TACT Looks to Increase Ridership to Avoid Shortfall

TACT General Manager Scott Kloes (center) meets with the Town and Country Transit Board yesterday afternoon. Missing from the attendees was Ford City Borough Council representative Ron Dillard. Dillard told Council earlier this month his appointment to the TACT Board would make it impossible for him to attend a 4PM Wednesday afternoon finance committee meeting.

by Nathan Lasher

 Town and Country Transit (TACT) is taking action to support its Shared Ride program by attempting to increase its fixed ridership numbers.

During the TACT meeting, held yesterday afternoon, General Manager Scott Kloes said he has put into motion the idea of distributing flyers in order to promote TACT programs.

When Kloes attended a Kittanning Borough Council meeting two months ago, he said the group was interested in helping.

“They had expressed interest in helping us distribute some flyers to the community through churches, shelters, and other organizations,” said Kloes. “I have made up a flyer, and (Director of Finance) Patti (Baker) has corrected it six times, so I think I’ve got it where it needs to be. I gave it to our vendors today, and I think it’s something we may want to do county wide. I also looked into doing an insert in the paper.  Really, the PWD (Persons with Disabilities) program and the Shared Ride program are really what we need to grow. The PWD has been growing on its own quite well. I think we nurtured it a little bit more, so it’s going to help close that gap that we have in the Shared Ride program which is something that we really need to be concerned about.”

Kloes also discussed the idea of restructuring some of the bus routes in order to accommodate possible riders. “We’ve had some input from seniors in Ford City who are in some of those apartment buildings up off the street.  They would love to ride the bus, are capable of riding the fixed route, but can’t really walk the distance down to the bus line,” said Kloes. “ So, probably next week or the first part of February, Jerry and I are going to do some figuring. What we may start working on some ideas like, for example, for the ten o’clock run we will go up past those apartments. During the 11 o’clock run we will go through Ford City, but instead of going past those apartments we’ll go up the hill here to Trader Horn. During the next run, maybe we will go down another side street in Ford City in order to try to pick up more riders.”

After he voiced his ideas for increasing ridership, Kloes stressed the importance of increasing ridership in order to knock out TACT’s debt.

“The only way we will get more money from the state is through our fixed route numbers, period,” said Kloes. “So we need to look at other ways to get fixed ridership up. We need to generate more fixed ridership so that we can get more money from the state, so we can close this gap off and really get our debt taken care of. We are looking forward to doing that.   Patti’s numbers, although they looked sort of scary in the beginning, show that we are going in the right direction.”

Kloes also reported that TACT is saving money by taking two large busses off of the road and replacing them with two smaller busses. “Those small busses save us a hundred dollars each per day,” Kloes said.