CHARLESTON, W.Va.– The Kanawha Valley Regional Transportation Authority Board hosted their third and final public meeting Wednesday to present their finalized bus service changes.
Due to costs, KRT started the proposals back in 2022, and are now finalizing the plans and the official board vote will be held Thursday morning.
And one of the proposed things KRT talked about was getting rid of the Sunday services, and Edward Woolwine, a citizen who depends on the services that they provide on Sunday said that he wouldn’t be able to get to work on Corridor G.
“And if they’re going to cut out the bus on Sunday and not at least have KRT Plus, I’ll have to tell my employer I can’t work Sundays,” Woolwine said. “Which is not right for me, not right for my employer, which is just a royal pain. Do I wish I could go to work on Sunday’s, absolutely.”
Another citizen, Alberta Brown said that she was concerned about being able to make it local functions that are on Sunday.
“I do, do other things, like the car show, I can walk to that because it’s in my capitol, but I can’t walk downtown, when they have it downtown on the Boulevard, functions down there,” Brown said. “I was going to the multifest on Sunday and that would have counted that out.”
Another proposed plan was raising the day fare price from $2.50 to $3.50 and Woolwine said that while he’s not opposed to raising the day fare price by a dollar, he thinks that the board needs to be cautious.
“If there trying to grow rider ship, they need to be very wary of increasing a price,” Woolwine said
And since this was the last public meeting, Sean Hill Executive Director of KRT, said that the board will be able to use the public’s comments to make a decision.
“The nice thing here, throughout this process, we’ve recorded all our individual meetings, we’ve shared that amongst our board members, several of them were here today, also they can go online and watch it to make sure that those comments are digested, and they can reflect on those so they can make an informed decision.” Hill said.
Hill also said that, while the vote is Thursday, these new plans would not go into effect until February 2025.