Thursday, April 25 you have an opportunity to ride one of Greensboro’s 10 electric buses for free.
Actually you can ride any bus in the Greensboro Transit Authority (GTA) system for free that includes HEAT and SCAT, although SCAT buses are for people with disabilities that prevent them from riding the fixed route buses. And not just that but the PART buses are free as are the buses in Winston-Salem and High Point. So you could take a Greensboro bus to the PART terminal, ride to Winston-Salem or High Point ride around on free buses for a while, take PART back to Greensboro and ride a bus back to wherever you parked your car, all for free.
The Greensboro Transit Authority (GTA) board in March voted to participate in the National Get On Board For Public Transit Day on April 25 sponsored by American Public Transportation Association. But “sponsored by” is a little misleading because the American Public Transportation Association is not paying the cost of a free fare day. The taxpayers of Greensboro will be picking up the tab for that.
So on Thursday if you happen to be standing at a bus stop when an electric bus comes by, you could hop on and hop off at the next stop just so you can brag about having ridden on an electric bus.
No fares will be collected on the buses in Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem or by PART on Thursday.
At the District 2 Community Forum last week City Councilmember Goldie Wells invited people who haven’t ridden a bus in a long time to give it a try on Thursday.
It might be a good idea to ride a bus and see what it’s like because along with the 3.5 cents of property tax revenue or about $10 million that is dedicated to the bus system, the City Council is going to have to find an additional $2.5 million in order to provide the same level of service next year the city is currently providing. Plus, there is a lot of talk by city councilmembers about enhancing bus service which means more money would have to be allocated.
If you want to try out an electric bus and don’t want to leave it to chance you can visit the city’s bus tracker site at http://gtaheat.transloc.com. Once there if you double click on the moving icons, it provides the bus number. The electric buses are: 797, 798, 848, 849, 850, 851, 852, 853, 854 and 855.
Greensboro put the first electric bus in North Carolina on the road Jan. 31. It now has ten operating and by the end of the year will have 16 which will give Greensboro the second largest fleet of electric buses on the East Coast.
