Published: December 26, 2009 10:23 pm      

Whitfield bus service wins recognition from state

Lance was all smiles as driver Larry Styles helped him onto the Whitfield County Transit Service bus one recent Friday, locking his wheelchair in place.

“How you doing, Lance?” Styles asked the smiling young man as he prepared to head to his next stop to pick up more passengers.

A short while later, Styles kidded with another passenger, Mary, whom he was picking up and transporting home to the edge of the county.

“When you moving into Dalton?” he joked.

“Oh, Larry! I ain’t a-moving!” she said with a laugh.

By the end of the day, Styles had covered some 170 miles, carrying more than a dozen passengers to their stops in the morning and then bringing them back home again in the afternoon.

After nearly a decade of transporting passengers like Lance and Mary, Styles, like other drivers in the transit service, has cultivated friendly relationships with the folks who depend on the buses to make their daily lives run smoother.

“It’s the best job in the world,” Styles said as he motored down the highway, passengers chatting in the background with one another about their lives and the random things they saw out the windows during the trip. “I enjoy it. I like driving, meeting people … I couldn’t have found a better job.”

Styles has driven buses “off and on” since 1991 and has worked for the transit service since 2000.

“Since the county took it back over in January,” he said, “I’ve seen a big difference in it. Seems like we’re picking up more people — able to get them picked up and getting them back home better — sometimes before, they’d wait an hour, hour and a half before a bus would get over to pick them up. I think the buses are better took care of now, too.”

Styles isn’t the only one who’s noticed the county’s transit service.

The success of the program has even caught the eye of the state Department of Transportation, which presented the statewide Frank J. Hill Service Award to Whitfield County last week during its annual conference in Athens.

“Each year the state selects one 5311 program to receive a memorial type of service award for running a very good or improved program,” said Whitfield County Finance Director Ron Hale, who oversees the service. “You can only win this award once so in effect we are only running against people who haven’t won before. We were nominated by our district, which we thought was a nice kudo, but then we got a call in mid-November and were informed over the phone that we had won on the state level — which we take tremendous pride in because we really feel like this is a brand new service.

“We just started Jan. 1,” Hale said, “and to have us noticed by the state for the efforts that have gone on in a little less than a year of operation says a lot about this staff and the people working on this program.”

Hale, dispatcher Scott Cooper, and operational manager Mike Turner traveled to Athens to pick up the award.

The 5311 program, as it’s known by the sponsoring Federal Transit Administration and the Georgia Department of Transportation, aims to make public transportation available in all areas.

“They are really strongly encouraging that, and accordingly they help out local governments a lot with the expense,” Hale said.

The county has to pay just 5 percent of the cost for capital items (the actual buses themselves), with 15 percent coming from the state and the other 80 percent from federal funds. The county is also responsible for 50 percent of the operational cost, but user fees help tremendously with that expense.

The county took back management of the transit service effective Jan. 1, 2009, and through the end of November has seen ridership increase by an average of about 1,000 trips a month.

“This is really a win-win situation for county taxpayers,” Hale said. “We have budgeted about $90,000 for the county’s share of the funding for the program, but our revenue has been much better than we anticipated with this growth in ridership. As of October, we have only spent about $20,000 net. We are coming in about a third of what it was costing us with the subsidies we were paying to the former management company.”

Taking care of some maintenance issues resulted in most of that $20,000 cost this year, “so we could be close to operating at revenue-neutral for the county,” Hale said, “which means that between the matching funds we get from federal and state agencies and the user-generated revenue, the county wouldn’t have to put any general fund money into running this service, which would be absolutely wonderful.”

Hale says the transit service “is a great program that costs the county very little and helps a lot of residents get to important destinations. We are glad to be a part of it.”

He praised the efforts of transit coordinator Sheila Seay and dispatcher Cooper. “They really deserve a lot of credit for what they have done with the program this year,” Hale said.

Seay and Cooper passed the accolades along to drivers Styles, Ken Banks, Garry Broome, Dennis Bryant, Cecil Cooper, Frank Davis, Robert Mashburn, and Laura Smith.

“Our drivers are very, very dependable,” Seay said. “Our riders depend on us a lot, and our drivers do their best to make sure they get where they need to go, as efficiently and safely as possible.”

That’s not surprising with drivers like Styles, who says the passengers have become like family members to him.

“Some of the seniors — I’ll call and check on them over the weekend … make sure they’re all right, if they need anything,” he said. “You just get to know them, and they get to know you.”