Lakeport >> The Lake Transit Authority (LTA) has been slowly gearing back up to their normal schedule and routes since the Valley Fire began on Sept. 12, but the plight of all of the residents of Lake County that have been displaced in the aftermath of the blaze has pushed them to expand beyond “normal.”
Thanks to the willing assistance of CalTrans and the Federal Transit Authority, grant monies on which LTA relies to operate their bus lines and services have been increased for the rest of the year to help LTA stretch beyond their normal operating capacity and offer services to the county that would otherwise be unfeasible. Chief among them at the moment are free rides for anyone moving through the county, originally intended to last just through the end of September, but officially as of yesterday continued through October.
The free rides began on Sept. 15 to help Lake County residents with transportation needs during the Valley Fire emergency. During the week of Sept. 20, LTA held a teleconference with the state and federal agencies to discuss the situation in Lake County and what options LTA has to help. Because of difficulties in still accessing Cobb, which is along the bus service’s Route 2, LTA is looking into establishing services to Loch Lamond and Hobergs. Additional services for the Middletown area linking it directly to the transit hub in Clearlake were also proposed. Dialogue is also ongoing with the Emergency Operations Center to potentially establish other connection points. According to Transit Manager Mark Wall, the process could continue for “quite some time” as LTA continues to identify additional services they are able to offer.
“The reason for that (the additional services), we have talked to a lot of people who are living a long ways away from where they used to live. There are students needing to get to Middletown High School and the charter school… These are services they need to get to there,” said Wall. “We just don’t know where everybody is living. We feel this is the best thing to make it easy for everyone to get around.”
Wall added the routes in place have been effective as-is to helping fire victims get around, and that the modifications proposed are more refinements.
“We have found that our existing routes do a pretty good job of getting people between all the different emergency shelters, the Middletown assistance center. The only gap that we have right now is Route 2 not operating, and we’re trying to solve that a soon as possible.”
Since some customers have already purchased October monthly passes, Lake Transit will honor the October pass through November 2015.
Wall reported that many are taking advantage of the free transit.
“Since we started the free rides, we are seeing record ridership right now,” he said. “We are seeing a little more than 1,700 passengers a day.”
“We hope that people will learn more about public transit and will see a continuing use of the transit system in the future.”
