This summer, the Starkville Area Rapid Transit program will alter and add several of its in-town shuttle routes in order to meet the needs of Starkville and student community needs. 
The SMART program has ordered three new buses as part of the $3,060,387 grant it received to fund its 2015 operations. 
Joel Walls, who runs the transit operations, said one of the new SMART routes that will be added will run the length of Mississippi Highway 12, starting at Wal-Mart and ending at the Montgomery Hall hub. 
“So you can get on at Montgomery and go anywhere in the primary shopping areas along Highway 12,” Walls said.
Additionally, the Boardtown loop will be split into Boardtown North and Boardtown South, with the north loop including a stop at the Oktibbeha County Hospital. 
The Old Main loop will extend its route to include a stop at Patriot Park to facilitate people who live in the Greenoaks residential neighborhood. 
Jeremiah Dumas, director of parking and transportation at Mississippi State University, provided a presentation to the Starkville Board of Aldermen Monday detailing these and other route changes as well as explaining the source of funding and the specifics of the department’s proposal for a 2016 grant.
“This last year was the first full calendar year of our implementation,” Dumas said.
“What we operate under is what’s called the 5311 rural mass transit program. It’s for communities and municipalities that are 50,000 folks or less. These are federal transit dollars that are administered through MDOT [Mississippi Department of Transportation].”
Dumas said MDOT provides for 80 percent of the cost of capital spending such as new buses or the construction of bus stop shelters and 50 percent of the day-to-day operational costs such as gas, tires and other maintenance concerns. 
According to Dumas’ presentation, SMART will request $3,226,400 from MDOT for 2016 to fund the next expansion of the program, which will create one bus route to East Mississippi Community College and a second that will loop from EMCC to the Golden Triangle Regional Airport, to several of the industrial companies in the surrounding area, and then up to West Point for the tire manufacturing plant the Japanese company Yokohama established there.
“MDOT wants us to go regional,” Wells said. “We are part of a regional group called Easy Tag, and the Choctaw nation transit manager is our mobility manager for Easy Tag.”
The Choctaw nation has been in talks with Yokohama about job training and employment opportunities. Wells said the plan is for the two communities to both send buses that will hub at EMCC, and from there members of both communities can receive job skill education from EMCC as well as have assured transportation to any of the major industries in the region.

“That’s what we’re here for as part of the 5311 grant money we get through MDOT,” Wells said. “It’s public transit funds. It’s about getting people where they need to go. We are trying to get the word out that that’s what we are here for.”