Update: CATA announced on July 25 that the College Connector fixed route will continue to service Lemont on a reduced schedule, in addition to the new CATAGo zone.
Riders will see several significant changes to Centre Area Transportation Authority services in the next two months, including the implementation of the B-Line service replacing CATAGo in the Bellefonte area and the move from fixed route service to CATAGo in Lemont.
CATA also plans to expand other fixed route services and frequencies.
Bellefonte-area and most CATAGo changes will go into effect July 1, while modifications to fixed routes are planned for the start of the fall service schedule on Aug. 22.
Here’s what to know
B-LINE
The previously announced B-Line will replace the on-demand CATAGo microtransit service and CATARide paratransit in Bellefonte and Benner Township on July 1. It will mark what CATA Executive Director David Rishel called at a June 17 public hearing “effectively a 90% reduction in the level of service that we’re able to provide out there…” as a result of funding shortfalls for contracted services in the Bellefonte-area municipalities.
An educational session about the B-Line will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, June 26, in the large meeting room on the first floor of the Armory Building, 301 N. Spring St. in Bellefonte.
The point-to-point service will be available only from 7 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Riders will be required to schedule their trips one business day in advance by phone, unlike CATAGo which allows booking through an app same day or in advance.
A substantial reduction in service — CATAGo currently offers six vans for 15 hours a day on weekdays and 13 hours on Saturdays — and advance reservations offered on a first-come, first-served basis “means some people are not going to get their trips,” Derek Sherman, CATA’s ADA and on-demand programs coordinator, said at the public hearing. He advised booking trips, including return travel, early.
The B-Line will have 20 designated pick-up and drop-off points in Bellefonte and Benner Township, and will have a stop at the Nittany Mall to connect to the CATA Bus CC fixed route or CATAGo. Spring Township, which is withdrawing from CATA services after June 30, is not included in the service area.
Fares will be $4, cash only, for each ride. No passes or tokens will be accepted. (CATAGo and CATA Bus fares are $2.20 per ride, with several pass options also available.)
Free transfers will be provided to CATA Bus routes but not to CATAGo.
The B-Line will utilize existing CATARide and CATAGo vehicles.
CATA had been seeking substantial contribution increases to close a combined operating deficit of more than $250,000 for contracted services in the Bellefonte and Benner Township area. Rishel said the authority, which was chartered by and has primary responsibility to State College and College, Ferguson, Harris and Patton townships, is not legally permitted to run deficits for contracted services.
Bellefonte and Benner Township officials, who said they could not provide more funding, both voted to end their municipalities’ contracts with CATA after June 30, 2025, though Rishel indicated talks are still ongoing.
“We can’t run at a deficit so we’ve really just done our best with the resources they’re able to provide to craft a service that’s going to provide as many rides as we can to the residents who are going to be using the service,” Rishel said. “We are continuing to talk with the folks in Bellefonte and Benner Township, so we are hoping that this is an interim solution and that we’ll be able to provide some other ideas for service in the coming years.”
Access to Courthouse and County Government
With the major change to transportation to and from Bellefonte, CATA is also introducing on July 1 a new service to provide access from the Centre Region to Centre County Government’s Willowbank Building and the Centre County Courthouse.
The service will be available 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and trips must be booked one business day in advance through the CATARide scheduling line at (814) 238-6100. Unlike the B-Line, fares will be $2.20 as with other CATA services.
It also will use existing CATARide and CATAGo vans.
Hugh Mose, the retired CATA general manager and current State College Transportation Commission chair, who emphasized he was speaking as a private citizen, said he had “grave concerns” about the new Bellefonte-area services. He said he was concerned about discounts not being offered to persons with disabilities, and that the courthouse and B-Line services using the same types of vehicles would cause confusion.
“There’s going to be some confusion between the two services,” Mose said. “The fares are different, the hours of service are different and how it connects in the Centre Region appears to be a little bit different.”
Rishel said it would be an “all-hands effort to minimize confusion” and that test runs were being conducted, but that he anticipated a “challenging” few weeks at the start.
LEMONT/HOUSERVILLE CATAGO
A pilot CATAGo zone will begin offering the on-demand service in Lemont and Houserville on July 1. Similar to other CATAGo zones in the Centre Region, it will operate from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, with a fare of $2.20.
Outside of Lemont and Houserville, the zone includes part of Branch Road, the Nittany Mall, Centre Care and Mount Nittany Medical Center. It will offer destination points at Scenery Park and the Weis Markets, Giant and CVS on South Atherton Street, all off which have connections to the Atherton Connector fixed route.
“This is the first new zone we’ve introduced in a couple of years,” Sherman said. “We’re excited about this zone.”
Not everyone was excited about it, though. While Houserville will have public transportation for the first time in years, with CATAGo in place, Lemont will be removed from the College Connector route effective Aug. 22, bringing an end to fixed-route service in the village.
“That makes my head explode,” Mose said. “A lot of money has just been spent to enhance the bus stops in the core of Lemont and now they are going to go unused… If that’s the case, that’s something that should be seriously reconsidered.”
Cafe Lemont proprietors Jodi Hakes and Michael Beck wrote in a Facebook post that Lemont residents and businesses depend on regular bus service. The cafe has staff that depend on bus service to get to work “and staffing in the service industry is challenging enough already without adding further obstacles to small businesses like ours and others in Lemont,” they wrote.
