STEUBENVILLE, Ohio - The Regional Access Mobility Partnership is preparing for its purchase of transit scheduling software with additional work for consultants Wilbur Smith and Associates.

Smith and Associates helped develop the partnership, which seeks to coordinate a variety of transit services across the public bus and human services agencies spectrum. During the past year, R.A.M.P. has selected the scheduling and reporting software, TranSched, and needs to complete agreements and business rules for the participating agencies.

The consultant will be paid about $7,500 for the additional prep work, including surveying and developing information explaining each agency's business operations and work services in December; preparation and review of the operating rules for use of TranSched in January; and completion of agreements for agencies that will be parties to the scheduling software project in order to protect federal and other funding sources for each agency.

Mike Paprocki, transportation study engineer for the Brooke-Hancock-Jefferson Metropolitan Planning Commission, told a R.A.M.P. member at a meeting Tuesday morning that there is a chance that even the maintenance costs for agencies will be picked up with 80 percent of the money coming from federal dollars.

Frank Bovina, transit manager for the Steel Valley Regional Transit Authority, explained the potential for interurban bus services, possibly heading into a connection with interstate buses in Wheeling or with the Port Authority Transit buses serving the Pittsburgh area at Robinson Township or Greyhound in downtown Pittsburgh.

Bovina said the Ohio Department of Transportation is paying for pilot service in the Cincinnati region and is taking bids for three more feeder services. The concept is for a small rural or semi-rural transit system to operate service into a major city in the region to connect with other transit systems and interstate systems such as Greyhound. The area had Greyhound service until about 2005 when it was eliminated in a round of service cuts by the interstate carrier.

As part of the plan to coordinate public and human service transit services, BHJ will administer a program surveying an option to send buses to connect with PAT or Greyhound in Pittsburgh or Robinson Township.

Bovina said ODOT has stated it would consider SVRTA's potential to provide such service.

"One of the key elements is that the area has to have a locally developed coordinated transit plan," he said. "Our homework is paying off."

Paprocki said Morgantown's bus system established a similar system linking that area with Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh International Airport, and a similar urban system operating an intercity link has been established between Athens, Parkersburg and Columbus.

"The common theme is they're all college towns," Paprocki said.

He said local transit agencies get calls frequently from families and students of the Franciscan University of Steubenville seeking rides to and from Pittsburgh and the airport, so it's indicative the system could work here. He said the proof has to be established with numbers.

The group heard from Daria Jones of the West Virginia University for Excellence in Disabilities, who complimented BHJ and the local transportation providers for their work in developing the R.A.M.P. transit coordination plan.

She explained she's been traveling throughout West Virginia trying to establish such coordinated efforts and finds the BHJ effort to be the best.

"Your metropolitan planning organization is coordinating and proving that people do work together. Other economic development regions in the state are dead in the water," she said.

Jones explained there are only 33 of West Virginia's 55 counties with public transit agencies in them. She has been serving as part of the "Ride in 55" effort, seeking to assess public transit needs across the state. Under the effort, the state was divided into five regions, including one for the Northern Panhandle and the Wheeling region. She said the efforts of R.A.M.P. through BHJ are an example for the rest of the state.

R.A.M.P.'s next meeting will be in late January.

(Giannamore can be contacted at pgiannamore@heraldstaronline.com)