Bus service will go nowhere without a leader

Here we go again with the discussion of bus service in Highlands County.

It has been talked about before and the most recent discussion on that possibility took place last month as the steering committee of the Heartland Rural Mobility Plan met in Sebring for the release of its draft report.

The need for bus service was reiterated. It was noted that it would benefit middle-class families as well as low-income people and the elderly who either can't or don't want to drive.

Few if any doubt the need. There is a tremendous need for the service here and it would be great for the area.

That's not the problem. The problem is the funding - not only the start-up costs but the operational costs.

A public transit system is not cheap. According to the plan, launching a bus line from Avon Park to Lake Placid would cost $600,000 to purchase three buses and $648,926 for yearly operation, for a total start-up cost of $1.2 million.

Several projects for the six-county Heartland area are for public bus service, and three are in Highlands County. Each project is merely a "suggestion," and would need a local or regional government, a nonprofit agency or a private-sector company to take it on.

The mobility plan's steering committee will take its report this summer to the county commissions of the six counties to see if there is interest in pursuing any of the projects.

It will be interesting to see if any of the county commissions in the region - Highlands, Hardee, DeSoto, Glades, Hendry and Okeechobee - even want to discuss it. Although it's an important issue, we suspect that bus service is not a priority this year.

Those commissions are likely going to be struggling with budgets this summer and facing the possibility of cutting programs and people.

We wonder if any of those boards have the will to go ahead with it. Someone has to take the lead and commit time - and resources - if buses are going to be running around the county.

It would make sense to establish a partnership between the counties and perhaps a company in the private sector. Launching a bus service, which the report said would take at least one to two years, is a massive undertaking that will require a lot of work.

The plan identifies possible sources of state and federal grants to help launch projects and provides estimated costs. But it was also mentioned at the steering committee meeting that at least some local tax revenue would be needed to run each suggested project.

The report is extensive and contains a lot of information. We hope that something worthwhile will eventually come out of it instead of just sitting somewhere on a shelf collecting dust.