Great Barrington – It was a shocking revelation delivered to a tranquil Great Barrington Selectboard Monday night: It takes two hours to get from Great Barrington to Pittsfield by public transit bus.
And it only gets worse if you work in Pittsfield: you arrive at 7:35 a.m., which is too early for most. And good luck returning to Great Barrington at a reasonable hour, if at all.
It won’t be the case much longer if the Berkshire Regional Transit Authority (BRTA) has its way. Vin Ronghi, an IT and Transit consultant for the Authority, and Kirk Dand, BRTA General Manager, were both on hand to discuss the issues, and ask the board for help gathering information to target routes and timetables, since Great Barrington is a “hub,” for Southern Berkshire County, said Ronghi.
BRTA wants to help solve Berkshire County’s public transit issues for all residents, especially workers and the elderly, who need an efficient system. The BRTA wants to “take Berkshire County and shrink it time-wise,” in Ronghi’s words. And Dand wants to “make public transit sexy.”
Sexy is not how one feels during the 4- to 5-hour ride up to North County from Great Barrington, however.
“You could get on a plane to California in the same amount of time,” said Ronghi, who, with Dand, wants to fight what he calls a “disdain for public transit,” mostly because of “bus routes that take too long,” a problem across America. The way to fix the time issue, is, Ronghi said, to “fight the old transit paradigm” by anticipating possible stops.
RTA consultant Vin Ronghi addresses Selectboard.
But how to figure out who needs to go where and at what time? Data: they want to hear from employers, towns, and the public. They have surveys out right now, and they are collecting information, said Dand, because “we can’t have empty busses.”
They have federal funding known in transit jargon as “Job Access Reverse Commute” and “New Freedom.” That will help run a pilot. But they could use more to accommodate more customers. “With proper funding I can do whatever you want,” said Dand.
Great Barrington, as a hub, said Ronghi, could be viewed as the center of a flower, and all the other, smaller towns, petals that loop back to center.
Town Manager Jennifer Tabakin said that data from the GB Master Plan was already available, and Selectboard Chair Deb Phillips wondered aloud what exactly the BRTA was asking the Board for.
Great Barrington ridership data, said Ronghi. The BRTA requires more detailed data, and they need the Town’s help to do it. “We need to know where people want to start and end,” he said.
Here is a link the the BRTA service map and schedules.
Selectboard member Stephen Bannon suggested convening a meeting with representatives of large employers and asking what their needs are. Phillips identified one issue as employees who work nights and weekends, but Dand pointed out that this is where funding restricts the BRTA’s creativity.
Both Tabakin and Selectboard vice chair Sean Stanton mentioned one of the challenges for Great Barrington involves workers from other communities who need to park in town, but the town has limited space; Stanton said that it would be great to bring workers in without cars.
BRTA is looking at both the “historic and current driving patterns around South County and into the Pittsfield area,” said Ronghi. BRTA can “embark on these changes,” he added, but the “burden is on communities to sustain it.”
What Ronghi meant by that remark was made clear by BRTA Administrator Gary Shepard.
“I would interpret Mr. Ronghi’s comment to mean that sustaining the changes are contingent on customers riding the routes at a reasonable level to sustain and maintain the route existence,” he stated in an email from his Pittsfield BRTA office.
Michelle Loubert
In other meeting news, Michelle Loubert of Housatonic made a passionate plea to the Board to enforce the cemetery dog laws in Great Barrington, to stop the four-legged fiends, who, with their owners as accessories, are defiling graves –– including that of her father –– with excrement. Loubert says the situation is out of hand. She said she has made countless appeals to the Board, Great Barrington Police, and Animal Control. Nothing has changed, she said, and suggested that it is time to “fine people and raise revenue for Great Barrington.”
While the Town has installed dog bags, and signs — there are two more on order — according to Tabakin, it is not enough, said Loubert, and she hasn’t noticed the signs, at least in St. Peter’s cemetery.
“It comes down to common decency,” she added. “The cemetery is not a dog park.”
Maryella Bowens Satinover, a California resident who was born in Great Barrington and is here visiting her mother, reinforced Loubert’s plea on behalf of those who are no longer with us, who have paid dearly for their resting place, and who can’t speak up for themselves anymore, she said.
Maryella Bowen
“It is disrespectful to take advantage of the dead like that,” she said. Satinover’s father is buried at Elmwood, and she has been “concerned for years” about dogs doing their business in cemeteries. She is “fighting to ban them [dogs].”
In other news conveyed to the Selectboard:
Great Barrington will soon have real time weather data, instead of data from the skies of Albany and Taunton. National Grid is donating a weather station to be installed on the roof of the Great Barrington Fire Station. It is a small antennae requiring only “light housekeeping” by the Town, said Board of Health Director Mark Pruhenski.
Pruhenski, who was also recently appointed Special Projects Manager, worked on the weather station project. He said this was an exciting development that will “close the gap in weather coverage.” It will help determine storm response, school and hospital closings, among other benefits, he said.
The data is run through WeatherBug and the National Weather Service. Pruhenski said there will be a link on the Town website as soon as the unit is installed. And anyone can access WeatherBug – the app is available for smartphones.
As Health Director/Agent for the past nine years, Pruhenski had also worked on special projects for the Town Manager’s office. He worked on the plastic bag reduction bylaw, the food truck bylaw proposal, and implementation of rooms and meals tax program, to name a few, he said. This new position, he added, will give him “regular hours” to work on “tasks such as these going forward.”
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