How severe weather impacts TTA bus service

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) - People who depend on public transportation are wondering if anticipated severe Thursday morning weather will affect their ride.

TTA General Manager and CEO Paul Davis says they have several route supervisors who’ll be out at 3 a.m. Thursday, checking the roads to determine whether they need to delay, alter or cancel any of their routes.

They also have three vehicles with plows in their fleet used to help clear parts of their routes.

Davis says some of their Dial-a-Ride customers have critical medical appointments they can’t afford to miss, and there have been times when TTA route supervisors or operations workers have used their own four-wheel drive vehicles to pick up someone when a bus can’t safely get there.

“Those folks a lot of times don’t have a choice,” Davis said. “They’re either going to dialysis or cancer treatment. They still need to go. Those are the hard ones to get sometimes, but we do it. We figure out a way.”

Davis says when they do alter their schedules due to weather, they post it on their Facebook and Twitter accounts. You can also call TTA and check if your bus is on schedule.

Davis says they don’t want people standing out in the cold waiting for a bus that isn’t coming.

He says during the last snowstorm, only one of their buses was involved in a minor accident, and nobody was hurt. He says that was because a four-wheeler crowded a bus in the Harveytown area.

Davis says sometimes when the weather is bad they’ll avoid hilly areas.

“Typically, the buses will come off all the hills, like East and West Pea Ridge and the Walnut Hills area,” he said. “We kind of constrain the buses just to the flat ground. I know that puts some people in a bad way sometimes, but safety has to come first.”