With a deviated fixed route, Kosciusko Area Bus Service (KABS) hopes to combine the reliability of a fixed route with the flexibility to deviate as needed within a certain area.
Tuesday at the Warsaw Community Public Library, KABS held a two-hour open house to explain the new deviated fixed route while also taking public input on it.
Aidan McHugh, Michiana Area Council of Governments transit planner, said, “MACOG, as the regional NPO, we kind of help with a lot of different planning things in these four counties - St. Joe, Elkhart, Marshall and Kosciusko. MACOG also administers the inter-urban trolley in Elkhart, so we have a whole transit department, but it’s nice to be able to work with our more rural transit providers sometimes.”
He said KABS reached out to MACOG about looking at adding some new service in Warsaw, and what they’re currently considering is a deviated fixed route.
“A deviated fixed route is kind of a hybrid between what KABS currently has, which is the on-demand service where you call, schedule a ride, it takes you directly from point A to point B,” McHugh said. “And normal, fixed-route bus service, like larger cities have where the bus runs a scheduled route, you just hop on, no calling, no scheduling, it just runs a normal route daily on a fixed schedule.”
The deviated fix route is a hybrid of those two things, he continued. It has kind of a fixed loop that will run hourly, more or less, but some extra time is built into the schedule. There are fixed stops along the route where people can wait with no scheduling or calling ahead.
“But, maybe you have some accessibility issues or things like that. You can also call ahead and schedule a deviation, so that will be more similar to the on-demand service part of it where if you live within a certain radius, like a quarter mile, of the normal fixed part of the loop, you can call, request a deviation and the bus will deviate from the route, come pick you up before resuming the normal route,” McHugh explained.
There are some ideas of where the route for the deviated fixed route could go. At Tuesday’s open house, two different concepts were presented on a poster board, though they are not final.
The North Concept within the city of Warsaw included parts of Market Street, Winona Avenue; parts of Center and Harrison streets; CR 200N, East Bell Drive and Ind. 15. The South Concept extended beyond the Warsaw city limits to include areas of Winona Lake, including Detroit Street, East Winona Avenue, Kings Highway, Wooster Road, CR 250E, Frontage Road, Harrison Street, CR 200N and North Park Avenue.
“It’s, obviously, Warsaw/Winona Lake, the densest part of the county, so where it makes the most sense. And we’ve gotten some feedback from surveys, looking at current KABS rider data of some general areas that we want to serve - Walmart, north of U.S. 30, the hospital, the library, things like that, that are major destinations,” McHugh said. “Because the goal of this is to absorb the densest trips in this area, so that it might free up the on-demand service where people could just use the fixed route to reach some of these major destinations.”
However, with just running one bus a day on the deviated fixed route every hour, there is only so much that can be done within that hour, he said.
“So this meeting is to kind of show yes, we have some ideas, but also look for what the people want, what can we understand that’s beyond just the ridership data. And we can kind of explain some of the different trade-offs,” McHugh stated.
While they have some ideas for the deviated fixed route, they are also very open to feedback. Service hours and days are still up in the air, which was other information KABS and MACOG was hoping to glean from the public at Tuesday’s open house.
Kristin Rude, KABS general manager, said currently they are running between 3,700 to 3,900 passengers monthly. She said many of their riders are regulars, but they have been getting a lot of new riders.
“We’ve been creating a lot of additional profiles, and that need in the area is definitely there, so getting that service availability out there,” she said. “I think that this route will really help that availability for the community.”
A deviated fixed route is not a new concept for KABS.
“We’ve done a lot of research and history into KABS, and it was more of a fixed route is what we found back in the ’90s. There were a couple fixed routes that were operated, but in the recent years there has not been a deviated or fixed route operated,” Rude said.
McHugh said there was a little bit of back and forth in the 1980s-90s. A couple times they tried a fixed route system, with one having three or four routes, but it was always a fixed route system or an on-demand system and never a hybrid until now.
Trying to not repeat history, he said they want to test out a deviated fixed route and build ridership out instead of going full-steam ahead.
McHugh reiterated that the on-demand won’t be going anywhere.
“The normal KABS service will remain. This is sort of an addition to that. The idea is that this can kind of collect a lot of those trips from this area and make it a little more efficient, which, hopefully, should free up more capacity on the other vehicles to serve the rest of the county more reliably,” he said.
Rude stated, “Our goal is to serve more people and be able to serve the larger county more efficiently.”
If anyone was unable to make Tuesday’s event, they can still share feedback with Rude via email at [email protected]
For more information on KABS, visit the website at cardinalservices.org/services/KABS or call 574-267-4990.