CC Rider promotes expanded service at Resource Fair in Rainier

The Columbia County Rider ("CC Rider") is Columbia County's local transit service for residents and visitors with bus service between the communities of Rainier, St. Helens, Scappoose, and many others. This service also includes trips to Portland and Kelso/Longview in Washington.

The organization is hosting an open house on Thursday, Sept. 18 from 11a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Rainier Transit Center to share information about the new route and other CC Rider services. CC Rider Line 1 to and from Rainier only and RiverCities Transit will be free fare on Sept. 18. The event is a collaboration between CC Rider, River Cities Transit, and Mobility Management Program.

In June, CC Rider extended the Line 1 daily commuter bus route to Rainier's CC Rider Transit Center with stops at 8:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. Line 1 is scheduled to coordinate with the first and last RiverCity Transit buses to Longview, and the cost is $3 to ride.

"We're going to have a vehicle at the event for everybody to look at and, if some people get nervous to ride the wheelchair lift, they can come and try it out," said Columbia County Transit Director Chris Wheatley. "We're going to have tons of information, flyers, brochures, and schedules where people can plan their trips. We're going to be there to talk to people and answer any questions and tell them how we can get them where they need to go."

Currently CC Rider offers two main services. Line 1 leaves St. Helens every morning and goes into Portland and then back to St. Helens. This line now goes to Rainier with the recent extension. The route primarily caters to commuters going to Portland. The other service, which is not currently available in Rainier or Clatskanie, is the Dial-A-Ride service where customers can schedule a time, date, and location to be picked up.

"We do a lot more rides with [Dial-A-Ride] and anybody can call in," said Wheatley. "The big confusion that people have is they think Dial-A-Ride services are just for older people or people with disabilities, but it's actually for anybody in the county. People call in and reserve a ride. When we take them, we'll pick them up curb-to-curb, from their house [and] take them to Walmart or wherever they want to go. We also do medical trips twice a week. Once a week, we go to Portland and Longview and that's for people that are going for medical appointments. It's beneficial for people that use wheelchairs, as all our vehicles have wheelchair lifts on them."

While CC Rider currently focuses most services between St. Helens and Scappoose, they are slowly expanding services to north county with the extension of Line 1. Dial-A-Ride is not yet available in Rainier or Clatskanie due to budget restraints and operation costs.

"That's on the list of things for the future," said Wheatley. "We're watching to see how ridership is with what we've done so far and see if we can add a midday run up there [to Rainier]. Right now, if somebody comes from Rainier and rides into St Helens, they've got to stay all day because there's not really a way for them to get back until later in the evening. I think it'd be beneficial in the future to add that midday route, even if it's not every day. It might be a couple of times a week, but if we could have a little more service going up there and eventually add Dial-A-Rides up there, it would take to where we had enough demand. It doesn't make sense to have a driver sit there for four hours during the day and do one or two rides."

The CC Rider program does not receive money from the county and is funded solely by three main grants creating an operating budget of $3 million with primary costs of labor, fuel and maintenance expenses. The program would like to apply for more grants, but most have strict stipulations about where the money can be applied which typically does not cover operations costs. This area is specifically where additional funds are needed to continue expanding coverage and services.

"Nobody wants to make grants for operating expenses, which is what everybody needs," said Wheatley. "We get separate grants for vehicles and if we do improvements on the building [such as] the transit center here or Rainier. The problem with those grants [is] they're on a two-year cycle, and that cycle just started last month. The funding we get now is based on what we did in the last two years. The trick is trying to build things still using the same amount of money. If we increase ridership and miles we cover, the next time funding comes around, we'll get more funding and be able to do more. That's the thought anyway. On average, to run a bus route, factoring in costs of labor, gas, and maintenance, it's something like $115 an hour. That trip to Rainier every day, twice a day, costs a few hundred a day to do that and that's not a whole lot of service that we added. It's just expensive."

In years prior, there were more route offerings, but the organization has undergone restructuring and is redesigning the program and allocations. "We're starting with very little and we're trying to slowly add back in and build things back up," said Wheatley. "It's a lot quicker to just cut everything, but to add stuff back takes a lot longer. That's why we're starting this extension to Rainier. It's kind of the first of lots of little moves."

During the interview, Wheatley shared a larger, more long-term vision of collaborating with other transportation agencies to create connections to places like Astoria and creating links out to the coast, as well as expanding service within the county-at-large but a lot hinges on demand. If there are more riders, then it makes it easier for CC Rider and other transportation agencies to request increased grant funding.

"We've been doing it for a month and a half, almost two months, and we've got some regular riders that ride all the time," said Wheatley. "It's not full buses yet. It's still a young route, but people are using it and I think it's benefiting people."

The Rainier Transit Station is located in Rainier at 207 W. B Street on Highway 30. For more info, visit http://www.nwconnector.org/agencies/columbia-county-rider