TARTA ‘coffee’ meetings open with discussion about riders’ safety

Ways to foster ridership growth on TARTA’s expanding service, and the role public perception of the bus system’s safety would play in accomplishing that, dominated the first of a planned series of “community coffees” Wednesday morning.

Gisele Johnson, a Toledo resident, told Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority officials during a gathering at Rustbelt Coffee that while she has experience riding buses, many of her friends are “leery that something’s going to happen to them” and would feel safer if more “professionals” regularly used transit to provide safety in numbers.

But to make that happen, she said, the transit authority needs to better promote its service to draw discretionary passengers from their automobiles.

Sean Kidd, an intern at the Toledo Design Collective, said running bu