Public transportation: a vital partner in business and community well-being: can your company provide a benefits program that includes bus passes for employees? If so, there are tax advantages.

• Author: Killoran, Nancy

John Q leaves his house in Ocean view to catch People Mover Route 60 at 7:13 a.m. His wife will take the family car to drive carpool today, and his teenager needs the second car for his first after-school job. John Q arrives at the Downtown Transit Center at 7:50 a.m. and walks briskly to his job in the Atwood Building. John Q's trip represents one of the 12,000 rides Anchorage residents take each weekday on a People Mover Bus to travel to work, to shop, to school, to recreational opportunities, or to business and medical appointments.

PEOPLE MOVER'S 30TH ANNIVERSARY

While bus service began in Anchorage in 1944 and operated through a private company until the 1960s, People Mover as it is called today, was created in 1974, and assumed its current place in the government structure when the city and borough were unified in 1975.

There are three distinct components to Public Transportation in Anchorage: People Mover-the fixed-route bus system; AnchorRIDES-the Americans with Disabilities Act compliant paratransit services for seniors and the disability community; and Share-A-Ride-the carpool and vanpool matching service.

The fixed-route fleet consists of 50 40 foot and five 30-foot low-floor buses; each has kneeling capability, a ramp. two wheelchair stations and a bike rack. People Mover operates 19 routes from Oceanview to Peters Creek. One-way adult fare on the bus is $1.50, with discount fares and passes for seniors, disabled individuals and youths.

"We know that transit is not just a social service, as many people think," explained Tom Wilson, director of Public Transportation. "We are demonstrably an economic factor in labor mobility and in the social life of the community. We are a work force and customer delivery system for the businesses of Anchorage."

Mall managers at both Fifth Avenue and Dimond Center report that about 40 percent of the employees at the Fifth Avenue Mall and 25 percent at Dimond Center rely on People Mover as their primary means of transportation to/from work.

"When People Mover prepared to institute service to the airport in the summer of 2003, employers told us repeatedly that they were eager for the service to begin because it would reduce personnel turnover and substantially reduce retraining costs," Wilson said. "Our surveys indicate that 50 percent of our riders do not have any other means of transportation, so it's a safe bet that we are also delivering customers to businesses as well as employees."

Among the...