This morning the average price of regular gasoline in the United States passed $3.50 per gallon.  In the Middle East, brave Americans are fighting and dying to secure an oil supply and stabilize a regional politics which has frustrated the west since the Roman Empire.  Despite seven years of unrelenting road building, which has pushed the Town of Mount Pleasant into spending 1.5 million dollars more than it will collect next year, traffic is still backed up for miles along the town’s highways. Charleston Post and Courier, April 18, 2008.  Through all of this, the CARTA express bus in Mount Pleasant is beginning to run full.

It has been nearly three years since CARTA came back from a near shutdown that eliminated all East Cooper bus service and left only limited buses running on five core routes.  The part of Charleston County some political leaders dismissed as a place no one would ride the bus is currently running some of the system’s busiest routes. If you still believe “nobody rides the bus,” you haven’t been on board lately.  The 20 riders on the No. 40 I rode home with last Friday afternoon on the once empty mid afternoon run are proof things are changing.

East Cooper’s day long Monday to Saturday No. 40 fixed route, which runs from the Visitor’s Center in downtown Charleston to a new end of the line stop at the North 17 Walmart, beyond 41, continues to show steady growth in ridership. In March 2007 there were 8,498 riders.  In March 2008 there were 10,404.  The 40 got a new, attractive stop, bench and shelter in Seaside Farms.

The Express route, now running from a park and ride lot at the North 17 Walmart, with a single stop at Kmart before going into downtown Charleston and finally out to Citadel Mall, has shown a dramatic 121 percent increase in ridership during the same period, going from 4,773 to 10,462.  It’s delivering hundreds of people a day to work at the universities and hospitals downtown.

As the Express Bus fills, CARTA is considering adding a “pusher” bus which picks up additional passengers so everyone gets one of the comfortable fabric upholstered seats you pay extra for on the Express.

You can even now transfer to a rural service bus at Wal-Mart which will take you to and from Awendaw and McClellenville.  Call ahead of time and it comes.

The door to door, call for a reservation, Flex Route is currently running two neighborhood buses at capacity.  It’s a share the ride system which makes sure there is bus service on the Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island.

Ridership is up throughout the CARTA system.  In March 2007 there were 264,216 riders.  A year later there were 312,660.  Many days, over 12,000 passengers now ride CARTA busses.

CARTA buses now run on time.  Contract operator Veolia, based in France, is bringing European on time standards to Lowcountry buses.

Some people are sitting around dreaming about cheap hydrogen, cheap long range electric cars and anything else which will bring the unsustainable dream of an automobile base lifestyle back from the dead.  It’s becoming like the Ghost Dance culture of the Plains Indians in the late 19th century, who rebelled on the reservations to dance in the burning sun so the Great Spirit would make the buffalo return.  

Other people are figuring out what bus transit can do for East Cooper.

There are some things which can make the East Cooper Transit System work and they may go in the pipeline soon.  More benches and shelters are needed at appropriate locations.   There may be plans to revise the route of the No. 40 so it serves the new Waterfront Memorial Park under the bridge and the thousand hotel rooms nearby, which would give them a direct link to the Visitor’s Center downtown.  More service and new fixed routes for IOP and Sullivan’s are being mulled over.  Eventually walkable and neighborhood connected park and ride lots will be needed for Northern Mount Pleasant, probably with special sections for small electric personal vehicles and large bike racks. If Express Bus ridership continues to grow, it might be possible to run a separate line to each of the stops, giving those boarding at the North 17 Wal-Mart an uninterrupted ride all the way downtown.

Public input is welcome on all of these ideas.  Full information on the entire system, an e-mail link for suggestions and notices of upcoming meetings can all be found on the www.ridecarta.com Web site.

However, the CARTA Board’s decisions aren’t going to be driven by your e-mails about what they should do so someone else will ride the bus.  Ridership, the return at the fare box and the number of bottoms in those seats, both the hard fiberglass ones on the 40 and the cushy ones on the Express and Flex, is the critical factor.  The areas where busses are ridden more are the areas which will get more busses and additional busses sooner and more often. If you want better service, encourage your neighbors to try a ride.

The routes currently running are being reviewed constantly. Service is adjusted based on where the busses are running with the most people on board.  It is a contest the East Cooper area is beginning to win.

It isn’t all tree hugging misery on board either. By now the people who share the daily ride know each other. They’ve become friends. Instead of fighting aggressive traffic, they’re enjoying the ride.  Somewhere on the system, someone fell in love with their bus driver. They’re married now.  The view on the Ravenel bridge from the bus is great.  You can enjoy it when the 70,000 pound bus your on has made the threat of being run over by a hummer and its distracted cell phone obsessed driver irrelevant.

CARTA has big goals for the future. They’re aiming for 15,000 riders a day and a half million in a month.  If a lot of those people come from the East Cooper area, we’ll soon find buses coming more often and nearer to home.

William Hamilton (www.wjhamilton.com) is an attorney who lives on I’On Village.

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