The addition of bus service to Mebane is just one of several twists and turns that have lately confronted Burlington’s Link Transit’s bus system.
Mike Nunn, the city’s transportation director, went over a number of these recent developments when he gave Burlington’s city council an update on the eight-year-old bus system on Monday.
Nunn reminded the council that a recent decision by Mebane’s city council will allow the bus system to extend its eastern terminus beyond the main campus of Alamance Community College in Graham.
Mebane’s leaders authorized this expansion a week ago when they agreed to chip in $15,000 to extend the bus system’s orange line to reach Cone Health’s MedCenter near Mebane-Oaks Road. As part of this deal, which Burlington’s city council firmed up on Tuesday, the smaller community will also receive a seat on Link Transit’s municipal advisory board.
Mebane’s decision to join the bus system comes barely a year after the town of Elon hopped aboard Link Transit – becoming the third municipality after Burlington and Gibsonville to take part in this federally-subsidized venture. In the meantime, financial contributions from ACC and Alamance County have enabled the bus system to offer service to the county’s headquarters and the community college’s main campus in Graham.
Nunn told the council that the bus system’s foothold in Mebane coincides with an ongoing increase in ridership, which he said is en route to reach 200,000 passenger trips for the current calendar year. He added that the system’s continued growth will eventually require the city to set up a new permanent transit hub in lieu of the rented building that it currently uses near the grounds of the Burlington-Alamance Airport.
In addition to these recent developments, Nunn briefed the council on a proposed federal grant that will allow Link Transit to beef up its offerings for disabled passengers.
At the behest of the city’s transportation director, the council has agreed to apply for about $1 million in state and federal funds to augment the bus system’s so-called paratransit service. These grants, if approved by state and federal authorities, would cover the purchase price of two electric paratransit vehicles, provide new scheduling software for the service, and bankroll a year’s worth of paratransit operations. In order to leverage these funds, the city will need to contribute $176,740 from a vehicle registration tax that the council has previously enacted to defray the bus system’s expenses.
The council gave its unanimous nod to this grant application on Tuesday after its members registered their united support for the paratransit service a day earlier.
“When you have somebody call who needs that you can’t disregard how important that is,” Burlington’s mayor pro tem Harold Owen said of the bus system’s services for the disabled on Monday.
“And if you look at the [financial] obligation of the city,” added mayor Jim Butler, “it is very minimal in the grand scheme of things…It’s leveraging resources that would otherwise go unclaimed and unused.”
