The bright neon green buses that are often spotted in front of Baker Center, GoBus, will be expanding their service by adding four new intercity routes.
GoBus, the bus program that connects Ohio University students and Athens residents to Columbus, Cleveland, Marietta, Parkersburg, Van Wert, Wooster and communities in between, announced new routes Oct. 23.
According to GoBus manager and lead community outreach Rendell Stiles, GoBus is adding routes between Toledo to Cincinnati, Toledo to Columbus, Toledo to Ashtabula and Columbus to Pittsburgh. Stiles mentioned smaller community stops will have no smaller amount between urban stops.
“To summarize, we will be expanding from five routes to nine routes,” Stiles wrote in an email.
The expansion will extend routes to Western and Northern Ohio, including cities like Bowling Green, Fremont, Marion, Middletown, Oxford, Upper Sandusky and Yellow Springs.
The expansion is the result of a partnership between the Hocking-Athens-Perry Community Action Program, which administers the GoBus program as part of its Transportation Division, and the Ohio Department of Transportation.
According to a press release by ODOT, the GoBus expansion will “connect thousands more Ohioans to essential services, higher education and employment opportunities” through a bus service that connects 47 of Ohio’s 88 counties, with 32 university connections, 27 local transit connections and an estimated annual ridership of 153,000.
Stiles said GoBus is effectively doubling their service footprint.
The project will be funded primarily by the federal Intercity Bus Program and administered by ODOT in collaboration with HAPCAP.
“It's money that comes from the FTA to ODOT, which we then pass through to our subrecipient Hocking-Athens-Perry Community Action, who then hires a contractor to provide the service there for that,” Alex Ewers, the federal grants manager at ODOT’s Office of Transit, said.
Local governments will also contribute funds to the project.
“That money is being matched with various sources of local and in-kind match, therefore this as well, but it's federal dollars that are allowing this to happen,” Ewers said.
While there is no official opening date yet for the routes, service is expected to begin this spring, Ewers said.
Currently, GoBus directly connects Athens to Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, making 64% of Ohio’s population within 10 miles of a stop and 93% within 25 miles of any bus stop, including Greyhound and FlixBus.
GoBus serves as a lifeline for underserved communities around the state.
“GoBus serves to connect rural and underserved communities with larger urban centers (and vice-versa), and to create connections with the greater national Intercity Bus Network, further providing Ohioans accessibility to transit options reaching beyond Ohio,” Stiles wrote in an email.
“Our schedules operate 7 days a week, 365 days a year, including holidays, and our fares begin at under $10,” Stiles wrote in an email.
The service is well-known in Athens and elsewhere in the state for its university connections, with stops at or near several college campuses statewide.
“College students account for a considerable portion of our total ridership, so being well-established in college towns, such as Athens, is a top priority for us,” Stiles wrote in an email.
According to their website, all buses are wheelchair accessible and lower themselves at stops to make boarding easier. Drivers are trained to assist with boarding and de-boarding, including the use of the lift, wheeled mobility devices, including storing and handling, oxygen, respirators, medicine, personal care assistants and service animals.
Overall, the project will be an asset for all Ohioans along the routes, according to Ewers.
“I just think this will be a good thing here to expand service and allow more Ohioans the opportunity to travel here on the intercity bus service and serve more parts of the state with everything,” Ewers said. “So I think it’ll be a good thing to have this happen.”
