News
Changes roll in for Athens Public Transit
< < Back toWith the start of fall semester at Ohio university, The Athens Public Transit is rolling out new changes.
Transportation Services Manager, Michael Lachman, says the goal, is to bring in more riders.
"Some of the routes we've added are for specific purposes for example our route number four. Each of our routes are numbered now. Our four route is designed primarily to take students from south green and east green out to some of the most requested stores on East state street," says Lachman.
Along with the routes, the price of bus fare has dropped from $1.50 to just $1.
Temporary bus stop signs have been set up on busy streets like Court and East State in order to catch more attention from students, and it seems to be working.
Ohio University Senior, Bryan Hoover says the bus system is convenient, "it's cheap and if it's rainy outside I would like to ride it instead of walk." "
I wanted to go to Wal-Mart or East State and it was the main or the only means of transportation and I never had a problem it was a very good experience," says OU Graduate Student, Alicia Aikens.
"We've had a big bump up ridership-wise on Monday and it went down a lot on Tuesday so it's been all over the map. One thing we have seen, we monitor our agency website and our traffic on that has quadrupled or quintupled over the week so people if they haven't ridden yet, they are definitely checking it out," says Lachman.
Lachman says funding for these changes comes in part from the federal government and the Ohio Department of Transportation and local advertising.
You can find out more about the Athens Public Transit by visiting their website at athenstransit.org.