Student customers typically can only access the cafe by bus, they added, and many residents depend on the bus to go into downtown State College and return home late at night. Some fixed-income residents, they wrote, have built their lives around being without a car and using public transportation.
“The proposed ‘on demand’ service comes nowhere near replacing regular bus service,” Hakes and Beck wrote. “We plead with you to not end our lifeline to the rest of the community.”
Removing Lemont will reduce the length of the College Connector trip between downtown and the mall and eliminate an area “where CATA has historically faced operational constraints and issues,” said Marin Yang, CATA transportation planner, said. Road work has caused issues with buses getting through in the past, and the narrow two-lane Pike Street means bus stops cause traffic backups, which CATA has received complaints about, he said.
“We do believe that for this kind of area and the limitations of streets and stops, it would be more reasonable to offer microtransit as a much more flexible option for this region while we keep the fixed route on the main avenue and hopefully provide a better quality and frequency of service,” Yang said.
MOUNT NITTANY MEDICAL CENTER SUNDAY SERVICE
Sunday service to Mount Nittany Medical Center will see expanded hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., but a change in how trips are booked with a pilot program starting July 1. Instead of scheduling through CATAGo, riders will be required to book a trip by calling the CATARide line on Friday.
Fares remain the same at $2.20, and Sherman stressed that the service is for non-emergency trips.
“Our vehicles are strictly non-emergency,” he said. “If people have an emergency, obviously that goes to 911. This is more for people who are looking to work that day or for visitation purposes.”
COLLEGE CONNECTOR ROUTE
Starting Aug. 22, the College Connector bus route will expand west as far as Research Drive in Cato Park.
On weekdays before 8 p.m., half of the College Connector’s trips will provide service to the expanded western end of the route at a frequency of 54 minutes. In addition to Cato Park, it will provide service to The Heights, Circleville Road, Science Park Road and Centre Volunteers in Medicine.
The other half of the trips will turn back at Sparks Street. With Lemont removed from the connector route, trips east of downtown toward the Nittany Mall will have a frequency of 27 minutes, down from 30.
Among other changes, the stop for inbound trips for the Blue Course Drive medical offices will be at the street, while outbound trips will stop directly in front of the office.
The Butz Street stop temporarily implemented in January will be removed.
ATHERTON CONNECTOR
Changes to the Atherton Connector beginning Aug. 22 will offer “more direct routing” between Valley Vista Drive and Scenery Park, with frequency improved from 40 minutes to 32 minutes, Yang said. Service will continue at The Colonnade and at North Atherton Place (the Walmart Plaza). At North Atherton Place, the stops will align with the V Route, so that at the stop on the Walmart side riders can catch the Atherton Connector or the V toward downtown.
The Atherton Connector also will partially replace W Route service in Park Forest Village. After departing Lowe’s, it will loop through the village before returning to North Atherton Street.
W ROUTE
The new W Route will terminate at Oak Hill apartments starting Aug. 22. In addition to the Atherton Connector replacing W Route service in Park Forest, service to Green Tech Drive and the Geisinger Healthplex at Gray’s Woods will transition to CATAGo.
On weekdays, the College Connector will provide an alternate option for travel to Circleville Road and Havershire Boulevard
The W “had been a very long route,” Yang said, creating “a lot of operational issues and delays” of 20 minutes or more during times of heavy traffic.
R AND RC ROUTES
The R Route will be extended to Cato Park, where it will also provide a connection to the CATAGo West zone, beginning Aug. 22. Frequency will improve to 32 minutes during most times of the day.
Already implemented this summer, the R is servicing Stratford Drive outbound and Southgate Drive inbound.
It will no longer serve Briarwood apartments and Thon Drive, where riders should use the RC Route during the full-service schedule. The RC has been shortened to run between The Yards and the Pattee Transit Center on campus.
During the morning commute, the R and RC will operate on coordinated schedules to campus and downtown for a frequency of about 10 minutes from The Yards, Waupelani Drive and South Atherton Street.
HU AND WE ROUTES
The HU and WE will operate as one continuous route along the entirety of Curtin Road beginning Aug. 22. Riders will be able to get on at any stop of their choosing there for a one-seat ride to The Heights, Circleville or Toftrees at a frequency of about 20 minutes.
H ROUTE
The H Route stop at The Village at Penn State will be removed in preparation for service at Mount Nittany Health’s new outpatient medical center at Toftrees West, which is expected to open later this summer.
OTHER CHANGES
• Most community routes will operate during the week between Christmas and New Year.
• The Blue Loop will operate for additional hours for the evening rush on Thursdays and Fridays during full service.
• Blue Loop extended late-night service (midnight and 2:30 a.m.) on Thursdays during full service will be discontinued because of staffing issues. Friday and Saturday Blue Loop hours are unaffected.
“We’re still struggling a bit with drivers,” Rishel noted. “We are working every day to try to recruit drivers. If we had more drivers to work with we probably would be talking about some different options today but we are working as best we can with the resources that we have.”
Rishel said the overall changes for this year are an effort to expand and improve service in the Centre Region, reversing the post-COVID trend of scaling back. He added that CATA consulted with municipal staff and planners throughout the process.
“We are really looking very hard at our transit system to try to reduce the amount of time you have to wait for a pickup and to try to shorten the time you’re actually going to be riding on the vehicle,” he said. “What we did this year is we really looked at our operating data and our ridership data and we looked at where are people riding, how optimize, and areas operating where people not riding.”
