Cache Valley transit sill being examined
Doug Smeath, Assistant News Editor
By the beginning of Fall Semester 2001, Utah State University students may be able to travel to the ends of Cache Valley – without paying a dime.
In November, Cache County residents voted to approve a sales and utilities tax increase of .0025 percent to fund a new transit district that will expand the service of the current Logan Transit District.
The new district, to be called the Cache Valley Transit District, will run buses from Richmond to Hyrum, all at no cost to riders, said LTD manager Ron Bushman.
And he said it could be up and running as soon as August.
Since the district was approved in November’s election, planners have hoped to have the service up and running by the time USU students return from the summer, Bushman said.
“We anticipate [students] will use it a lot,” he said.
The goal of August still stands, as the Cache Metropolitan Planning Organization unanimously adopted the proposal Wednesday.
The district’s opening day will probably depend on when construction of a new transit center at 150 E. 500 North is completed.
The center will be an expansion of the LTD’s current transit center, which will be able to accommodate LTD and CVTD buses, Bushman said.
Planners hope to see the center finished sometime in August, and as soon as it is, they hope to start the buses running, Bushman said.
“But you know how construction goes,” he said.
Still, the proposal’s actual implementation depends on whether a soon-to-be-formed CVTD Board of Trustees votes to approve it.
The board, which is to be organized Feb. 7, will have nine members chosen from residents of the cities and towns to be served by the CVTD.
State statute requires that none of the members be elected officials or employees of any company involved in the plans.
The transit center, which has been in the planning stages for several years, will cost Logan less than $400,000 – 20 percent of the $1.9-million cost. The rest of the funding is coming from the federal budget.