Following a year of record high gas prices, burdened roads and expensive new bus lines, Sarasota County expects 2007 to be the year its revamped mass transit system pays dividends.

Sarasota County Area Transit, buoyed by hundreds of new riders on three key routes and a host of planned improvements, expects to grow by 25 percent in fiscal 2007, senior planner Sarah Blanchard said Monday.

But the announcement came after a fiscal 2006 in which SCAT ridership grew by just 3.8 percent, a slower pace than the statewide average.

Sarasota County officials are hoping for more growth to justify the county's financial investment in the bus service. The county has increased SCAT's budget from $13 million in 2005 to more than $20 million today.

SCAT riders saw the extra spending last year in the form of a new North Port line, more frequent service between Sarasota and Venice and improved cooperation with Manatee County to get people to work from cities such as Bradenton and Palmetto.

This year will see evening and Sunday service, new hybrid fuel buses and new neighborhood routes in Venice and Englewood, Blanchard said.

Commuters such as William Canaday, a Venice air conditioning installer who rides SCAT twice a day, hope the changes will cut their afternoon commutes.

"Getting home is just a monotonous wait," Canaday said, waiting for a connection.

Indeed, SCAT riders often complain that lengthy connection waits and frequent stops turn their commutes into long affairs. But SCAT revamped three routes in 2006 to address those concerns and saw results.

In September, the service changed the frequency of its Venice-to-Sarasota line from every hour to every half-hour. SCAT also extended its Longboat Key line to reach Manatee County Area Transit buses and streamlined its bus to Palmetto to allow easier connections with MCAT.

Those three lines saw ridership increases of 21 percent to 68 percent, SCAT officials said.

SCAT's total ridership increased to 1.9 million passengers in 2006. It was the highest total since 1999, a year when SCAT increased its fare from a quarter to 50 cents.

Even with increased ridership, SCAT's ridership growth fell short of statewide trends.

Ridership grew by almost 5 percent in Florida between 2004 and 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available, said state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Tara Bartee. Anecdotal evidence suggests even more reliance on public transit in the past two years, Bartee said.

Blanchard expects new vehicles to help SCAT catch up to the state pace. Five new hybrid-fuel vehicles are expected to be launched soon, Blanchard said. By March, SCAT could also expand to 144 bus drivers, from 98 a year ago, she said.

Today, SCAT will ask the county to extend its Longboat Key service until 10:30 p.m. The line presently ends at Coquina Beach at 7 p.m.

More changes are on tap for the future. County Commissioner Nora Patterson said the county is looking for federal funding to dedicate a former railway or a lane of street traffic to buses only.

Sarasota government could be aligned in SCAT's favor. The county's newest county commissioner, Joseph Barbetta, made improved public transportation a major part of his campaign platform. Still on board are the rest of the commissioners, who approved a 40 percent budget increase for SCAT last year.

"We've got be aggressive about applying for federal and state monies," Barbetta said.

It is ambitious to think SCAT can grow ridership to more than 2.2 million, County Commissioner Jon Thaxton said. But the county will have to re-evaluate the changes it has made to SCAT if it doesn't start to see increased ridership within two years, he said.

"I want to see not just an increase but a per capita increase. An increase in riders as we increase in population," Thaxton said.
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Staff photographer Jason McKibben contributed to this report.

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