Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Three weeks into Kosciusko Area Bus Services’ deviated fixed route and it’s already being seen as a success.
“The first two weeks, we had 123 riders. Those first two weeks were fare free, a lot of people coming out, just really interested in learning about the route, which we loved. That was really exciting,” said KABS General Manager Kristin Rude. “Last week, with the fares implementing, our ridership did drop some, but looking at a benchmark of two people per hour as a success, that first two weeks were about 1.23 people per hour. So we’re looking at this as a successful launch and we’re excited to see as it continues to grow and people continue to learn how to use the service, really how it can make an impact.”
Monday morning, KABS celebrated the route, also known as The Lake City Loop, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce.
The route has 16 stops in Warsaw and Winona Lake, stopping at each location once an hour. It also offers limited (one per hour, within a one-quarter mile of a stop) off-route pick-ups and drop-offs by advance request. Cost is $1 per ride for adults, and any deviation is an additional 50 cents. Children under 8 years old ride free with a limit of two children per fare-paying adult. Monthly passes may be purchased for $20.
The route’s origin goes back a few years.
Cardinal Services Executive Director Marcie Arndt explained, “So every four years, INDOT (Indiana Department of Transportation) comes up to our area and they do a review. They look at all of our data, and they kind of help determine, ‘OK, you know what, we think that you might be big enough to consider some kind of deviated or fixed route,’ and that’s what they did. So four years ago, they’re like, ‘You might want to start considering Warsaw is getting populace enough that you may be able to start a deviated route.’”
INDOT said Michiana Area Council of Governments (MACOG) could help KABS with that route. Working with MACOG, KABS developed a strategic plan.
“It’s more than just ‘let’s start a deviated route,’” Arndt said. “There’s so much planning involved.”
The strategic plan to start it all began three years ago. Rude was brought on about 1-1/2 years ago and she implemented the strategic plan, including contacting MACOG, getting the feasibility study completed, the community needs assessment completed, the infrastructure needed to do the route, Arndt stated.
“It was more than just ‘let’s put a route up and we’ll have 16 stops.’ It was way more than that because the infrastructure that you need to support it, we didn’t have in place,” she said.
And that’s where the Kosciusko County Community Foundation came in.
“They’re really helping with that infrastructure piece for us to make this route successful,” Arndt said.
Community Foundation CEO Stephanie Overbey said, “The Community Foundation made a proactive grant to the deviated fixed route project. Proactive meaning that Cardinal (Services) didn’t have to apply for it. It was on our radar, we knew that they were making plans and doing the feasibility study. And so many of the things that we support, from a human services or even employment point of view, are all affected by transportation and the lack of it.”
She said they were excited to be able to make a grant that supports people getting to work, access to social services, healthcare, retail and the basic necessities of life.
“This really opens a lot of doors for people, and we’re thrilled to be a part of it,” Overbey stated.
In planning the route, Rude said she had to work through a lot of “hoops” with the city and county to make sure the route was being implemented the correct way.
“We didn’t want to just roll this out and hope for the best. We wanted to make sure we checked all the boxes, we talked to all the right people, we had the community buy-in and support to make sure what we were looking at was going to match what the community really wanted,” Rude said.
That involved going to city council and county commissioner meetings, and talking with the local transportation advisory committee and getting feedback from local nonprofits and community members.
If The Lake City Loop continues to be successful and the community requests other similar deviated fixed routes, those may be future possibilities.
“It’ll depend on, is there going to be a demand? We’re already hearing some requests for a possible east-west loop,” Arndt said. “A lot of it is going to boil down to funding, too, and support. So we’ve got to be able to get the match. We have a local-derived match that we have to have in order it to be successful, so a lot of it will be contingent on funding and rider use.”
MACOG Transit Planner Aidan McHugh said MACOG is the planning organization for the region, which includes Elkhart, St. Joe, Marshall and Kosciusko counties. They do community development, economic development, transportation and have a transit department, which mainly focuses in Elkhart and South Bend with the larger public transportation systems up there.
However, since MACOG has the expertise in running public transit, he said they were approached about the Lake City Loop last year by KABS and Kosciusko County to use MACOG’s transit knowledge on the route.
The impetus for Warsaw to have a deviated fixed route was a few different things, he stated.
“It’s the size, it’s that Warsaw is growing. It’s 15,000 or greater, I think, at this point. It’s a little bit the size, the density and also just the operational efficiency side of it. So when you’re operating an on-demand service like KABS has been traditionally, it’s not super efficient because you’re going point to point picking people up individually. And it makes it hard to have the vehicles and have the capacity to serve everybody,” McHugh said. “So, the idea really was that by having something that might be more efficient in Warsaw, they can free up more of that capacity for the rest of the county.”
He said the geography of Warsaw made the planning of the route a little challenging - the lakes, railroad tracks, the highway going through and many other things. McHugh said they came up with the best plan they could to hit all the major spots.
All the KABS vehicles are actually owned by the county commissioners because the grant for KABS from INDOT goes to Kosciusko County. The county then hires Cardinal Services to manage and staff KABS for them. The partnership started more than 40 years ago.
On the new deviated route, Kosciusko County Commissioner Cary Groninger said, “It’s something, obviously, we’ve been looking at. I come in and do the inspections every year with INDOT, with KABS, so I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. Some of the things that INDOT was really encouraging us to look at is somehow to figure out how we could do a fixed route to where we could impact more residents of our county.”
With that in mind, he said KABS “took the bull by the horns” with MACOG’s help to try to create a route that will be a big benefit to the Warsaw area.
“Hopefully, we see the ridership that we hope to. We’re really trying to connect not only the residents but college kids at Grace College with some of the facilities downtown, as well as out in the Walmart and health areas. I think they’ve done a good job of trying to create a route that kind of hits a lot of major hot spots and connects those people that might be struggling from a transportation perspective,” he said.
Obviously, there’s always more that people want, including seeing the route go further out, but it’s little steps at a time, Groninger said. “This is a big first step, I think, of really trying to create something that Warsaw has been needing for some time.”
One of Groninger’s aspirations, if they can see that there’s a need for it, is to eventually maybe have one day a week or every two weeks where KABS goes to the small communities in the county and provide rides to the residents there to places like Walmart, healthcare facilities or wherever there’s a need.
“That would be one of my hopes as a commissioner, but, obviously, funding is always a struggle,” Groninger said. “I think, with (Senate Bill 1), there’s been some funding cuts in some of the INDOT stuff. Fortunately, the Community Foundation stepped up in a big way and really kind of helped fund, at least this first year, with this deviated fixed route, so I’m excited to see their willingness to really see the need and try to lean in.”
