Board will allocate more money for buses

By Justin Faulconer

Published: August 20, 2008

Bus riders in Madison Heights received a lift Tuesday when Amherst County’s Board of Supervisors voted to give more money to the Greater Lynchburg Transit Company to maintain full service.

GLTC requested more than $53,000 to keep the 12-hour per day, six days a week bus line operating along U.S. 29 and other portions of Madison Heights. The service is grappling with higher fuel costs.

Supervisors on Tuesday appropriated roughly $21,000 in addition to $32,000 that had already been put aside in the county’s current budget — with the stipulation that GLTC does a study to determine exactly how many people are using the service.

The information would guide the board in next year’s budget, which takes effect next summer, said Supervisor Ray Vandall.

“We may have to reduce the service next year,” Vandall said.

But for now, the service will remain as it is, said Mike Carroll, GLTC general manager. Without more funds, GLTC was proposing to cut back some service to the county, which he said is the only neighboring locality to Lynchburg that pays for bus routes.

“Essentially, it’s cutting the service in half,” said Carroll before the vote. “We’re still providing the service — he question is how much.”

The bus that runs to Amherst has 17,000 to 18,000 passengers a year, he said. Several county employees recently rode two routes, one during in the morning and the other during the afternoon, to observe the impact on residents.

The employees talked to various riders and found that 12 of 19 surveyed didn’t carry a Virginia driver’s license. They found that many come to rely heavily on the service, some for work reasons, said Jeremy Bryant, the county’s planning director who took part in the questioning.

“We really got a feeling from the people it was a service important to them,” Bryant said.

Absent the funding increase, Carroll said he would have had to make a decision in the 30 days to run the county’s service on the $32,000, which he said would have presented challenges. The company may look at new “flex routes” to improve existing service, he said.

Also Tuesday, supervisors approved a resolution requesting that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine declare the county a disaster area due to extreme drought conditions. Amherst joins Bedford and Campbell counties in seeking the declarations for federal loans and disaster assistance to help citizens facing hardships.

William Seay, the county’s extension agent, said crops such as corn, fruit and apples have been damaged and hay cutting appears dismal, despite a successful first cut last spring. The county’s water streams are low and livestock is suffering due to lack of rain, he said.