{"id":8624,"date":"2016-01-15T09:06:23","date_gmt":"2016-01-15T17:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/ninilchik-tribe-plans-for-regional-public-transit\/"},"modified":"2016-01-15T09:06:23","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T17:06:23","slug":"ninilchik-tribe-plans-for-regional-public-transit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/ninilchik-tribe-plans-for-regional-public-transit\/","title":{"rendered":"Ninilchik Tribe plans for regional public transit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>KENAI \u2014<\/strong> Ninilchik officials say public transit service is making its way to the Kenai Peninsula with the help of a $300,000 grant from the Federal Transit Administration.<\/p>\n<p>Darrel Williams, Resource and Environmental Department Director for the Ninilchik Traditional Council, said the organization is looking to start adding 15-passenger buses to fill its garage, which is attached to the Ninilchik Tribe\u2019s 4,000-square-foot transit building, KBBI-AM reported.<\/p>\n<p>Williams said more than $1 million has gone into the construction of the building in Ninilchik, located 38 miles southwest of Kenai. It will serve as the region\u2019s transportation hub.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve already bought the property; we\u2019ve already built the building. This is really one of the final steps to actually make this service happen,\u201d said Williams.<\/p>\n<p>Initial plans for the bus service focused solely on the local community, but the council has since considered extending service to the western peninsula\u2019s major population areas of Homer, Kenai and Soldotna.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat service would consist of a fixed route service that would go from Ninilchik, as a hub, where everybody would meet,\u201d said Williams. \u201cAnd then we\u2019d have a bus that would go from Ninilchik to Homer and back. And we\u2019d have a bus that would go from Ninilchik to Kenai\/Soldotna and back. And the idea is that the buses could meet in the middle and then the people could actually switch from one to the other and then actually travel the entire Kenai Peninsula.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tribal officials said the transit service will increase access to health care and education for the tribe. The neighboring Kenaitze tribe recently built a new Native hospital in Kenai and both Soldotna and Homer have colleges.<\/p>\n<p>The lack of public transportation in the region has been a concern shared among residents across the Kenai Peninsula. A group of citizens started the Kenai Peninsula Transportation Task Force in September.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA route system is what our community needs; it\u2019s what our community wants,\u201d said Shari Conner, chair of the task force. \u201cIt will help with tourism, people getting to and from work \u2014 there are a lot of people in our community that are unable to drive due to no licenses or lack of funds for transportation,\u201d said Conner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KENAI \u2014 Ninilchik officials say public transit service is making its way to the Kenai Peninsula with the help of a $300,000 grant from the Federal Transit Administration. Darrel Williams, Resource and Environmental Department Director for the Ninilchik Traditional Council, said the organization is looking to start adding 15-passenger buses to fill its garage, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8624"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}