In July, Bis-Man Transit will celebrate its 25 years of service to the community, as well as the hard work and dedication of the many people and organizations that helped create the area’s door-to-door service, and help it to flourish in the decades since its inception.
A public event will be held July 15 at the Bis-Man Transit Center beginning at 1 p.m. This event will be followed by a reception for Robin Werre, the system’s transit director for the past two and half decades. This past April, Werre announced that she would be retiring in July.
“There are many, many people that owe a huge debt of gratitude to Robin Werre,” said Interim Transit Director Al Wangler, who worked with Werre for more than 23 years. “She completely altered the transit landscape for countless people in the communities of Bismarck, Mandan and Lincoln.
“It wasn’t just a situation where we wanted to bring this service to the people who needed it most, and everything lined up and fell into place. We really had to struggle to make it, especially in those first few years, and Robin was right there helping to guide the organization. Transit in this community would be drastically different if not for all the hard work and fundraising she helped put together. And I’m not just talking about applying for, and writing, grants. Once upon a time, she was organizing bake sales, raffles, and other fundraisers to help pay for vehicles. She believed in the mission of this organization, and did what it took to make it succeed.”
Werre was part of a six-person group that helped form the Bis-Man Transit Board, a volunteer board that is currently comprised of 11 community members. The board was incorporated as a non-profit organization in 1987, following its inception as a committee in 1986.
The first rides provided by the door-to-door paratransit service began in 1990, mostly with the fleet from Taxi 9000, the first and only service provider for Bis-Man Transit. The first customers were primarily individuals with disabilities, as a qualification based on the age of the customer was not incorporated immediately. In early 1991, the system began operating as a handful of vehicles, with a cobbled together fleet from other organizations, serving limited hours. Many of those first drivers came to Bis-Man Transit with the vehicles and were able to provide familiarity for clients, even though it was technically a new service.
Werre said a big turning point in the history of the organization came when the cities of Bismarck and Mandan voted to allocate part of the mill levies to the organization. “One city leader came up to me and told me he would have never thought that would have gone through, but that we had won overwhelmingly in each precinct,” Werre said. “The cities had spoken, and they said emphatically that they needed our service.”
Following the success of the door-to-door system, the cities gave Bis-Man Transit support in creating and running the fixed-route system. The CAT began providing service in 2004, and celebrated its 10-year anniversary last year.
“The city was very impressed with our collaboration, and all the hard work that was done,” said Rodger Wetzel, one of the members of that initial group that helped create the Bis-Man Transit Board. “They decided instead of having a second board that would only serve the fixed-route system, to have our Board supervise it all.”
Today, the Bis-Man Transit Board is the driving force behind the 24/7/365 service for individuals with disabilities and the area’s population over the age of 60. Bis-Man Transit has 22 cutaway buses and two minivans, and utilizes as many as 17 transit vehicles on the road at any given time, complemented by a fleet of up to 15 taxi vehicles. In addition, the CAT bus operates up to seven buses every day The Board oversees the fixed-route Capital Area Transit system, and the Jefferson Lines bus depot, and is contracted with Taxi 9000, which supplies drivers and support staff, along with the management team of the operations contract.
In 2014, Bis-Man Transit’s paratransit service, the CAT, Bismarck-Mandan’s fixed-route service, Jefferson Lines and Taxi 9000 combined to perform more than 430,000 rides for the tricity region.
