County officials may be cautiously optimistic about the prospect of a final exit from the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation (PART) following the sale of one of the park and ride lots.
Last week Mount Airy agreed to purchase the former park and ride lot at 1334 Carter Street in Mount Airy, attached to the Big Lots shopping center, consisting of more than 200 spaces for a price tag of $145,000, using funds from the state that had previously been allocated to the city.
The city has shown a great deal of interest in the use of land around the intersection of Carter Street and U.S. Highway 52 South. The Mount Airy Board of Commissioners agreed in March to purchase more than a dozen acres of land behind the shopping center that comprised the former Bonnie Lou’s Flea Market for $80,000.
Visions of sugar plums and soccer fields may already be dancing in the heads of city officials but while there may be grand plans in some minds, PART officials urged caution that the deal is not yet done.
Scott Rhine, CEO/general manager of PART, said Tuesday that the situation was still developing. “The PART board has not approved the sale of our land/park and ride facility in Mount Airy. This will be an item for consideration at an upcoming meeting.”
When Surry County exited the transportation authority in 2022, the county commissioners were informed that until such time as the park and ride lots that were built with federal funds were sold off, they were still the responsibility of the county to maintain.
“This property, we’ve looked at multiple times through potential grant opportunities,” said Mount Airy City Manager Darren Lewis said in March. While there is no firm plan yet on what to do with that land, there has been speculation that it could be converted into recreational uses for the city including perhaps soccer fields.
If that were to be the case, Mount Airy Commissioner Tom Koch last week alluded to the fact that such a project would require additional parking which must have made the PART Park and Ride lot an appealing prospect as it has sat there nearly two years not being used in any official capacity — while still needing to be maintained.
Some residents have taken to social media to share their own ideas of what that land could be used for. A Mount Airy mother said she wished the city would consider a venue for horse shows or amateur rodeo events, as there is not a public venue that can accommodate such events. Other commonly found suggestions included additional river access, fishing, playground, or a splash-pad for those having Dobson Square Park envy.
Even with effort from Rhine to keep Surry County from withdrawing from the regional transportation authority, in February 2022, the board voted to withdraw the county from PART.
The issue came to a head when PART was seeking additional federal funding to increase Express Route 6 services. Several board members wondered if it was wise to spend more money on a service they felt was no longer viable.
They cited a reduced number of riders which they said had started before the pandemic but was exacerbated by lockdowns and stay-at-home orders. Rhine countered that ridership was rebounding and that the federal funds to expand services in the county, with more options for pick up times and locations, would help increase ridership.
Besides declining ridership numbers, the main reason given for Surry County exiting PART had to do with a 5% tax on rental cars that was levied to cover the cost of the county’s participation. Some members of the board of commissioners felt that tax was unfair and that people renting cars in Surry County were funding a service that was no longer worth the investment or paying off a strong enough dividend to county residents to justify participation.
There was some protest from members of the community, members of the Town of Pilot Mountain Board of Commissioners, and a later statement of support from the Mount Airy Board of Commissioners but it was not enough to change the mind of the county board members, and the final commuter bus left Winston-Salem for points north on June 30, 2022.
“In all my years of this, I still am not sure how this came to be,” Rhine said of the county’s exit which Commissioner Eddie Harris jokingly referred to as a “divorce” on more than one occasion.
PART wrote of the resolution to withdraw, “The decision of the Surry County Board of County Commissioners to withdraw their membership from PART directly impacts the PART Territorial Jurisdiction and restricts PART from operating PART Express service in Surry County.”
Since that time, PART Express coverage has consolidated and now the commuter lines no longer run north to serve anyone on the U.S. 52 corridor.
The authority was created in 1997 to “enhance all forms of transportation in the region, address congestion, and reduce transportation related impacts on our air quality.”
Officials hoped that reducing costs for drivers coupled with the beneficial environmental impact of removing a percentage of commuting vehicles with only one rider would create a lasting appeal.
For residents in places such as Winston-Salem, Thomasville, Greensboro, Kernersville, Asheboro, Burlington, Graham, and Mebane, those line commuter lines are still running and in some cases are expanding.
Rhine said that when the federal funds he had been seeking in 2022, and had hoped to use on Route 6, were awarded that every dollar instead went to Randolph County. “(They) will get all the federal funds. We had been eyeing $300,000 up to Surry and $300,000 down to Randolph County,” he explained.
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