MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The Mountain Line Transit Authority will resume the collection of fares on the Route 50 Don Knotts.

Mountain Line CEO Maria Smith announced that the resumption of fares will begin on December 1st that will coincide with the establishment of two new rider-friendly programs. This comes after months of negotiations with public officials as well as conversations with Morgantown area social service agencies, who have been the most vocal advocates for the issuance of free bus passes.

“On December 1st, we’re going to resume collecting fares on Route 50, the Don Knotts route, which travels between Westover, downtown (Morgantown), and out to Scott Avenue and the Hornbeck Road Walmart,” said Smith.

According to Smith, the decision to resume fair collections stems from a combination of factors. The first is the expiration of the initial free rider program in June, which was formerly subsidized by Morgantown Community and the City of Morgantown. The second was the apparent misuse of the free rider program, which led to Mountain Line officials working with both city and Monongalia County officials to restyle the program to be used for direct social service purposes.

“It was social services who were supporting this, but they were providing trips who were either were non-destination riders, or were not using the social services,” said Smith on what prompted the need to start a new program. “So it was a lot of their force that was misdirected,” she said.

The two programs will be funded as part of partnerships with the City of Morgantown and the Monongalia County Commission. The City of Morgantown program will allow for free bus transportation called the “City Access Pass” to be provided to individuals who will use social services at Morgantown’s Hazel’s House of Hope or elsewhere in the Morgantown area. The county will help support the passes via pilot program bridge funding, where social services can reach out to Mountain Line to request the passes, with cost responsibilities being shouldered on a county level. This was all agreed upon ahead of the announcement of the return of fare collections for the Route 50 Don Knotts line.

“So what we have done, the city has agreed to put in place funding in order to allow us to give us time to come up with another plan,” said Smith. “So that’s what we’re now implementing, and we wanted to make sure that we had these kind of in place before we started collecting fares on Route 50,” she said.

The hope for Mountain Line, as well as the City of Morgantown and the Monongalia County Commission, is that the new bus pass programs will continue to assist low-income residents. As the program takes shape, Morgantown area social services agreed to submit data to Mountain Line regarding how the bus passes will be used, which will help determine the long-term prospects of continued financial support from public entities. The distribution period is expected to take place by the time Route 50 Don Knotts line fares return at the start of December.

“We’re trying to make them easy to get to,” said Smith. “So we’re looking at the Public Safety Building, the (Morgantown) library, we’re going to work with the city ambassadors, we’ve met with the police department, we also may be using the blessing boxes around town, and there’s some other social service agencies that we might work with as well,” she said.

 

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