Daniel’s Hill Needs GLTC Shuttle Service

The News & Advance
Published: September 22, 2008

When the city closed the D Street Bridge on the lower end of Rivermont earlier this year because it was deteriorating, it also cut off public transportation to one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods.

Cabell Street, the main artery on Daniel’s Hill, intersects farther up with Rivermont Avenue. Before the bridge was closed, Greater Lynchburg Transit Company buses could use it as an entrance to the neighborhood and then drive up Cabell to Rivermont. Or they could enter the top of Cabell from Rivermont and drive out by way of the bridge.

As it stands now, the buses have no place to turn around, which is why public transportation has been cut off to the neighborhood. But the folks over there need transportation just as much as they ever did. And reconstruction of the bridge is not expected to be complete for at least two years.

How can that problem be resolved? The transit company and the city are trying to find an answer.

Neighborhood residents showed support at a community meeting last week for a limited shuttle service that would provide some transportation, but not the full schedule they had before the bridge closed.

The proposed shuttle service would run during peak hours, presumably early morning and late afternoon. One resident explained that she voted for the shuttle because it would restore some semblance of a regular bus route to the area.

Another option would have rerouted an existing bus route into the neighborhood, but that would have reduced service elsewhere, which the residents did not favor.

A third proposal would have provided an on-demand service that would require residents to schedule rides in advance. That did not offer the same prospect for transportation as the proposed shuttle service.

The shuttle service will require additional money from City Council. Transit officials estimate it will cost some $81,000 and they plan to make that request from the council as soon as they can schedule a meeting.

With public dollars stretched about as far as they can be stretched, the transit firm has not had much luck getting more money from the city. It has raised its fares to help keep the buses on their daily schedules. Those increases have come in response to rising expenses, not the least of which is the fuel that keeps the buses running.

Daniel’s Hill, nonetheless, is just as deserving of some form of public transportation as any other neighborhood in the city. With that in mind, the council surely could find the cost of the shuttle service to help those folks get to work and to run the errands that their households require. It’s an added expense, to be sure, but doesn’t that part of the city deserve even a limited shuttle service? The answer has to be “yes.”