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:
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)