Ridership is growing on a coastal-area bus designed to connect rural residents to the services they need.

The public transit service is now a year old.

The Coastal Regional Commission runs eighty 15-passenger buses each day in a 10-county area from Screven County to Camden County.

You call and schedule a bus, but the destination or starting point must be in a rural location.

The CRC's Allen Burns says, the system runs by mixing people whose services are paid for the government, like the elderly and disabled, with others, who just might not have cars.

"The two of those combined keep our costs down and make it affordable for anyone who wants to use it," Burns says. "One of the things we've done is, we've linked it with some of the existing fixed-route services. We partner with them. We're also partnering with other transportation services, like airports."

Round-trips start at six dollars.

About 16-thousand riders a month use the buses. That's up from 14-thousand when the program began last year.

Burns says, he's had to buy more buses to keep up with the demand.

Tags: Screven County, Camden County, GPB News, Coastal Regional Commission., bus system, bus, Allen Burns