Fairmont Marion County Transit Authority - History

History

On December 31, 1971, the City Lines buses ended service in Marion County and Fairmont, West Virginia. This left the citizens of the area without any type of mass transit. The inauguration of a new system lasted over a year and a half.

In January 1973, the governing bodies of Marion County and Fairmont formed the Fairmont Marion County Transit Authority (FMCTA) as a separate government entity, funded equally at $60,000 by each of the bodies. The planning, purchasing, scheduling and recruitment process lasted five months. On June 7, 1973, the seventeen month period of no transit ended with the first bus operated by FMCTA hitting the road.

Originally service operated on seven routes in and around Fairmont plue five additional routes serving rural communities. The original routes were West End, East Side, Rivesville, Barrackville (with select trips to Chesapeake), Watson/Mall, Monongah (with select trips to Worthington) and Jackson Addition. Weekly routes were Kingmont and Manningotn on Tuesdays, Carolina, Fairview and later Colfax on Wednesdays).

Soon after, FMCTA began to expand the service area. The original fleet of buses consisted of Mercedes-Benz buses and later in the 1980s of Flexettes which were light duty buses built by Flexible. Grumman-Olsens (which look like bread trucks) were added for rural route service. Large Bluebirds which resembled school buses were bought to use on charters and interstate trips until insurance became cost prohibitive. They were by far the largest buses operated by FMCTA with 41 seats. The fleet for many years consisted of Goshen Coach buses, Ford mid-sized buses, vans and a trolley. The fleet now stands around 25 vehicles. The vehicles have various seating capacities ranging from seven to twenty nine seats and are fully equipped to meet the Americans with Disabilities (ADA) specifications.