Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the letter dated Jan. 3 regarding the Napa Valley Transportation Authority s Vine Transit Services ( Bus system should have been planned better ).
Prior to the pandemic, the Vine provided over 1 million transit trips in fiscal year 2019-20. Since the pandemic, ridership has dropped off by almost 80% but it is slowly coming back and the agency staff anticipate that ridership will be fully restored when the pandemic ends. During the pandemic, bus services nationwide - particularly those in suburban and rural areas - did not experience the same precipitous ridership drop as commuter services. This is because smaller systems, like the Vine, provide critical mobility for members of the community that cannot drive or choose not to drive. Providing services to the most disadvantaged members of the community is a key objective for the agency.