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WRTA boosting services
YOUNGSTOWN
Western Reserve Transit Authority is preparing a host of upgrades and new routes to its services, including a $3 all-day, unlimited pass; no more transfers; and longer in-service times for all daytime fixed routes.
All changes will take effect on or after Sept. 1, said Dean Harris, WRTA executive director. The changes would make Mahoning County public transportation run similar to the Cleveland or Akron metropolitan areas, he said.
Starting Sept. 1, all daytime fixed-route bus schedules will start earlier, and the Warren Express route will end an hour later each day, he said.
All daytime routes are scheduled to start sometime after 6 a.m. and end about 7 p.m., according to the authority website. The Warren Express goes in-service at 6:40 a.m. and out at 6:30 p.m.
Dylyn Shimko of Niles said he regularly rides the Warren Express to the downtown hub, then switches buses to his doctor’s appointments or to the city’s West Side to meet with friends. The route to Niles takes about an hour, with the last run leaving at 4:40 p.m. Longer service hours may give him more flexibility, he said.
The authority is also eliminating its 25- or 10-cent bus transfers, which Harris said were confusing for some riders. Instead, the authority will begin offering an all-day, unlimited pass for $3. Instead of paying $1.50 twice to ride in each direction, riders will need to buy only one pass.
“It makes it easier for the drivers. It gives passengers more access, more rides per the value,” he said. “Once they have the day pass, you’re on the bus faster; it allows the trip to be faster.”
Harris said the authority is currently applying for grants to establish on-demand, door-to-door service on Sundays. Currently, there’s no service on Sunday. The authority is considering about 10 paratransit vans that can carry about a dozen passengers each that run for 10 hours, sometime between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., similar to Saturday’s service.
“Just like Uber, you would fire up the [WRTA] app, say where you’re at and where you want to go. The bus will find its way to you in a timely manner based on demand,” Harris said.
Nicci Burt, a regular rider who can walk from her apartment in downtown Youngstown to the Federal Street station, said she’d consider calling a WRTA van to Sunday church services.
“I could use a Sunday on-demand – that would be awesome,” she said. “There could be some picnics going on. I have a lot of nieces and nephews, and I can’t move around on Sundays like I want to after church. We might want to go to the park.”
Harris said the authority wants to provide more service to the area’s larger employers, such as distribution centers near the Youngstown Commerce Park in North Jackson, Boardman’s McClurg Road or Lordstown’s incoming TJX HomeGoods warehouse. At the same time, the authority is considering establishing new transfer points with other public transportation agencies in the region.
“They need to have more routes going to industrial areas where there’s jobs,” said Andre Biggs of Youngstown, while waiting for a bus at the Federal Street station.
Anthony Thomas of Youngstown said he wishes WRTA would run longer each day and offer more weekend service, like Cleveland’s Regional Transit Authority. He said he rides WRTA near-daily to his chef job at Hollywood Gaming in Austintown.
“I gotta go to work. Bills gotta be paid,” he said.
The U.S. Route 224 cross-town bus route from Southern Park Mall to downtown Canfield will soon extend to Mahoning County Career and Technical Center and run hourly, instead of every three hours, at the request of MCCTC students, Harris said.
Another notable addition is a cross-town bus route along Midlothian Boulevard, to allow passengers to ride a southward route – such as Boardman to Struthers – without needing to transfer via the downtown Youngstown hub. The route would run along Youngstown-Poland Road, past the IGA grocery store to the Walmart along Boardman-Poland Road, making it the authority’s only fixed route to run directly through Poland Village.
Harris said the service changes will be funded through about $380,000 annually. Voters in 2017 approved the authority’s 25-cent sales tax levy, which raised about $8.4 million for the authority in 2018. Though sales-tax collection slumped in 2017 due to the loss of the state’s sales tax on Medicaid-managed care organizations, it was more than replenished by state transitional funding, he said.
He added the authority could consider adding new fixed routes to unserved areas such as Poland, Coitsville and Weathersfield townships, but it would depend on how well upcoming service changes are received.
“We’re looking at all the routes and working on them in phases,” Harris said. “We’re not spending a lot of money to provide more service. We’re trying to strengthen the service we have now, make [buses] more efficient, make them run faster.”