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Welcome to Our New Home and to Our ... A Brief History of Public ... Recent History of the BRTA BRTA timeline A Quarter Century of Transporting ... Not Just the B Bus Why Ride the Bus? ARCHIVES |
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November 17, 2004
  Articles on this page: • Recent History of the BRTA Recent History of the BRTA Founded in 1974, there have been four Administrators of the Berkshire Regional Transit Authority. M. Michael Muzyka was the first Administrator, serving part-time from the BRTA's inception in 1974 to 1976. Then Louis J. Perachi, Jr. took over and ran the Authority from 1976-1993 when he retired and Dianne Smith was selected for the position. Muzyka continued to serve on the BRTA Advisory Board for many years representing Williamstown, where he worked as the Health Inspector, even though he was a Pittsfield resident. Both Muzyka and Perachi have since passed away, but Smith and her successor Charles "Chuck" MacNeil, the current Administrator who has served since 1999, shared their memories of the challenges and joys they faced during their years at the BRTA. The Administrator of the BRTA does not run the day to day operations of the bus fleet. The original enabling legislation that created regional transit authorities in the Commonwealth in the 1970's separated the administration from the operations and maintenance, which is contracted out to a private party, currently First Transit Inc., an international firm based in Cincinnati, Ohio. "It's a wonderful system," MacNeil said, "They provide a professional management team, but we are locally controlled. Everything we do is done under a lot of watchful eyes."
The Administrator serves under an Advisory Board. The board consists of chief elected officials of each member community or their designee, which meets every other month. There are currently 23 member communities in the BRTA, 12 of which are served by fixed route bus service. Membership is voluntary. Immediately upon her arrival in 1993 Administrator, Dianne Smith reviewed and implemented changes in the fixed route service and proceeded to hold a similar review and update of the paratransit service the following year. "Long before I arrived in the Berkshires the idea of a multi-modal transportation center downtown had been proposed," Smith explained, "That ended when the downtown mall project failed, but the concept was still on the books in the downtown planning documentation. I dusted off the old plans, got some funding for a feasibility study, got some state and federal folks behind it, and worked on getting local officials and the business community on board with the idea." The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, known by its acronym ISTEA, helped to really streamline the process of getting intermodal facilities underway. "I knew the concept was perfect for Berkshire County and for Pittsfield," Smith said, "what we needed was one central location for all our transportation venues." MacNeil and Smith both offer hearty thanks to Congressman John Olver and his staff for their tireless support of the Intermodal Center, along with many other transportation related projects here in the Berkshires. Both recognize how closely Olver's efforts have matched their own work to get the BRTA recognized as more than just a bus service for the County. Mayors Ed Reilly, Sarah Hathaway, Gerry Doyle, Jim Ruberto, John Barrett, and the Select Boards of the member communities also earned kudos for their efforts on behalf of the Authority. Many Advisory Board members have served for decades and deserve much credit.
"The Intermodal Transportation Center means so much to the BRTA, the region and the city," MacNeil explained, "For BRTA it is the beginning of a new era, the end result of lots of work by lots of people over decades. I just happen to be the Administrator at the time of its opening. Now it is more feasible, comfortable, safe, and convenient for people to travel to and from this area. You can leave your car in Williamstown, Dalton, or Great Barrington, take the BRTA to the Intermodal Center, and end up in Albany, Boston, NYC or Chicago."
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