As gas prices soar, residents who drive long distances are increasingly questioning the value of the commuting lifestyle and are beginning to consider alternatives like carpooling and mass transit.

“At this point, I’m driving alone, which is an incredible waste of resources and money,” says Greg Kidd, a Waynesville resident who makes a daily trek to his job in downtown Asheville.

Kidd is starting to explore the option of carpooling with someone else who has the same commute. But in a region where there has traditionally been little interest and almost no public investment in public transit, the options are limited.

Kidd may be driving solo, but he’s far from alone in his search for a better alternative. When WCU sent out a survey evaluating interest in mass transit among employees, it received the highest response rate of any survey the university has ever conducted. And that was a week after school let out — a time when many have already left for the summer.

In Jackson County, the number of people riding the local bus system is up 14 percent, the highest increase Public Transit Director Chuck Norris has ever seen.

“People are moving toward riding the bus more,” he says. “There’s an influx of people calling and wanting certain things. We’re taking on additional transportation services because of fuel price increases.”

There are three separate efforts underway in the region to establish public transit or carpooling. WCU, Harrah’s, and Haywood County are all making strides to ease the burden gas costs are putting on commuters.

WCU formed a committee in May to study solutions based on the results gathered from the employee survey. The school hopes to establish a shuttle service for faculty and staff between WCU and Asheville, with a stopover in Waynesville, according to Lauren Bishop, the University’s energy manager. It would arrive at WCU at 8 a.m. and leave at 5 p.m. There will be 20 seats each semester on the shuttle, and if the survey response was any indication, they’ll go quickly.

The school is also looking at establishing a carpooling network through a Web site. Faculty, staff and students could search for riding buddies to split gas costs en route to the university.

Meanwhile Harrah’s Cherokee Casino has conducted meetings with officials from surrounding counties about a potential park and ride system and is looking at a carpooling network for its employees.

Shuttle service to Asheville

Meanwhile, Haywood County is taking the initiative to help its residents who work in Asheville, likely in the form of a park and ride system. Mountain Projects, the non-profit agency in charge the county’s public transit, has received a grant to develop public transit between Haywood and Buncombe counties.

Residents would drive their car and park it at one of two or three pickup points in the county — at the Pilot Truck Stop at exit 24, in Waynesville, and in Canton, for example. A shuttle (or bus, if there’s enough interest) would then transport them to two or three different drop-off sites, possibly Exit 50 near the hospital and the Asheville Transit Authority, where they could then take a bus to their job.

Aspects of the Haywood-Buncombe route will largely be determined by riders, and Mountain Projects wants their feedback. Do more residents need to be at work at 7 a.m. or 8 a.m.? Is 4 p.m. a better pickup time than 5:30 p.m.?

The shuttle could even run two shifts if there’s enough interest, says Susan Anderson, director of transportation for Mountain Projects. An early bird route could drop off at 6:45 a.m., then take another round of riders to work by 9 a.m.

It all depends on rider interest.

“This is starting from scratch, and it’s an opportunity to create what the people need,” Anderson says. “We’re prepared to do anything we can to meet those needs, but the public has to tell us what they’re needing.”

To participate in the survey, call Anderson at 828.452.1447, ext. 120.

A give-and-take process

Establishing public transportation in WNC is going to take some compromise.

Marcia Perry, a principal at Haw Creek Elementary School in Buncombe County, thinks a Haywood-Buncombe route “is a great idea,” — it’s just not necessarily applicable to her lifestyle.

“The problem is with what I do, it would really restrict me,” Perry says. “I need to be here around 6:30 a.m., and sometimes don’t leave until 12 hours later.”

Like many, Perry would miss the flexibility of having a vehicle. She likes to run errands at lunch, and sometimes has to take children home due to illness or discipline reasons.

“I never know when I might need my vehicle,” she says. “I don’t want to wait around — if I’m ready to leave, I want to be able to leave.”

Convenience is a major factor for Carleene Finger, a Lake Junaluska resident who commutes to her job as principal of Bell Elementary in east Asheville. Like Perry, Finger says she doesn’t work a 9-5 schedule — her shifts are more varied than that.

“The question for me is, how convenient would it be? There would have to be buses coming through on a schedule that fits my needs,” she says.

Yet, “people just have to learn that although we live in a society of convenience, that might not be an option anymore,” Bishop says.

“It’s a partnership and a compromise, and you weigh the benefits,” adds Anderson. “Is it worth leaving an hour earlier every day to save $50 or $60 a week?”

It’s also a process of adjustment. Over time, says Anderson, commuters “typically learn to can take a laptop or a book, and use that time constructively.”

Some are more open to the flexibility required when using public transportation. Though Canton resident Patrick Willis works a 9 to 5 schedule at the Thomas Wolfe Memorial in Asheville that may be more conducive to mass transit, he still “wouldn’t mind having to get up a little bit early or staying a little bit later waiting for the transportation, if it’s affordable and gets there on time.”

Kidd said he learned to be flexible during his years riding the public transit system in the Washington, D.C. metro area.

“As someone who is accustomed to dealing with mass transit, I would be prepared to just kind of allow it to dictate my schedule,” he says. “It might not be something I use every day, but it wouldn’t make any sense not to seriously consider it.”

Calculating cost a challenge

Cost is a major factor for many in determining whether or not they would opt for public transportation. To make mass transit enticing, it would have to cost the user less than if they took their own vehicle.

Mountain Projects is considering charging $25 per week for the Haywood-Buncombe shuttle. That’s $5 a day — the price of a little over a gallon of gas. Depending on where you live in Haywood and where you work in Buncombe, that could either cut costs or leave them relatively unchanged.

