An experimental bus route between Centralia and South Lewis County will end next week, with the transit system saying the two-year, grant-funded trial run didn't attract many riders.
Other grants, however, will keep many Lewis County buses running for the next two years.
Twin Transit, based in Centralia, will receive $500,000 from a federal grant for the next two years.
L.E.W.I.S. Mountain Highway Transit, running from Packwood to Centralia, will receive just shy of $400,000, allowing the entirely grant-funded program to continue for another two years.
In Cowlitz County, the Lower Columbia Community Action Council received $88,000. The group will begin daily express service between Longview, Castle Rock, Toledo and Centralia starting later this summer.
That service will, in some ways, patch the gap that will be created Tuesday when Twin Transit's route 51 ends after two years of daily service between Centralia, Chehalis, Napavine, Winlock, Vader and Toledo.
Despite attempts to tweak the trial run, it never attracted enough ridership to pursue as a permanent route, said Patty Alvord, who handles daily administration for Twin Transit.
"We did not even apply for other grant sources for it because the numbers would not justify funding," Alvord said.
The South Lewis County service had been 100 percent funded by state and local grants as a demonstration, but in some months it had fewer than two riders per hour.
Alvord said there had been strong public support for the rural route at meetings, but that support didn't translate into riders, she said.
Perhaps, she said, "people would like to have it there, but that doesn't mean they necessarily would use it. They like to have that option open to them."
The route wound past Napavine's Mayme Shaddock Park, past "the world's largest egg" and down the lonesome Winlock-Vader Road, then back up Jackson Highway from Toledo.
Many used the bus to get to work, the doctor, or to run errands, said Alvord, citing a survey that showed two-thirds had no other form of transportation.
On Thursday afternoon, the stubby Twin Transit bus was empty when it pulled out of the Lewis County Mall in north Chehalis at about 4:30. The driver, who gave her name only as Janice, said she expected to pick up a few passengers in Chehalis.
She said many of the riders are elderly and disabled, while others are younger but lost their driver's licenses through court action.
Although the route's last day is Monday, the riders who have no other form of transportation are holding on to the end, she said.
"It's hard when you've had the freedom to get to town and you can't any more," she said.
She said one rider works at Kmart in Chehalis. Another takes classes at Centralia College.
The route needed an average of eight riders per trip, but averaged 3 to 5, the driver said.
Within a few months, however, a Longview bus will make a South Lewis County stop on its way to Chehalis.
The twice-daily route will stop at the Toledo park-and-ride lot at exit 63 from Interstate 5 starting Aug. 4, said Kelly Wagoner, transportation manager for the Lower Columbia Community Action Council.
The group ran a similar route from 1998 to 2001, but lost funding at about the same time Twin Transit started running its route back and forth to Vader.
Wagoner said the new route won't run all the way into Toledo or other small Lewis County towns.
"We did that previously. We found there was just no ridership to take up all that time," he said.
With daily bus service from Longview to Vancouver, Wash., there will now be daily mass transit links from Centralia and Chehalis to the Portland area beyond train and Greyhound service.
No such links connect north to Olympia.
Although the court struck down Initiative 695, which in 1999 cut car tab fees to $30, the Legislature passed a similar law that saved car owners money, but devastated funding to smaller agencies such as local bus service.
Both Thurston County's Intercity Transit and Lewis County's Twin Transit cut their routes to Grand Mound, which had been a connection point from Centralia to Olympia.
The loss of the motor vehicle excise tax — 44 percent of Twin Transit's funding — is still an open wound on the budget, said Alvord, but the latest grant will help keep up the level of service.
The transit agency has cut an administrative position, switched to smaller, cheaper buses, and cut operational overhead, Alvord said.
Money set aside over the years to expand Twin Transit to countywide service has instead been used to keep basic bus service going over the past three years.
Still, even with the latest $500,000 grant, Twin Transit needs another $250,000 in grants to avoid a 14 percent service cut.
"It's not a permanent solution. It's a two-year improvement," she said.
The bus system, funded by a 0.1 percent Twin Cities sales tax surcharge, spent about $1.1 million last year, with routes that crisscross the Twin Cities and include a morning express run to the industrial parks.
Alvord said she's looking at other grant sources to keep service at current levels.
