Bus ridership slowly climbing

Like most other businesses and organizations, Washington County Mini Bus saw a drop in business when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country.

The organization, however, is starting to see a gradual rise in ridership.

'Right now, we're sitting about 60 percent from last year this very same time,” Cris Gaughan, transit director for Washington County Mini Bus, said. 'So our numbers are still down. We still haven't fully recovered yet from what's going on in the country, but we are increasing monthly.

'We have hopes that we'll be back to normal at some point.”

She said that last year in a 10-day time period, they had a little more than 2,400 passengers. This year, they have had about 1,400 passengers in that same timeframe.

'Right now, we have about eight drivers on the road a day,” Gaughan said. 'Last year at this time, we had 10 or 11 drivers on the road a day”

She said that the biggest drop has been people getting rides to go shopping or eating out at restaurants.

'A lot of the trips to the Square with all the restaurants and shopping, that has really gone away,” Gaughan said.

One thing that has remained steady for Washington County Mini Bus has been transporting people to medical appointments.

'We're taking people to a lot of doctor's appointments,” Gaughan said. 'That never changed.”

The service regularly transports people to appointments outside Washington County.

'We do go into other counties for medical reasons only,” she said. 'We're in Iowa City and Johnson County every day taking people to medical appointments. Sometimes, we'll go to Linn County or Muscatine or Fairfield but only for medical reasons.”

The service has seen a recent uptick in business now that school is back in session.

'The school year started, and we have a lot of children in the whole county who are riding our buses,” Gaughan said. 'That is always the case every year. I have two buses in Riverside every day, three times a day, picking up and dropping off children. We have quite a few buses trying to handle all the students we have.”

With the pandemic, the organization is putting extra emphasis on safety

'A lot of the procedures we were doing for cleaning and disinfecting the buses, we were already doing,” Gaughan said. 'We just amped it up a little more.”

Buses are wiped down and disinfected after each run, and every bus is sprayed with an electrostatic mister each night.

All passengers are required to wear face coverings, and attempts are made to spread out passengers.

'With what's going on, we have a little different way of transporting passengers,” Gaughan said. 'We try to not have so many people on the bus at the same time. We try to stagger people on the buses and do everything we can to ensure the safety of our passengers and our staff.”

Washington County Mini Bus transports persons of all ages throughout Washington County.

All minivans or buses are handicap accessible.

'Any limitation a person might have, we can accommodate,” Gaughan said. 'We can get you on the lift and on the bus.”

They have 23 employees and 16 buses in their fleet.

Washington County Mini bus is a non-profit organization.

'A good portion of our funding comes from our fares,” Gaughan said. 'We get money from the local option sales tax and the Washington County Board of Supervisors and from federal and state dollars. It's all very important to us to keep our doors open and to keep us running.”