ABOUT PHT
|
History
| |
| From its origination in 1989 as Spearfish Senior Transportation, West River Transit Authority, Inc., d/b/a Prairie Hills Transit has grown from serving strictly senior citizens in Spearfish to providing transportation to students, elderly, individuals with disabilities, and the general public – in a service area of a dozen communities in six different counties. |
|
| |
As the first and only manager to “steer the wheel” at Prairie Hills Transit, Executive Director Barb Cline knows the business from the ground up – because she started it. |
 |
|
|
| |
From her position as nutrition manager for a Spearfish senior meals program in 1989, she started seeing the reason some people weren’t participating in the meals program was because they didn’t have a way to get there. She approached her superiors for permission to obtain a grant and begin a senior transportation program. Thus began her journey of enhancing the lives of older citizens through transportation that helps them remain independent in their own homes. |
| |
And it continues to grow. In those early days with a single 1979 van (with no lift equipment) the program transported seniors for a few hours a day in Spearfish. The program has since become a fully coordinated public transportation system covering an area more than 7 times the size of Rhode Island. Now seniors in several communities with nutrition programs can join their friends to enjoy a nutritious meal by riding Prairie Hills Transit. And the public transit system serves people of all ages, offering trips for employment, daycare, social, and medical trips, shopping, special events and whatever community members need. |
| |
 |
Now sporting a fleet of 35 vehicles (mostly lift-equipped), the service is indispensable in more than a dozen communities in six counties in the Black Hills. |
| |
From a single parking space at the nutrition site, Prairie Hills Transit later moved to Colorado Boulevard in Spearfish (the former Ainsworth-Benning Construction shop). The company added bus facilities in Belle Fourche, Sturgis, and Custer as service expanded to meet the needs of neighboring communities, and another site is in the works to house the vehicles in Hot Springs. |
| |
During the term of former Gov. Bill Janklow, a Governor’s Initiative was launched in 1995 with two pilot programs in South Dakota – one in Spearfish and another in Huron – that drew state agencies together, putting public transit as the lead agency. Instead of individual agencies each providing the full extent of transportation they needed, the various agencies combined efforts and began calling on transit to provide as much service as possible. Prairie Hills expanded into the Southern Hills, and currently, the nonprofit service extends from Newell in the north, to Edgemont in the south, providing transportation to rural communities and helping residents remain in their homes by having access to much-needed medical services in larger communities. |
| |
In May, 2010, thanks in large part to money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Prairie Hills Transit broke ground on a new facility – a regional intermodal transit facility expected to be finished by April 2011. The new site will house PHT’s office and garage space, as well as being the ticketing agency for Jefferson Bus Lines. It will also house a state-certified daycare facility that will feature weekend and after-hours childcare. |
|
|
