When voting last month to support Pilot Mountain in seeking the reinstatement of PART bus service to Surry, Mount Airy saw it as assisting a sister city — but the big brother in the local governmental family wasn’t amused.
“The Surry County commissioners, we were very displeased in your decision,” Larry Johnson, one of those five individuals, told Mount Airy officials during a meeting at City Hall last Thursday night.
Commissioner Johnson, who represents the Mount Airy District on the county board, said he was speaking on the behalf of the other Surry commissioners in responding to city officials’ Aug. 4 action regarding the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation (PART).
The Mount Airy Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution of support then, at the request of a Pilot Mountain official, to join that town to the east in asking that the public transportation service to Surry be reinstated.
It was discontinued by the county officials effective with the start of the new fiscal year on July 1, citing the cost required compared to the ridership involved — specifically local revenues from a rental car tax which went to support the program.
County did its “homework”
Johnson reiterated that ridership was “very, very low” when speaking during the public forum portion of last week’s city council meeting.
“We did a lot of homework on this,” Johnson added. “It wasn’t spur-of-the-moment.”
That evaluation process centered on the PART parking lot at the Big Lots shopping center just off Carter Street in Mount Airy, but did not involve counting vehicles in the lot but the persons actually getting on and off the buses.
“We used our own eyes,” the county commissioner said, explaining that some parking in the lot are doing so to use the city greenway nearby.
Johnson said since the service was discontinued, only a handful of citizens have complained, including some from Pilot, one from Cana, Virginia, and “zero” from Mount Airy where the bulk of car-rental tax revenues are generated.
The visiting county official remarked that the county could pay each rider a couple of hundred dollars and still come out to the good with the funding equation involved.
Although he voted for last month’s resolution in support of Pilot Mountain, Joe Zalescik, a city commissioner, also voiced some of the same concerns then about low ridership.
While the city council seemed somewhat swayed by a stated need for local residents to have a means of transportation to medical facilities in Winston-Salem — among the stops on the regional PART routes along with shopping venues — this was questioned by Johnson.
He suggested last Thursday that if citizens need a ride to and from a medical procedure that would preclude them from driving themselves, then family members, friends or church members can provide this.
Johnson also took aim at people who used the transportation service as a low-cost means of going shopping or eating out, saying they were being subsidized by those renting cars to the tune of $100,000 annually to fund the program.
“They should do that on their own,” the county official said of such passengers paying their way.
The fate of the rental car revenue is yet to be decided, Johnson advised. He mentioned that PART officials have money coming “out their ears” from various governmental sources to fund the system rather than taxing Surry motorists.
What will become of the parking lot off Carter Street is another question to be answered, based on discussion Thursday.
Another motivation for Mount Airy officials’ support of Pilot Mountain was the notion by recent high gasoline prices would result in greater use of the bus service by the public if it were reinstated.
But comments by Commissioner Johnson indicate that such a reversal is not likely to occur.
“The county commissioners are firm in our decision,” he said.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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