David McManus hasn’t driven a vehicle for about 30 years, but he still has ways of getting from his home in Lyndora to shop for essentials on Main Street in Butler.

The Butler Transit Authority’s local service has a stop by the post office on Whitestown Road, which McManus said takes him to the city so he can get what he needs.

“I ride it on and off, maybe once a month,” McManus said Wednesday afternoon as he was waiting at the West New Castle Street stop for the bus back home. “The schedule is pretty consistent.”

John Paul, executive director of the Butler Transit Authority, said the authority’s administrators have tried to keep routes as consistent as possible, and the service has added more stops than it has gotten rid of since it was incorporated Sept. 28, 1989.

According to Paul, the authority’s founders started the service with four routes, and buses have been traversing almost those same routes for more than 30 years.

“We designed all the routes in Butler to coordinate with what was required by the federal government to align with economic areas,” Paul said. “They included the low-income areas, the senior high rises in the community, the hospital and doctors’ offices, and retail establishments.”

Joe Hasychak is a member of the transit authority board who helped found the agency in the late 1980s. He said prior to the transit authority’s creation, there was a private busing service that shut down in the 1980s, and there were some other attempts to provide transit services in the Butler area through the decade.

Hasychak, who was a Butler Township commissioner in the 1980s, said he and Butler’s mayor at the time, Ron Forcht, discussed starting a public transportation system. It would be started with financial support from both municipalities and grant money from Pennsylvania that allowed them to purchase the authority’s first buses.

“We had to have a solicitor, of course, and we used the township’s solicitor at the time,” he said. “We had to get it approved, and we had to create a board. We met periodically — it was in the city’s offices.”

Hasychak also said the name of the authority’s vehicles, “The Bus,” came from a contest in which Butler residents could suggest names for the bus service.

The local routes would be designed by the authority’s first director, Paul Domenick, according to Hasychak, and each has many stops along the trips.

Route 1 goes from the terminal to its first stop at the Terrace Apartments and travels as far as Pointe Plaza in Butler Township. Routes 2 and 4 go from the Lafayette Apartments and round Butler County Community College and Greater Butler Mart. Route 3 goes from the intersection of Chestnut and Jefferson streets and rounds the Butler Health System Crossroads Campus. Route 5 — the newest route — is an “express route” that has its first stop at the intersection of Wayne and Main streets and rounds Butler Crossing and Moraine Plaza.

“The fifth route is the express route, and it was put in place to alleviate some of the ridership on Route 1,” said Kelly Stewart, public relations and IT manager for the transit authority.

All routes begin at the transit authority terminal at Hollywood Drive and end at the intersection of West Cunningham and Chestnut streets.

Paul said the routes are designed to cross residential and points of interest, like businesses and hospitals.

“We tried not to modify it too much over the years as not to take away with what was originally designed,” Paul said. “We have added stops, changed them as different businesses have closed and opened. We tweak it a little bit but we have added more than we'd ever subtracted.”

The authority also began a commuter service that operates between Pittsburgh and Butler, which has its own separate routes and funding.

Paul also said the authority can make adjustments to routes and schedules, if needed, and administrators have in the past.

“We do look at ridership and we do know where people are getting on and off in the system, so we know where the heavier areas are,” Paul said. “We've added, especially in midday, (stops) so that bus timing would be reliable.”

Tim Boden, facility manager for the transit authority, said it currently has five commuter buses and four routes, and six local service buses.

“We rotate them because we don’t want a bus sitting there with no miles and all these other ones piled up,” Boden said. “On the local ones, we have six buses … and they get rotated out.”

Each bus ends its journey at the transit authority’s headquarters, where it gets cleaned and necessary maintenance. He said there are three full-time employees who do maintenance — two mechanics and a cleaner — as well as a part-time cleaner.

“Every day they are washed in the bus wash, and then all of their fluids are checked and they are cleaned inside every day,” Boden said. “Our buses get washed every day at the end of their shift, and they get fuel every day at the end of their shift.”

Stewart said the authority moved its headquarters to Hollywood Drive in Pullman Center Business Park in 2010, and it is where all of the buses are maintained and stored.

Paul said the authority’s budget is mainly spent on maintenance and staffing costs for the buses. The authority contracts its bus drivers through MV Transportation, a Dallas, Texas-based transportation company.

“Basically it goes to operating, paying for drivers, fuel and maintenance, and cost of operation,” he said.

The transit authority’s budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year is $2.9 million, and Paul said about $2 million of the budget is for the local service, while the remaining money funds the commuter service.

Paul said about 8% to 10% of the authority’s funding for the local service comes from fares and revenues. Since 2012, fare for the local service has cost $1.25 for adults, and for the commuter service it is $5 per trip. There are also monthly passes for the local service and multi-trip passes for the commuter.

According to Paul, up to about 45% of the funding comes from the state and up to around 7% comes from Butler County. The transit authority is allowed to have up to 50% of the local service deficit be covered by federal money.

“We're allowed to use federal because we're a rural system; we're under 50,000 people (population),” Paul said. “Our revenues are pretty consistent year to year.”

McManus sat at the bus terminal at West New Castle Street for about 30 minutes Wednesday afternoon, waiting for the Route 1 bus that would take him back to his stop in Lyndora.

Stewart said that while route schedules are posted online and on papers posted around stops, the authority also has an online live bus tracker that authority administrators can also use.

“We have Fixed Route Intelligent Transportation System (FRITS),” Stewart said. “That is our GPS system so we can get on at any point in time and see how many passengers are on, what the speed of the bus is, its location.”

Paul and the authority administrators track daily ridership, and he gives a report to the board of directors at monthly meetings. He said local service has been doing well, and the commuter service has been slowly rebuilding its ridership, which took a plummet in the COVID-19 pandemic.

“A lot of people are working hybrid, working from home two or three days a week, or in the office two or three days,” Paul said of the commuter.

Instead of a monthly pass, a 15-trip pass for $60 is now an option.

Paul said the jump in ridership in January, which saw 12,952 trips compared to 9,484 in January 2022, was the largest increase in a month’s ridership he has ever seen. He attributed the increase to the financial benefits of riding the bus compared to driving to the same destination. Additionally, Butler is not very populated with ride share workers in cities like Pittsburgh.

“The local service and the recovery of that just shows the local need,” Paul said. “With gas prices up, food prices up, people are looking for ways to save money, and public transit can save money.

“It's not as convenient, but it's a pretty economical way around if you don't have a vehicle.”

Samantha Gaiser, of Butler, has been a regular bus rider for about a year-and-a-half, since she moved to the city from the Slippery Rock area, and she normally takes the bus to and from work.

While waiting at the West New Castle Street terminal, Gaiser said she typically buys a monthly pass at a cost of $40, which she said can get her most of the places she needs to go on a regular basis.

“Usually, I get on here and take it to Kohl’s,” she said. “It runs a little late sometimes, but I haven’t had any real issues with it.”