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Higher gas prices may push more aboard CARTA buses
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
The Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority’s buses are beginning to attract car-driving commuters shocked by high gasoline prices, according to Howard Chapman, CARTA’s executive director.
“We can’t quantify this, but we know we’re getting more ridership,” Chapman said.
CARTA’s bus fare remains unchanged at $1.25 and will not be raised in response to rising gasoline prices, Chapman said. The transit authority buys the diesel fuel powering CARTA buses at a set price under a state contract.
If gasoline prices continue to hover around $3 or more per gallon by January, such timing would be fortunate for CARTA. January is when CARTA plans to have about a dozen smaller buses for express routes serving park-and-ride locations in Mount Pleasant, James Island, West Ashley and North Charleston. All the express routes lead to downtown Charleston.
CARTA’s board voted unanimously on Sept. 9 to purchase the buses, which cost about $76,000 a piece.
High gas prices plus an express-bus service could attract more Lowcountry commuters to CARTA, said Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., a CARTA board member.
The express buses are about 40 feet long and roomier than the current buses. The fare will be $2.
Staff and students at the Medical University of South Carolina strongly support the express bus service because of difficult and expensive parking around the MUSC campus in addition to rising gasoline prices, said John Runyon, director of MUSC’s business services.
“There has been a gradual MUSC student migration from the peninsula to James Island,” Runyon pointed out.
While CARTA has not been hurt by the gasoline shortage caused by Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of the Gulf Coast, South Carolina school buses came close to running out of fuel. The hurricane knocked out two commercial pipelines supplying much of South Carolina with gasoline.
Amerada Hess Corp.’s Charleston terminal, which receives its fuel shipments by barge rather than commercial pipeline, signed a contract with the S.C. Department of Education on Sept. 7 to sell the department 75,000 gallons of diesel fuel per day.
The department’s 5,000-bus fleet uses 66,000 gallons of diesel fuel and transports some 330,000 children daily.
The contract with Amerada Hess calls for the department to pay the wholesale price for diesel fuel, minus the state’s 16-cent-per-gallon fuel tax.
State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum said she expected the arrangement with Hess to be temporary, lasting until United Energy, the state’s contracted supplier, begins receiving shipments through South Carolina’s two commercial pipelines.
Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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