Transportation proposal submitted to county

HARLEM VALLEY — Well over a year of discussion and planning culminated this month with a proposal for public transportation routes in northeastern Dutchess County that is expected to be submitted to the county for possible adoption this year.

The proposal was developed by consulting firm Nelson/Nygaard after a series of roundtable discussions with a transportation task force organized by the Foundation for Community Health, based in Sharon, Conn., as well as information gathered from questionnaires distributed throughout the affected areas in the past two months.

The task force is comprised of representatives from local municipalities, not-for-profit community service groups and concerned citizens. It was formed at the beginning of 2009, after the county eliminated LOOP bus routes servicing the area.

Since then the task force has met to address the need for public transportation, acknowledging the difficulty in making a rural public transportation system financially supportable.

Cynthia Ruiz, the county’s transit administrator, and Dutchess County Transportation Council Senior Planner Mark Debald have attended several of the task force meetings. They have presented the group with a unique task: to develop a transportation proposal for a “flex service� route that the county would fund.

The county has been broken up into four rural areas outside of the area surrounding Poughkeepsie that is already well-serviced by LOOP bus routes. Each area will receive funding from the county for an eight-hour route, once a week. The schedule of that route is up to the discretion of each area.

Municipalities represented by the task force include the majority of towns in the Northeast service zone (North East, Amenia, Stanford, Pine Plains and Washington) and Dover, which belongs to a Southeast zone grouped with Union Vale, Beekman and Pawling.

Stephanie Davis of Nelson/Nygaard developed a series of transportation proposals that were presented to the task force at the beginning of April. The parts of each proposal that would best serve the needs of the area were then combined into a final proposal that was submitted to the county earlier this month.

The proposal combines the Northeast and Southeast zone buses on a single day, allowing two buses to service areas in the towns of North East, Amenia, Pine Plains, Stanford, Washington and Dover simultaneously. One bus would run the proposed route in a clockwise manner and the other would travel counterclockwise.

The buses will run a flex route along routes 199, 82 and 343, meaning that time is allotted during the schedule to deviate off the main road to pick up passengers within a certain distance of the route.

The same buses will also run a deviated fixed route along the Route 22 corridor from Millerton to Wingdale in southern Dover, meaning that while the bus would still be able to travel off the route to pick up passengers not on the main road, it would need to travel the entirety of its original route. This would force the bus to re-enter the route at the point where it departed, whereas on the flex route it could deviate to a destination off-route and then find its way back to the route without retracing its steps.

The proposal also has routes traveling to Sharon Hospital via Route 343 in Amenia, an important destination according to those who participated in the survey. The flex routes would also offer transfer locations to LOOP Routes D and E in Millbrook and Pawling, which then could be ridden toward destinations in Poughkeepsie.

Ruiz, who was present at the April 6 meeting, was impressed by the proposal, but stressed to the task force that the routes submitted to the county might not be the exact routes that the county ends up adopting.

“Your recommendation comes to us,� she explained, “and we’ll see how it fits into our fixed route schedule. It may be different from yours, but it will make the most sense and work the best with the fixed route schedule.�

It’s unclear when exactly the county would make a decision on the proposal, but Ruiz said she expected the flex service to be in operation at some point in 2010.

The Millerton News was given a copy of the proposed schedule, but will wait to publish a detailed schedule as well as specific locations on the route until the county has released its finalized version.

The task force acknowledged the need for a strong marketing campaign once the flex service is underway, to make sure residents are aware of the service.

Also discussed at the April 6 meeting was the possibility of an independent operator run by a local community group. The service would “fill in the gaps� and would service a much smaller ridership, according to Gertrude O’Sullivan, executive director for the Foundation for Community Health. She also said that solution would not compete with the flex service in terms of operating hours.

The North East Community Center has shown some interest in being the operating group, but NECC Executive Director Jenny Hansell and O’Sullivan both stressed that the service wouldn’t be available at least until next year.