Governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed into law a bill making it illegal to hold and use a mobile electronic device while operating a motor vehicle in Michigan. With the bill signing, Michigan becomes the 26th state in the U.S. to establish hands-free driving laws.
For more information and details, please visit https://www.michigan.gov/msp/divisions/ohsp/distracted-driving
Michigan’s Jean Ruestman and Iowa’s Travis Estep sit down Jared Schnader of CALSTART to talk about how they are supporting their agencies, and what they have learned.
You can listen to the podcast in it’s entirety by clicking the link below.
On Friday, April 15, 2022, the Blue Water Area Transportation Commission (BAWATC) released a letter detailing its opposition to Senate Bills 597 & 598. You may find a copy of the published letter here.
The Blue Water Area Transit system provides regularly-scheduled bus service six days a week to the City of Port Huron and Fort Gratiot Township as well as a dial-a-ride service in Marysville, Fort Gratiot, Burtchville and Port Huron Townships.
The public transit system is operated by the Blue Water Area Transportation Commission, an independent public agency, with support from state, federal and local governments. The Commissioners are representatives and their alternates from the Transit’s service area.
In 2016, Blue Water Area Transit averaged over 100,000 trips monthly with 1,246,295 for the year — and over 29,000,000 since 1976. The 85 busses cover nine regular routes and multiple handicap, dial-a-ride and agency partnerships.
See the following article found in the Detroit News.
https://detroitnews-mi.newsmemory.com/?publink=30658c999_1348416
Yesterday, the legislature adopted the K-12 School Aid Budget bill and sent it on to the Governor. The rest of the state departments and agencies will have to wait until the legislature returns in mid-July to complete the state budgets. We would not doubt if it takes until early September for the House and Senate to complete negotiations with the Administration. They have blown past their own statutory deadline of July 1 to complete the state budgets, so in many respects, the pressure is off for a short time.
August 9th kicks off the MASSTrans annual Frontline Conference at the Boyne Mountain Resort in Boyne Falls, Michigan. This conference focuses on the transit staff who are on the front lines daily supporting Michigan passengers.
Multiple training sessions will be held this year including customer service, human trafficking, software training from Routematch and PCTrans software, accident investigation, practical technology solutions, defensive driving, and much more!
More information can be found by visiting our conference site at www.masstrans.org/conference.
The Governor’s 45 cent gas tax proposal is gaining no traction at this time and she is now calling out the Legislature to come up with their own plan. We believe there will be a very slow response. The budget recommendations she has proposed is all wrapped around the road fix so we see it challenging to decouple the issues at the moment. Expect a long budget process, likely well into the summer unless something breaks.
With the retirement of Brooks Patterson as Oakland county Exec, you will get a Dem in office and we believe that person will be far more supportive of RTA so we need to be mindful.
At our February 11th board meeting held in Cadillac, MI we hosted Hopthru Mobile out of San Fransico to present to our members their mobile ticketing platform. Hopthru is a fare collection and validation platform designed to connect transit agencies on one system that can be accessed by riders across the country.
Michigan customers for Hopthru include BATA in Traverse City, and the Cadillac/Wexford Transit Authority who is currently in talks with Hopthru.
If you are interested in learning more about Hopthru you may visit them online at www.hopthru.com or you may download a copy of the presentation they gave to the board.
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