STARKVILLE — Starkville’s transit system is bouncing back.
“We’re not back to where we were pre-COVID, but we’re slowly getting there,” Ronnie White, director of Mississippi State University Transportation, told the Starkville Board of Aldermen Wednesday. “Very slowly.”
The Starkville-MSU Rapid Area Transit (SMART) system had more than 470,000 riders in 2023, an increase of 22,000 from 2022.
SMART is funded through a Federal Transportation Commission grant, along with contributions from Mississippi State University, the city of Starkville and various other contracts and advertising.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, monthly ridership was climbing higher and higher, with about 100,000 riders in each of January and February 2020. The pandemic resulted in SMART capacity restrictions, and consequently, a 40% drop in ridership that year.
Ridership has not returned to pre-pandemic highs, but White said ridership is increasing year by year. The 2023 peak was in September with just less than 80,000 riders.
White also said there has been a steady increase in paratransit riders, a transportation option for riders with disabilities or medical needs. There were more than 7,300 paratransit rides in 2023, an increase of around 1,200 rides from last year.
He said SMART intends this year to finalize the development of its own purchasing contracts for buses. SMART is also close to formalizing its own internal driver training program to hire drivers and train them to earn a commercial driver’s license.
SMART’s proposed budget for 2025 is roughly $7.3 million. About $2.9 million of that will be the local cost share, with $2.5 million coming from MSU, $241,000 from various contracts and advertising and $100,000 from Starkville.
“I think it’s a service that really benefits a lot of our community,” said Ward 2 Alderwoman Sandra Sistrunk. “Those of us who have access to other transportation don’t always see that. But I do think it’s a tremendous benefit to our community as a whole.”
Irregular bid
A bidding procedure quirk resulted in one engineering firm losing out on a Starkville intersection improvement project.
The project is at the intersection of Spring Street and Highway 12 and includes making the intersection compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act so it can be streamlined with sidewalk improvement projects coming from the north and south. It has a total cost of about $500,000, with 80% coming from grant funds and a 20% local match.
The board approved Burns Construction to take on the project in the amount of $474,000.
City Engineer Cody Burnett told the board that Byrum Construction originally had the lowest bid of $463,000, but it included three pay items at $0.
Because of the laws governing bidding procedures, Burnett said the city could not ask Byrum why it listed those items at no cost until after the bid was awarded.
Burnett said the city’s consulting firm, Garver Engineering, recommended rejecting the bid as “irregular,” which Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) guidelines permit. He said neither Garver nor MDOT had seen $0 bids before.
“We feel that accepting $0 unit prices sets a precarious path going forward for other projects because you don’t know the intent of a contractor when they bid zero dollars for something,” Burnett explained. “You don’t know if they said, ‘We’re not going to do this work,’ which is a problem, or if they’re saying, ‘We’re going to do the work for free,’ which could also be a problem. Because let’s say that the pay item increases by three-fold or 10-fold in our construction with a unit price of zero. That is really a slippery slope.”
Burnett said the rejection is not a reflection on any work Byrum has done for the city.
“We have a great relationship with them. … It’s really just a technicality with the bid,” he said.
Representatives from Byrum were originally scheduled to appear before the board, but they informed Burnett prior to the meeting they couldn’t make it.
Kevin Edwards is news editor and reports on Starkville and Oktibbeha County government.
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