PANAMA CITY — Cities and Bay County will be asked to pitch in more than $52,000 to increase weekday and Saturday service on the Bay Town Trolley’s Beach route from March through August.
Trolley operator First Transit is proposing to add eight more trips a day to accommodate the many people who use Route 7 to get to their jobs, the company’s General Manager Nancy Lohr told city and county leaders last week.
Workers who live in locations such as Callaway or Lynn Haven use other bus routes to get to the Beach trolley route, which departs from Gulf Coast State College. Lohr told the Bay County Transportation Planning Organization in a recent one-hour period 354 riders rode that trolley route.
“The trolleys only have 25 to 30 seats, and then, it’s standing room,” she said. “You can see we’re definitely at capacity during those peak months and during those peak times during the months.”
Lohr told the TPO she was requesting the additional routes because workers need it.
“I’m not here representing anybody but your riders, the person who is trying to get to work or the grocery store. But primarily this is the workers going to the beach,” she said.
Route 7 currently comes every hour, but the bus would come by stops every half hour if the proposal comes to fruition. The proposed new trips would be on weekdays and Saturdays, in the mornings at 6, 7, 8 and 9 a.m., and in the afternoons at 2, 3, 4 and 5 p.m.
“We don’t have the trolley capacity to get them to where they need to go,” Lohr said.
The trolley service would use buses that are not currently being used for other routes, county transit service administrator Angela Bradley said Friday.
TPO members were in agreement that the extra Beach service is needed, and the only thing stopping this from coming to fruition is finding more than $52,000 to pay for it. The actual amount of adding the service may only add up to $33,000, TPO staff said, because the added service could boost ridership and thus the fare revenues.
Bradley said Friday she would discuss with Lohr how to come up with a dollar amount that will be requested of the cities and county for the additional service. Population in the cities and county could be one factor, but ridership might be another, she said.
TPO member Walter Kelly, the mayor of Lynn Haven, asked on Wednesday whether staff has requested funds from cities that don’t chip in for the bus service, which are Springfield and Parker.
Lohr said it is on their list of things to do.
“One of the next things we want to approach is community partners — the colleges, Gulf Coast College, FSU, the other municipalities, possibly a private entity too,” Lohr said.
TPO member Kelly said it’s hard to sell people on contributing “if everyone is not in the game with us.”
TPO member John Reichard questioned whether service could be eliminated in those cities that are not contributing toward the bus service, adding that this might give staff “a little more muscle” when they go asking for contributions.
But Bradley said the bus system could not legally cut off bus service in cities that don’t contribute to the service because of federal regulations.
“That could be viewed as putting someone off because they couldn’t afford it,” Bradley said.
However, TPO Chairman Rodney Friend said bus service could be scaled back in cities that don’t contribute. “That might be a way to address that,” he said.
The board agreed to table the discussion of expanding the service, and have staff contact the cities and then talk about it again at the April meeting.