District Three to celebrate $3 million project's completion

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

District Three Governmental Cooperative is turning 35, expanding its transit facilities with a 15,000-square-foot building, and inviting the public to help it celebrate on Sept. 16.
The agency will hold an open house at 4 p.m. with guided tours for invited guests at 5:15. At 6 p.m., the dedication ceremony will begin.
The building will serve District Three Public Transit’s 77-vehicle fleet, and features office space, driver testing and training facilities, a wash bay, a four-bay maintenance garage, a locker room and break rooms for drivers, a fuel station, a back-up power generator, and canopies to protect the vehicles from the elements.
The dispatch office in the new facility currently serves Smyth and Wythe counties, and has the capacity to eventually serve the entire district, District Three said.
The $3 million construction project was funded by state and federal grants on land adjoining the central office of District Three Governmental Cooperative, sponsor of the rural public transit program.
The anniversary and the physical growth are the latest milestones in what District Three Executive Director Mike Guy on Thursday called the agency’s evolution.
“It certainly has grown in some fits and starts and up and downs,” Guy said. “We have acquired new programs and been open to any opportunity that meets a regional approach.”
Guy said the agency has enjoyed “good local support” from leaders of communities it serves.
According to literature from District Three, the agency began its public transit program 25 years ago with a Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation grant for providing public transit as an outgrowth of its senior citizens programs.
The Area Agency on Aging owned a fleet of 15-passenger vans that transported seniors to nutrition sites and other service locations. “Some of the first public routes were used to transport students to area community colleges and other citizens from rural areas to commercial centers for shopping and other business,” District Three said.
Its first subsidiary transit system provided public transportation in Wytheville on a request-response basis. Similar systems served Galax, Marion, Abingdon and Chilhowie. The first municipal "loop" routes were established in Marion and were later implemented in the other localities.
The first county subsidiary system established in Washington County brought people from outlying communities to Abingdon. Similar systems later served Grayson, Carroll, Wythe, Bland and Smyth counties.
In 2008, the "New Freedom" program, funded under a federal grant, began serving people with disabilities and those needing transportation to regional health care centers. New Freedom offers routes to the Tri-Cities Virginia/Tennessee, Winston-Salem, N.C., and the New River Valley and Salem-Roanoke areas.
Today, the system’s 77-vehicle fleet, ranging in capacity from 13 to 22 passengers, operates along 75 routes throughout the area with dispatch centers in Galax, Abingdon, and Marion. They travel over 600,000 miles per year, providing more than 220,000 passenger trips. The system employs 65 people and has an annual operating budget of $1.6 million.
“We’ve managed to evolve over time,” Guy said.
District Three said a number of alternate locations for the new transit building were considered before the decision was made to attach the two-story structure to District Three's current office at 4453 Lee Highway east of Marion.
The original 13,000-square-foot structure was built in the 1950s as a Coca-Cola warehouse, and was used as a Ryder truck garage in later years. It was purchased by District Three and remodeled for office space in the late 1990s.
After securing a federal planning assistance grant for the transit facility, the agency awarded the design contract to Spectrum Design of Roanoke and Marion. Additional federal and state construction grant assistance was secured for the $3 million structure. The construction contract was awarded to H.S. Williams Construction Company of Marion, District Three said.
Construction began in 2007, with planned completion in 2008. During the construction phase, administrative offices for the transit program were temporarily relocated to 1248 S. Main Street in Marion. Plan changes and other problems delayed placement of the facility in service until early 2009, with final work completed this year.
District Three said several new technologies are maximizing efficiency and safety. Security cameras are being installed in all transit vehicles to improve security, aid in accident investigation, and monitor routes.
To aid in communication between vehicles and dispatch centers, the agency is developing a new digital system with repeaters at strategic mountaintop locations that will dramatically increases the range of radios, District Three said. The Automatic Vehicle Location system will allow dispatchers to see where vehicles are on the road in real time and Computer Aided Dispatch will allow dispatchers to send detailed trip information digitally so drivers do not have to take notes or memorize information.
District Three has about 165 people on staff, some 35 of whom are full-time employees, he said.
Looking ahead, Guy envisions District Three will find service opportunities in national health care reform, especially through federally funded programs promoting wellness.

dkegley@wythenews.com