Free bus route for Logansport in the works

Cass Area Transit offers bus services from doorstep to doorstep as needed for $2 a ride for the general public, but for the next three months is piloting a regular route with nine proposed stops throughout the city. Rides on the route would be free for all passengers.

The organization has asked city council to supply $10,000 for the pilot program.

“This is the testing phase to see if this route is going to be viable and be a benefit,” Cass County Council on Aging Inc. Executive Director Seger Mathew said. The Council on Aging oversees Cass Area Transit.

The proposed single route would start at Logansport Memorial Hospital, making stops along the way to Wal-Mart on Mall Road on the city’s east side and heading west as far as Jerry’s Pizza on West Market Street before ending downtown at Fifth Street and Broadway.

Stops would mostly be located on main streets near shopping centers and the route is designed so that a bus would stop once per hour at each. Mathew said the stops haven’t been confirmed but he doesn’t anticipate the route changing significantly.

He anticipates starting the route Sept. 1 and running it 8 a.m. to noon and 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

On Monday, city council approved a first reading of an ordinance appropriating up to $10,000 from the County Economic Development Income Tax fund.

Mathew said the city would pay out no more than $2 per ride, should the number of rides and resulting funds requested fall short of $10,000.

The measure passed 5-2 with council members Bob Bishop and Joe Buck voting against.

Bishop expressed concerns over whether a free bus route would be sustainable long term.

“I was told that if we charged a dollar, nobody would ride it,” Bishop said during Monday’s city council meeting.

Since that’s assumed, he said, he wasn’t convinced there would be enough demand to warrant the expense to the city.

“I do believe most people would expect to pay something,” Bishop said.

Council member Teresa Popejoy considered the pilot project worth a try.

“This is just a test to see if it’s going to work,” she said. And in light of the impact a regular bus route would have on city applications for grants, she added, “I don’t have a problem paying that when we can see the long-term benefits.”

The City of Kokomo launched a similar program in 2010 to provide free bus rides. The director there said the response was overwhelming and expects the same in Logansport.

“We had a consultant come in and look at [the plan] for us,” Tammy Corn said. “… He said, look, you’re looking at 40-70 a day to start, and work up to about 300 a day. I kind of giggled.”

Public transportation was the No. 1 need in Kokomo for two decades, she said. “I said [to the consultant], we’re going to blow that number out of the water.”

And they did. On the route’s first day, 299 passengers rode, and the volume topped 300 the second day. The route system, which serves most of the city’s 56,000 residents, is carrying about 1,600-2,000 riders a day currently.

As executive director of Kokomo-Howard County Governmental Coordinating Council, which oversees Kokomo’s public transportation system, Corn funds the system with a combination of federal grant dollars and local match funds from the City of Kokomo.

She’s convinced of the value of the free rides but thought the general public didn’t understand the impact of the bus system.

“You can get people who are using food stamps to the grocery store instead of the Village Pantry,” she offered, providing access to healthier food options at lower cost to the consumer. “It’s a trickle-down effect in economics for the community.”