History
The need for creating RVTD arose when its predecessor, a private company named Mount Ashland Stage Lines, went bankrupt and ceased operating in 1974 after having served the Rogue Valley since 1965. Area voters approved the creation of a new public transit district in 1975, but funding for operations was not included, and subsequent requests for authorization of a property-tax increase to fund the service were rejected at the ballot box. The district's board scaled back the original plans by about 35 percent before finally gaining voter approval of operations funding. The service that was inaugurated in July 1977, initially operating under the name, Rogue Rapids Transit, comprised just three buses serving six routes. Initial ridership on the fledging system was better than expected, prompting the city of Medford to agree to purchase three vans for RVTD's use, which were used for a new shuttle service in the downtown area starting in November 1977. The district's bus fleet has since grown to 20 vehicles.
Read more about this topic: Rogue Valley Transportation District
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)