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TRANSIT OPERATES UNINTERRUPTED

By AmyJo Brown/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Friday, May 16, 2008 9:59 AM CDT

Despite a fire that destroyed four city buses Saturday, passengers of Pine Bluff Transit said they are seeing little interruption in service.

“To me, it’s about the same,” said Eddie Sanders, as she waited Thursday afternoon at the intersection of Second Avenue and Main Street for one of the temporary passenger vans the city is using to cover its eight bus routes.

Sanders, a Tyson employee who said she uses the city’s public transportation to get home from work every day, said the vans work fine — “there’s plenty of room,” she said.

Indeed, John Baltzell, a bus driver with Pine Bluff Transit for the past 30 years, said overcrowding has not been an issue, and that people are even excited about the substitute vehicles.

“They think it's new, and they haven’t seen nothing new in a while,” he said.

Except for an hour and a half lost Monday morning, the city’s public transportation system has been running on schedule all week, according to Larry Reynolds, manager of Pine Bluff Transit. The city is temporarily covering the 30-minute routes using a leased 15-passenger van from Enterprise and two cut-away buses on loan from the Area Agency on Aging of Southeast Arkansas. It also has its own 15-passenger van in service, as well as an eight-passenger van on call to transport the disabled.

Reynolds said the vans are planned to be used only until a better short-term solution can be worked out, one that may involve borrowing buses from other agencies. He said he still does not know how the city will permanently replace the four buses lost in the Saturday blaze, which he estimated cost the city about $1 million.

“You’re in limbo until the insurance tells you something,” he said.

In addition to the four buses — which included two four-year-old buses, the city’s newest — the fire Saturday destroyed two older service pickup trucks and a service car. The terminal, located at 2300 East Harding Ave., also sustained major damage in the 3,200 square-foot secondary shop where those vehicles were stored, and electrical damage in the main shop area, where the city’s two remaining buses are stored.

Reynolds said both are in need of repairs that the city can’t make.

“We can’t do anything in the shop,” he said.

The rest of the 17,000-square-foot terminal still smelled strongly of smoke Thursday and city employees had fans near doors to combat the odor.

City firefighters responded to the fire at the terminal around 1 p.m. Saturday. Lt. Shauwn Howell, spokesman for the Pine Bluff Fire Department, said investigators were waiting for the insurance adjusters to finish their job before the city completed its investigation into the cause of the fire.

He said there was no sign of forced entry into the building.

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