Page 56 - South Mississippi Living - November, 2015

LEISURE bus-loads of fun
HOP ABOARD
Coast Transit introduces new services and routes
story by Jeff Clark photos by James Edward Bates
For four decades, Coast Transit Authority (CTA) has been transporting people across the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Last year alone, more than half a million riders
used its bus routes.
“We have bus services that rival
those you see in any city, “ CTA Executive Director Kevin Coggin
said. “We have specialized services
for seniors, hurricane evacuations
and a lot of community support such as park and rides. We serve the three coastal counties, but we are a regional transportation system. We don’t have a lot of geographic boundaries like some services do. We operate as a public utility.”
One of the services Coggin said is unique to CTA is van pool for workers who travel as far west as Slidell,
La., and as far east as the Florida panhandle to pick up people who work along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
“We are a true regional transportation system,” he said. “We are the largest urban transportation system in the state. We carry more people and offer more services than the Jackson transit system.”
Coggin said the CTA is currently focusing on economic development and supporting the local economy through a variety of ways including its popular Casino Hopper and BeachComber routes as well as a transportation initiative for Gulfport. “We are doing a major project to support the City of Gulfport and the new aquarium,” he said. “We are going to play a major supporting role in the aquarium. We also have a major project going on in D’Iberville.”
CTA operates with two main hubs, one in downtown Gulfport and one at Edgewater Mall in Biloxi. The buses run on 45-minute and 90-minute schedules, meaning a bus should be coming into one of the hubs every 45
minutes. “This allows us to move our riders with minimum waits, he said. “We are looking to cut these times down very soon.”
Coggin said CTA underwent major changes after Hurricane Katrina
struck the Gulf Coast in 2005. The Beachcomber fixed route, which
runs up and down Highway 90, was especially hard hit. “The Beachcomber was our most popular stop before Katrina,” he said. “After the storm almost 50 percent of ridership was gone. We didn’t start running it again for years. But now we’re operating about like we were before Katrina. Our most popular route now is the Pass Road route.”
One of the post-Katrina routes started by CTA is a stop in D’Iberville, which has its own transit center and will include an express trolley service. “The idea is to place this on Rodriguez in D’Iberville to serve the casino and the redevelopment district. An express
56 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • November 2015
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