and to employment for residents who may not have an alternative.
Voters last November approved a 0.25-percent sales tax for the transit service. WRTA had said that night and Saturday service would be restored, routes would be expanded and the door-to-door service implemented if the tax passed.
Weekend and night service was restored earlier this year. The expanded routes and door-to-door service started this week.
“Mahoning County is now seamless,” Ferraro said. “You can travel from one end to the other” on public transportation.
Expanded routes include a line into Struthers covering the north side of the city with stops at the Fifth Street plaza and other residential and commercial areas. New lines also were added to cover the west and east ends of Boardman, allowing shoppers without other transportation to go to the Southern Park Mall, Shops at Boardman Park and businesses on Tiffany Boulevard and Doral Drive.
Buses also travel along state Route 7 to Assumption Village nursing home and to Hospice House on Sharrott Road, and the new routes also provide transportation to St. E’s in Boardman.
Genie Aubel, president of the hospital’s Boardman campus, said the new routes provide transportation to not only patients but for their families and current and prospective employees as well.
WRTA’s services also offer transportation to the elderly and disabled, Ferraro said.
Fares on a fixed-route bus range from 60 cents for a senior or disabled person to $1.25 for an adult.
The door-to-door service, dubbed EasyGo, allows residents to arrange to be picked up at one location such as their home, and transported to another, such as a doctor’s appointment. The cost is $1.25 one way, and rides may be arranged by calling WRTA between one day and one week in advance.
Tony Paglia, the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber’s vice president of government affairs, said it’s rare for a chamber organization to support a measure that includes a tax increase.
But the Regional Chamber supported the WRTA sales tax because it believes that an efficient public transit system is necessary for a viable center of economic development.
“We believe it will help us bring businesses to the Mahoning Valley,” Paglia said. “We believe we are poised for success after years of decline.”
denise_dick@vindy.com