Public transportation on the Kenai Peninsula can leave a lot to be desired, especially compared to more urban areas of the state. That’s one reason why CARTS, the Central Area Rural Transit System, is holding some public meetings next week, to get suggestions on what could work better and more efficiently.
“We’re evaluating the current service. We’re evaluating our current budget and seeing what we can do with the money we have," says CARTS executive director Jennifer Beckmann.
The organization is developing a longer-term plan and that means not only looking at what’s working well or not right now, but what could work better in the future, provided there’s funding.
“We’re also looking at how we could increase services if there was an increase to our budget, say if we got more local money or something like that. So, it’s kind of two-fold; it’s looking at what we’re doing currently, how we can do it better and what we could do if we had more resources.”
Local funding for CARTS has been a political football for nearly two decades. The borough used to provide some funding, as much as $50,000 annually. But two years ago, after that number had already been cut in half, the assembly voted to cut its support entirely. For an organization that relies heavily on grants, local municipal funding is an important tool for leveraging extra dollars from state and federal programs.
Beckmann says the degree to which you value public transportation is pretty tightly correlated with the degree to which you use it.
“If you use it, of course it’s very valuable. If you’re not necessarily using the system, sometimes it may be a little more difficult to convince people of the value of it.”
CARTS currently provides transportation from Sterling to the end of the Kenai Spur highway in Nikiski, and down to Kasilof and all the way to the end of Funny River road. The public meetings to get input on how to improve that service are next Monday from 4-6 p.m. at Homer city hall, next Wednesday, March 7th from 5-7 p.m. at the library in Soldotna, and the following evening from 5-7 at the Challenger Learning Center in Kenai.