Mountain Line & GMAYC Offer High School "Free Ride Program"

Mountain Line Transit and The Greater Morgantown Area Youth Commission have partnered to offer all Monongalia County High School students the opportunity to ride the bus for FREE!!

Upon boarding the bus just show the driver your High School ID and ride for FREE!!

There are several tools available to you in order to get to know our routes.

1. www.busride.org/Routes has a listing of all of the routes including maps and schedules. You may want to begin with the Blue Line that provides direct service to University High School, or the Southside Route that provides service to Morgantown High School.

2. www.busride.org/MyBus/BusFrame.html will take you to "My Bus" a web page where you can track the location of each bus and check to see if it's running behind or on time. This page also displays Mountain Line's latest news about road conditions, construction detours and will soon provide information about the PRT. If you go to www.busride.org/MyBus/MyBus.htm you can download the "My Bus" Time Ticker to your pda.

3. www.busride.org/google_refresh.html will take you to our Google Trip planner, just enter in your location and your destination and it will tell you which bus to catch when, there are many other useful tools in the Google Trip planner, so take some time to experiment with it.

4. When in doubt you can call the depot at 291-RIDE.

 
     

The State Journal March 20, 2009

By PAM KASEY

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MORGANTOWN — High school students ride public transportation for free in Morgantown through a new Mountain Line Transit Authority program.

High School Ride Free allows all high school students to ride local Mountain Line bus routes for free by showing a valid school ID.

Lines serving University High School and Morgantown High School give students access to the main depot, where they can catch any of the other 19 routes that serve Monongalia County.

The program provides alternative transportation to students for after-school activities, sports, work or technical education programs. Mountain Line Marketing Officer Maria Smith said students are using it for all of those reasons.

 

“They are taking it to and from school and also riding to the depot,” Smith said. “On Monday, March 2, there were softball tryouts, and we saw a big spike in ridership then. And it’s not just after-school athletics but academics as well.”

Using the centrally located Garrett Street depot as a drop-off and pickup point could lighten traffic around town, although Smith said it’s too soon to say how much of a difference the program might make.

“One of the goals we hope this program accomplishes is addressing the traffic buildup at Morgantown High School and University High School in the mornings,” she said. “We’re hoping that parents will realize that they can drop their kids off at the depot, which will keep them out of the high school traffic areas, get their kids to school on time and get them to work on time.”

Students also can use the program on weekends to get around Morgantown.

  An advertisement promoting the program depicts a used car for $5,000, car insurance at $50/month and a parking pass at $50/month. Below the images, a city bus bears the tag “Priceless.”

Since it was launched on Feb. 2, the number of students taking advantage of the program rose from 47 the first week to 81 in the fourth, according to Mountain Line statistics.

Mountain Line’s Web site, www.busride.org, now links to the Google Transit trip planner to help students plan their transportation.

 High School Ride Free is supported by Mountain Line Transit and the Greater Morgantown Area Youth Commission.

 

 

 
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