Finger, the Asheville principal who commutes from Lake Junaluska, currently forks over $60-$70 for gas every week. She said the price of public transit would have to be at least half of what she pays now to make her turn her head. In her case, $25 per week would be a steal.

But Willis, who initially expressed excitement at the shuttle concept, had second thoughts when he heard how much it would cost. Willis lives about as close to Asheville as one can get in Haywood County, and therefore only has a 40-mile roundtrip commute in a 30-mile per gallon vehicle. He wouldn’t save money by taking the shuttle.

Theoretically, it seems if you’re currently riding solo, splitting the cost of gas with anyone else would be a cheaper alternative. But there are other factors to consider. If there aren’t enough people to fill seats, for instance, each rider could shoulder a bigger burden of the cost.

“If you don’t have a subsidy, you have to have people buy into this thing and be able to pay for the transportation,” says Chuck Norris, director of public transit for Jackson County.

Norris says if a bus travels from Sylva to Asheville with 20 people, but doesn’t have anyone on the return trip, it’s “deadheading — we’re bringing an empty bus back, and you’ve got recoup your costs somehow.”

Subsidies are crucial in keeping public transportation systems afloat, particularly when they’re first getting off the ground.

Rider fares may cover the cost of fuel, but above and beyond that, there are driver salaries (about $10-$11 an hour) and maintenance on the vehicles to factor in.

Jackson County, for instance, is considering running a once a week shuttle to and from Asheville. Officials proposed charging $15 each way to cover costs. That was too much, according to responses gathered from a survey.

“Everyone said they wanted to use it, but pay $3 to $5 to do it,” said Norris.

Fares in the single digits are probably an unattainably low number, but if drivers can get to Asheville and back in their own car for $15, they’re unlikely to be interested.

“If they could drive themselves and come out close, why would they want to (take the shuttle)?” Norris questioned. “You have to keep costs down low enough to where if you ride it, you get a good deal.”

In Jackson, subsidies the public transit department receives are increasingly going to cover fuel rather than other expenditures they’re supposed to go toward.

The department budgeted $40,000 for fuel at the beginning of the last fiscal year. Prices rose so much over that time that the number had to be amended to $60,000 by the end of the year. Norris projects by the end of this year, the department will spend $80,000 on fuel.

That’s a 100 percent increase in fuel costs over a two-year period, and funding just hasn’t been able to keep pace.

“If fuel costs keep continually going up, subsidies that we get will help pay for those,” Norris said. “That means it just cuts into the amount of services we can provide.”

Who should pay?

If public transportation is to be successful, it will need an infusion of cash to get it up and running or improve existing services. But where the does the responsibility of funding it fall?

Mountain Projects in Haywood County is kicking off its park and ride program through a grant from DOT’s Rural Operating Assistance Program, part of which aims to help rural areas with work-related traffic. WCU is funding part of its shuttle service (though hopes to recoup costs through ticket sales) and Harrah’s is throwing in money to jumpstart initiatives for its employees.

There is an increasing call for counties to get more involved in the mass transit process by engaging in talks with entities currently working on establishing more options.

“We feel that it’s way bigger than us and we would love to see the counties coordinating together to make this way bigger than WCU,” Bishop said.

It’s a win-win situation, since counties benefit from their employed residents.

“They’re seeing unemployment numbers drop, and they’re seeing a more lucrative tax base,” says Charles Pringle of Harrah’s. “And we need the employees.”

Jackson County officials have been instrumental in helping the mass transit there stay afloat. Norris says the county stepped in when the system ran out of subsidy funding two months before the budget year ended.

“The county will still allow us to provide services and not cut back on them,” Norris said.

In WNC, the level of county involvement in public transportation varies. Swain and Haywood counties’ mass transit systems are run by a non-profit entity. Jackson and Macon counties directly oversee their systems.

Admittedly, though, establishing an effective public transportation system in a rural area like WNC is tough.

“Mass transit in a rural area is hard to do. We’re so spread out, it’s almost impossible to provide transit at a reasonable cost to the masses,” Norris says.

Door-to-door service is currently the primary way systems operate in the region. Even though there are some main drags where bus stops could be located, “if people live five or six miles up a side road, they need transportation to get down to the bus stop,” Norris says. In terms of fuel costs, door-to-door is a largely inefficient way to provide mass transit, and Norris says, “it eats up a lot of money.”

To further complicate matters, many Jackson County residents over 60 years of age and of a certain income bracket can’t be asked for a fare or donation, so the department eats the entire cost.

“If we don’t get any help with fares, every bit of subsidy we get goes for the trip,” says Norris.

Ultimately, geography may make it impossible to ever put a true mass transit system in place in parts of WNC.

“I don’t know how you get across that hurdle,” Norris says. “You can do some things that are semi-mass transit in town and village areas where most of the shopping is done, but when you get out in rural communities, you might as well just forget it.”

Incremental change

Despite challenges, many are adamant that the time is ripe for the region to start considering alternatives to the solo, 30- to 50-mile commute common in WNC.

“I think the sooner we start talking about public transportation, the further ahead of the curve we’re going to be,” says Perry. “Gas prices are not going back down again. It’s a reality we have to live with, and we’ve got to begin finding alternative methods of going back and forth to work.”

Mass transit is already the norm in urban areas, Anderson says.

“The rural communities are just not used to it. But when you’re spending so much on gas, it’s time to stop and think, what are some options?” she says.

So what will it take for commuter routines to shift?

“Some really major changes in concepts and some education to the public on how we do things,” according to Norris.

It may ultimately be a small, grassroots — but necessary — process.

“This is way bigger than us, but we’ve got to do something,” maintains Bishop. “Baby steps are key. If we try to create some kind of grandiose plan, we’re going to fail. We’ve got to start somewhere, and think, what can we change now?”