PA: With CATA services gone in Bellefonte, here’s what to know about the replacement

CATA services have ended in Bellefonte Borough, but a new Centre County-run transit program has arrived to serve residents.

The partnership between the Centre County Office of Transportation and Bellefonte Borough will see the borough cover the majority of each riders’ fees — exclusively for its residents — through the shared-ride, on-demand bus service.

The program, which saw its memorandum of understanding approved unanimously by the Centre County Commissioners at their meeting Tuesday, officially started this week on the same date that CATA’s services ended, meaning that there will be no gap in service for borough residents that rely on public transportation.

With the new program in place, any borough residents between the ages of 19 and 59 that don’t already qualify for free or reduced-cost rides can get a ride from Bellefonte for a flat $5 fare, both ways.

“I think [the new transit program] is going to be completely beneficial to our residents,” Bellefonte Borough Councilwoman Deborah Cleeton said at Tuesday’s meeting. “Bellefonte Borough has been committed to providing transportation to its residents for many decades. We’ve always budgeted for it and as long as I’m on council, we will continue to do that.”

Tensions between the borough and CATA had been boiling for well over a year before recently parting ways. Last spring, the authority shared with the borough that it was running at a significant deficit, and requested that it — along with Benner and Springtownships — increase their financial contributions.

After being unable to find a solid solution to the deficit issue, the borough council voted to withdraw from all CATA services effective July 1, 2025, unless the authority and the borough’s transit task force could come up with a cost-effective solution.

While a temporary solution — the Bellefonte/Benner B-Line — operated for a while, in February CATA shared with the borough that a financial contribution of $60,000 would be needed to maintain the service. The borough began to search for other options, eventually landing on the county.

“We were with CATA for 50 years,” Borough Councilwoman Joanne Tosti-Vasey said at a borough meeting in May. “Considering the cost and the concerns that we had for people, particularly people who need to get to work, we felt that this alternative was a better option.”

Currently, the county offers a door-to-door pickup and drop-off service, with riders having to schedule their trips by 2 p.m. the day before the ride is needed. The service can transport riders anywhere in the county, not just to partnered municipalities, which is a feature that CATA did not offer.

The new program will operate the same way as the office’s current service — borough residents must schedule a ride by either visiting the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s “Find My Ride” website, or by calling the office at 814-355-4731.

“I recommend that [potential riders] call our office ... that way my reservationists and staff people can walk them through the process, sign them up and explain all the benefits, that way there are no questions that are left unanswered,” Dave Lomison, the county’s transportation director, said.

In May, when the idea for the program was first discussed by the borough’s council, how much of the standard ride fare the borough’s riders would have to pay, and how much of it the borough would subsidize, was still being worked out.

A $5 rider fee was landed upon, meaning that for a ride between zero and 5.9 miles long, the borough will cover $17.50 of the original, full $21.50 fare. The borough will also cover all but $5 of rides longer than 5.9 miles long too, up to 44.9-mile-long rides.

The money that the borough is using to subsidize the rides comes from a $36,000 reserve that was once designated toward next year’s CATA fees, although only $16,000 of that funding has been used so far to cover the first six months of the program.

Lomison said that the transportation office is “right about where it needs to be” in terms of his current staff’s capability to handle the increased ridership that the borough will bring. He is looking to hire people to fill a few extra “on-call positions,” or staff members who can fill in for someone else when they’re out, he said.

The transportation office’s partnership with the borough will last until either party decides to terminate it — there is no cap on how long the partnership will last.

Moving forward, further updates on the program will be shared at future Centre County Commissioners meetings, which take place at 10 a.m. every Tuesday morning. Updates may also be shared at future Bellefonte Borough meetings, which take place at 7:30 p.m.on the first and third Mondays of each month.

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