The joint cross-county route run by RiverCities Transit and Twin Transit is coming to an end after Twin Transit expanded its service to Kelso.
Twin Transit, the Lewis County-based public transit agency, launched its route to the Safeway near Three Rivers Mall on Monday. The expansion effectively takes the place of the role RiverCities played in the joint North County Connector route that launched last summer in August as a pilot project to fill one of the only public transit gaps along Interstate 5.
RiverCities Director Jim Seeks said they were given limited notice from Twin that they were expanding into Kelso. The agency is now asking to suspend their trips to Castle Rock so the two groups are not running duplicate, unnecessary trips.
“We’re now going to Castle Rock at a time when it doesn’t connect with them and it doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Seeks told the Cowlitz Transit Authority board on Wednesday.
On the joint route, Twin Transit took passengers from Centralia to the Park and Ride outside of Castle Rock, where they transferred to vehicles from RiverCities or Lower Columbia CAP. Twin Transit spokeswoman Maleah Kuzminsky said they extended their route because some of their passengers were “not able to meet a reliable connection southward to Kelso” in recent months.
The new version of Twin Transit’s purple line leaves from the Mellen Street station in Centralia and arrives in Kelso roughly an hour later before making the trip back. The passenger van stops at two I-5 exits in south Lewis County and Castle Rock along the way.
Seeks told the transit authority there had been a “miscommunication” from Twin Transit’s staff alerting them of the change. He said that he planned to hold more regular meetings with Twin now that they have a larger operation in Cowlitz County.
“It happened so quickly that we were kind of caught off-guard,” Seeks said. “It’s not my favorite way of doing things but we will work on being better communicators in the future.”
The transit board approved a public hearing date in April to end the RiverCities routes into Castle Rock and approve the replacement trips that RiverCities will use those buses for. Seeks said the specific changes would be announced next week but that it would likely include more trips to Lexington.
The North County Connector was the least-used of all RiverCities routes in February, with the agency reporting 120 passengers over the course of the month. Twin Transit reported 261 boardings in February and said “we expect continued ridership growth.”
