Tupelo renews agreement with public transit company
Oct. 6—TUPELO — Tupelo officials have renewed the city's contract with a Northeast Mississippi company to continue offering public transportation services to residents.
The Tupelo City Council on Tuesday night voted to approve a memorandum of understanding with Booneville-based company Northeast Mississippi Community Services.
The memorandum will be in effect for a year, and the city will pay $144,900 for the transportation services.
"I think this is a worthy service because we keep serving people that wouldn't otherwise be able to afford transportation," Tupelo Chief Operations Officer Don Lewis said. "They don't have their own form of transportation to and from work and to and from medical appointments."
The public transit system is a "reservation" type system that picks residents up from their homes and transports them to other locations. Lewis said a large portion of the people who utilize the service are traveling to or from work or medical appointments.
The memorandum states that the transportation service will utilize at least one bus and five vans to service customers from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday through Friday. Customers must pay $2 for a one-way ticket.
Steve Gaines, the CEO of Northeast Mississippi Community Services, told the Daily Journal that the COVID-19 pandemic initially led to fewer people utilizing the transportation service, but it's beginning to increase again to the point where more drivers may need to be hired.
"We've enjoyed our partnership thus far and we hope to continue to do this," Gaines said. "We feel like it's very successful to this point. We'd love to see it grow."
Citizens should call and request to be picked up from their home or another local by calling 48 hours in advance. If a customer cannot give a 48-hour notice, that is not a "deal breaker," but it is the main way to completely guarantee that transportation services can be provided to them.
At one point, the city had two methods of public transit: one was a fixed route system that operated on a continuous loop, and the other was an "on demand" system where elderly and disabled citizens could call and request to be picked up from their home by calling 48 hours in advance.
The city voted to do away with the fixed route system in 2019 and offer the reservation-type system citywide.
Gaines said that the company reached its peak with the city's transportation services in 2020 when it serviced around 2,000 customers one month. But the pandemic slowed things down considerably.
Lewis said that the company averages around 1,200 to 1,300 customers each month, and Gaines said that the company is starting to see the number creep up to around 1,800 customers each month.
