CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas —
For nearly 40 years, the CCRTA has been providing accessible and affordable public transit to the Coastal Bend.
The transit authority got quite a bit done within the last year. In 2023 they saw 3.2 million riders use their service.
While the overall number of riders are down and service hours have been reduced since the COVID-19 pandemic, RTA’s number of paratransit riders have now reached pre-pandemic numbers.
In 2023, the RTA recorded 181,000 paratransit trips. That's a 12% increase from what they saw in 2022.
“We know that people need our service, especially the people that have special needs, and so they recognize that it is a viable service for them," managing director of public relations Rita Patrick said.
Last year also marked the beginning of the RTA’s Destination Education program - a service that provides public, private, and homeschool students though grade twelve with fare-free rides to school.
"By offering free rides to our students, it would decrease the barrier of them getting to school on time and moving their education forward,” Patrick said. “Since last year, we have seen an increase of about 300% of students riding our services."
But perhaps the biggest accomplishment that RTA’s saw this year was the completion of their Port Ayers station.
The RTA’s second busiest location has been transformed into a state-of-the-art facility and is set to open to the public Monday morning.
“It was more than 25 years old, and it was not safe anymore to get buses in and out and to get people here safely, so we dedicated this to building something new in west side to help our citizens here,” Patrick said.
If you plan on heading out to the Mayor's Big Bang Celebration but want to avoid traffic, CCRTA is there to help. If you'd like to use their service, you can park and ride from city hall to the event. You can find more information on that here.