The New Face of CARTA
May 29, 2012: Today, we had the pleasure of hearing from Elliott Summey of CARTA (Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority); he covered the challenges and highlighted the opportunities in the organization, and spoke to the benefits of mass transit in our community.
CARTA has been is existence since 1995 and operates the only bus service in the city of Charleston and the DASH shuttle service on the peninsula. Summey said as a third generation County Councilman he attempts to operate government like he would the family owned business, maximizing income and managing expenses. The Councilman shared that the primary challenge for CARTA is that the funding mechanism has been chronically broken; he elaborated saying that mass transit is always expensive and does not make money, similar to garbage pick up or recycling, but said the key is “getting the most bang for our buck”. Summey is actively closing lightly utilized routes and redistributing those resources to areas where “we are leaving people on the street”.
Summey reminded the group that all Charleston tax payers are paying for CARTA whether they ride the bus or not, and he explained that as the economy has taken a down turn and gas prices continue to rise more and more people are looking for mass transit. As a community leader, Mr. Summey reiterated that “we have to get serious about our transportation issue. He said: 526 is as wide as it can get and successful mass transit is a serious quality of life component; every major city must provide mass transit options”.
The speaker went on to briefly discuss the working five year plan for CARTA, the number one goal being “get out of debt”. The organization currently has approximately $5,000,000 in debt and the method of retiring it will depend somewhat on state and federal funding. Additionally, CARTA has launched a new cutting edge website allowing riders to go online and plug in destinations and locate the most efficient route. Summey is focused on “Smart Drivers, monitoring fuel efficiency, timeliness, and safety”, he has also upgraded to a paperless management system that allows dispatch to tell a driver the most efficient route to a pick up. It seems that the improvements are beneficial as he reported that year to date ridership is up over 12%, and they are on target to carry over five million customers this year (4.5 million in 2011).
Summey closed by saying that he believes in CARTA, if we make it friendly, clean and efficient, the people will ride!”
Submitted by Elizabeth Burwell , Editor