Getting around on Saturday is about to get a little easier.
Grays Harbor Transit has announced the return of Saturday bus service, beginning on Jan. 3.
“People voted for the 1/10th-cent sales tax in 2013, and the revenue has allowed us to bring the service back,” General Manager Ken Mehin said.
Hoquiam Mayor Jack Durney says the returned service is an important piece of overall bus service.
“Transit is important to help folks get around, get to work, and to shop — it’s worth additional coverage,” Durney said. “This is a great addition to our schedule, particularly for people who shop on Saturday. It is also important to the service employees who need transit to get to the North and South Beach restaurants and motels to work.”
Weekend service was discontinued in September 2013, when the cost to maintain the service proved to be prohibitive.
“We just didn’t have the money to run them,” Mehin said.
Canceling the service dropped the total number of rides by at least 20 percent, Mehin said, accounting for both Saturday and Sunday losses. (A round-trip ride is counted as two trips.)
Saturday service saw a bulk of the weekend riders, and Grays Harbor Transit is hoping to earn back the customers.
“Eventually we hope we can get it all back — we have to start where we can afford it and bring it back as funding allows,” Mehin said. “Saturday was much bigger than Sunday.”
But don’t count Sunday service out completely. Though a date to restore Sunday routes isn’t nailed down, Grays Harbor Transit is keeping it in mind.
“There isn’t a definite plan yet, but as our budget allows, we’ll be looking to bring it back when we can,” Mehin said.
The transit board will hold a special meeting on Dec. 23 to discuss the budget, and looking ahead Mehin says Grays Harbor Transit is looking at ways to ensure services continue well into the future.
“We are looking at streamlining all of our trips and routes to make sure we don’t duplicate trips and to make sure we’re putting stops where they need to be,” he said. “We’re also automating our schedule.”
Other changes aiming to improve the overall experience are on the way as well.
Sometime in 2015, Grays Harbor Transit plans to have a bus book that would include all of the routes, rather than individual printouts of each route.
The website, www.ghtransit.com, is being revamped and will be more user friendly when it goes live near the end of the month.
In time, Grays Harbor Transit expects the lapse in service to be a distant memory.
“We’re going to be stronger than we were before,” Mehin said. “We appreciate the riders we have and the voters who approved the sales tax.”
Routes and schedules can be found at the Grays Harbor Transit website or at the Transit office located at 705 30th Street in Hoquiam.
Corey Morris, a Daily World writer, can be reached at 537-3936, or by email at cmorris@thedailyworld.com
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