BIG STONE GAP — Thirty-eight years ago, Mountain Empire Older Citizens was trying to help senior citizens get to the organization’s feeding and socialization programs.
Starting with a few white vans and a combination of volunteer and paid employees, that effort has grown into a full-sized regional public transit system — Mountain Empire Transit — with service across Wise, Lee and Scott counties and the city of Norton.
MET Director Mitch Elliott, Operations Manager Will Wright and Mobility Manager Nicky Fleenor oversee the transit group and two new programs — METGo!, a pilot on-demand bus system in the Norton-Wise area; and METLink, a way to connect Southwest Virginia riders with Kingsport and its Kingsport Area Transit bus service.
“We were the first Medicaid-Medicare transport service in Virginia in 1985,” Elliott said of MET’s evolution from supporting senior services into a public transit organization.
MET’s body-chassis buses have been a familiar sight around the three-county area for years. Transit buses haul seniors to MEOC’s congregate centers or shopping trips, shuttle people from parking lots to festivals like Home Craft Days or the High Knob Music Festival, and provide rides to work, school or other destinations for people of all ages.
MET expanded its service about three years ago in a pilot program for students at The University of Virginia’s College at Wise — Cavalier Connection. Before Cavalier Connection, MET’s rides had to be scheduled at least 24 hours in advance. The college system introduced a more rapid on-demand dispatch service that became popular for students looking to travel off-campus for shopping, eating or other services.
MET fares were cheap — 75 cents for a one-way trip or $1.50 for a round trip — and they became cheaper when COVID-19 struck in 2020, Elliott said.
Elliott said Cavalier Connection became the prototype for METGo!, which covers an approximately 12-mile loop in the Norton-Wise area.
“We began METGo! in the midst of one of the hardest parts of the pandemic for our area,” said Elliott. “We received a grant for fare-free transportation at the time.”
Elliott said the fare-free grant, from the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation gave a boost to METGo! when it started routes on June 28, 2021.
“If we agreed to pay for the fourth year, (DRPT) agreed to help us for the first three years,” Elliott said. “The more passengers that ride our buses, paying or not, increase the federal subsidies that the state gets.”
Elliott said the MET service area is classed as being in chronic poverty, and lower-income residents are likely to spend as much as 15% of their monthly income on transportation costs without available public transit.
“It’s hard to imagine a more effective way to help the low-income and elderly people we serve than by making our system more accessible and eliminating 15 percent of their expenses,” said Elliott.
When looking at MET’s overall ridership, Elliott said, about 61% of riders are 65 or older and 70% have an income below $15,000. About a third of MET riders use a wheelchair, cane or other assistive device, he added, and 47% of MET’s ridership does not have access to a working vehicle.
“We’ve made the commitment to be fare-free for the next four years,” Elliott said. “That’s for the general public.”
Since July 2021, when daily ride requests ran between approximately 10 to 55 daily and METGo! had just completed its first month of operation, daily ride requests for all of MET climbed to 165 in early December and have run between 175 and 220 in May and June.
Fleenor said, despite the limited Norton-Wise service area, she receives calls daily from Appalachia, Big Stone and Coeburn about how to use METGo!
“We do hope to expand but, for now, this is the area,” said Fleenor.
Elliott said MET hopes to start a demonstration grant in December to bring METGo! to the Big Stone Gap and Pennington Gap areas. Connecting that area with the existing Norton-Wise zone could be done with the METLink system, which uses MET’s standard buses to connect counties for rides to Kingsport.
Wright said a typical week sees 750 to 820 riders weekly just on the METGo! system. With its first anniversary approaching, he added, METGo! had carried 27,207 riders up to Wednesday.
“To put that in perspective, our whole system in 2021 transported 32,187 people,” Elliott said. “With the inception of METGo!, METLink and fare-free, this year we’ve already transported 73,145 people. In days when public transportation has had a huge drop, we’ve been able to recover and go beyond and it’s because of those three initiatives.”
“It’s a bargain when you consider gas prices and going all the way to Kingsport,” Fleenor added. “For METLink in our first two months we only did 40 trips per month and now we’re averaging upwards of 200-300 trips.”
Up to June 17, Fleenor said, METLink reached 188 trips with 210 riders. While the service still requires at least 24-hour prior scheduling and is developing a plan to include regular shuttle stops, she said riders can still use it to access Kingsport’s KATS system and ride its buses to events, retail sites and events before riding back on METLink.
“I feel people have responded well to the service,” Fleenor said.
Mitch said the ridership numbers do not show a human element to METLink and MET.
“What we see in transportation these days is not who you transport but how many people you put in the seats, and that’s how you get your funding,” Elliott said. “My fear is that they’ll legislate compassion out of this. We’ve got people who have to get to dialysis appointments and we drive 35 to 40 miles.”
Elliott said METLink has helped people visit their relatives in the hospitals, sometimes when those relatives may be dying.
“People may look at efficiency in different ways,” Elliott said, “but we look at efficiency as how many people do we become a lifeline to.”
Wright said a recent conversation with DRPT officials and grant recipient Bay Transit in the Peninsula and Eastern Shore area brought another element of MET’s ability to light.
“They were asking us how we were doing it, how was it exploding,” said Wright. “You’ve got to have the right people in the right place, and our drivers make this happen. You have to have a champion to do this, and they’ve pioneered this.”
Wright said he received a call from one rider who credited METGo! driver Shanghai Nickles with motivating her to get on the bus and go to work when she did not think she could.
“Everyone of them has compassion for the people who ride,” Wright said.
“We couldn’t be happier,” Jennifer DeBruhl, acting DRPT director, said of MET’s performance and programs. “We have seen (MET and Bay Transit) ridership far exceed our expectations, and their experience has given us a lot to go on as we look at rural transit.”
DeBruhl said MET and other rural transit systems are important because they will serve as “capillaries” to get people to urban areas and to passenger rail service when it reaches as far as Bristol, Virginia.
“They are just as important as larger transit systems to give people access to jobs, education and health care access,” said DeBruhl.
Fleenor said drivers across the MET system show the same concern for their riders, often advocating for riders who may have medical problems and helping them if they have something like low blood sugar during a trip.
“That’s what we tell our drivers, if they can make their connection, to use their discretion,” said Fleenor. “It shows they go above and beyond.”
“An unexpected perk of METLink, especially, is socialization,” Fleenor said. “You get on there with people and they just chat. They don’t know each other but they chat on the way over and get to chat on the way back.”
With a long-term discussion among Southwest Virginia officials, residents and businesses about bringing passenger rail to Bristol, Elliott said MET and other rural transit organizations in the region have a long-term role in linking rural areas to the Tri-Cities.
Fleenor said MET officials have started discussions on how METLink can find ways to connect with transit systems in the Bristols, Kingsport and Johnson City and the state’s Virginia Breeze bus system from Southwest Virginia to Washington, D.C.
“We’ve always been open to work with anybody in any way,” Elliott said. “We’re going to need each other in this battle.”
