 - The Wind River Transportation Authority recorded an increase in ridership last month according to a recent report to the Fremont County Commission.){kind=link}
(Lander, WY) – The Wind River Transportation Authority recorded an increase in ridership last month, according to a recent report to the Fremont County Commission.
“December was a very good month,” WRTA Director Tim Nichols told the Commission during a meeting last week.
Ridership
The agency’s Safe Ride program transported 818 passengers in December, Nichols said – a 36 percent increase from the previous month.
“Exactly 111 of those were New Year’s Eve transports,” he noted, but overall the Safe Ride program is “outperforming our expectations at this point, which is tremendous news.”
“(We’ve had) a great response from the communities.”
The Riverton microtransit model also showed “tremendous growth” last month, Nichols said, serving 1,079 passengers for a 19 percent increase in ridership over November.
“We see increased utilization in our late-night safety and rural access with flexible trip needs,” he explained. “That’s where our microtransit system within Riverton is really taking off.”
The WRTA’s fixed route service saw a 13 percent increase in December, with 1,185 total riders, Nichols continued.
Altogether, he said, the data shows a 9 percent increase in ridership across all services, with 3,957 passengers served in December.
Nichols characterized the overall increase as “marginal growth (that is) pretty consistent.”
Funding
For fiscal year 2026, Nichols said the WRTA still needs to generate almost $152,580 to meet the local match obligations associated with the grant funding it receives.
Commissioner Mike Jones asked whether Nichols would be asking Fremont County to cover some of that local match requirement, and Nichols confirmed that, “as I do with all of our local government partners, I’ll make the rounds … come budget season with (a) humble request.”
The WRTA has already received a “one-time infusion” of more than $244,000 from Gov. Mark Gordon’s Infrastructure Matching Funds program to support the local match, Nichols noted.
In addition, he said the City of Riverton has granted the WRTA a $42,000 operating subsidy out of its contracts for services account, and the State Loan and Investment Board has approved a $48,000 award to help fund the agency’s local match obligation for rolling stock.
The SLIB money will support the purchase of three 14-passenger cutaway buses, Nichols said.
For more information, contact WRTA at (307) 856-9782.