Fare hike planned for Go Westmoreland shared-ride system

Fares to ride Go Westmoreland vehicles will increase next year under a revised fee structure expected to be approved this fall by the county’s transit authority.

Authority board members said last week they intend to approve the agency’s first fare hike in more than four years to ride the door-to-door subsidized shared-ride paratransit service geared toward senior citizens and low-income and disabled passengers.

“The only way to get more revenue into the system is through a rate increase. It is absolutely time to do it,” authority Executive Director Alan Blahovec said.

Fares on the authority’s fixed-route commuter bus service to Pittsburgh and local scheduled routes that run throughout Westmoreland County will remain unchanged, officials said.

Go Westmoreland represents nearly half of the the authority’s ridership and is paid for through a combination of state subsidies and co-pays from passengers. Some riders, such as those who receive medical assistance benefits from the state, are not charged out-of-pocket fares.

Others, including senior citizens, pay fares based on the length of their trip. Seniors pay $4.25 for a trip between five and 10 miles, according to the authority’s fare structure that was put in place in 2018.

Longer rides are more expensive. A senior who travels more than 30 miles pays a fare of $11.25.

The amount of the proposed fare hike has yet to be determined, and a final plan is expected to be approved by authority board members before the end of 2022.

“The plan is to have the new fares in place by the first of the year (2023),” Deputy Director Ashley Cooper-Brounce said.

The Go Westmoreland service provided rides to more than 181,000 passengers in 2019. Those numbers declined in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic, which caused the authority to implement substantial service cuts amid staffing shortages.

Ridership on the system has rebounded this year. In August, Go Westmoreland had more than 13,700 passengers, the most it has carried since February 2020.

Officials said the service remains understaffed, and the authority continues to seek to fill 14 vacant driver positions. This month, the authority scaled back the hours it drops off and picks up riders on some out-of-county trips.

Meanwhile, ridership on the authority’s fixed-route bus system — which operates 19 daily and Saturday routes — continues to rebound from enormous losses related to the pandemic.

The authority carried more than 16,000 bus passengers in August, a number that represents just more than half of its ridership two years ago. Still, the number of riders increased by more than 32% from August 2021, according to statistics released by the authority last week.