Customer Spotlight: Mason Transit Authority
Last year we worked with the fine folk at the Mason Transit Authority in Mason County, WA to create some fun custom Hawaiian shirts for their team. We loved working with them and appreciate their mission to provide fare-free public transportation in their community. We’ve asked them to share more with us and they responded with enthusiasm!
Can you tell us a little about Manson Transit Authority?
Mason Transit Authority (MTA) is a public transportation service in Mason County, WA., serving the citizens since December 1992. Our team of 80 individuals strives to provide transportation choices that connect people, jobs and community; increasing the quality of life in Mason County. We provide approximately 500,000 rides a year and drive over 1,200,000 miles. MTA provides many service options to riders including deviated fixed routes, Demand Response (general dial-a-ride), Worker/Driver commuter service to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Vanpools, Community vans, and volunteer drivers who use their own cars. MTA serves all of the County where roads are accessible, running Monday-Saturday from 4:00am to 8:30pm.
What is an ‘average’ work day look like?
Each day our team looks forward to helping our clients safely travel to their desired locations. We have routes throughout the county and also connecting to neighboring transits in Thurston, Kitsap and Jefferson Counties as well as Squaxin Transit. Our commuter routes are highly used as a transportation alternative to driving to the Washington State Ferry system in Bremerton and the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
In 2015 MTA was the first transit agency in the country to open a Transit-Community Center (T-CC) which brought community partners together to build a facility for transit riders and community services all in one location. The T-CC, which includes offices for social services, an event center and a bus hub for the majority of our routes, has been a huge success for the citizens of Mason County.
Two pictures from Snowmaggendon Feb 2019. We had 2 feet of snow at our facility and some locations in our service area had 3 feet of snow. We had to cancel service for 3 days and ran limited snow routes for 4 more days until the snow was plowed or melted.
Your company really cares about giving back to the community. What events do you look forward to?
Annually, we participate in many events throughout the community from parades to Allyn Days Salmon Bake Festival to Oysterfest. MTA takes great pride in helping the community with special event transportation as much as feasible as well as the daily service we provide. Our staff also participates in job fairs, high school competitions, and mentoring.
Feel free to add anything else you want our customers to know!
Why did we purchase our Aloha shirts with Shop4ties? We were looking for a fun uniform option for our teammates and the Hawaiian style of shirts were an excellent choice. April, Keisha, and Rhonda did an excellent job helping us create our MTA Aloha shirts by supplying us with different choices of colors/flowers/materials/options. It seemed like a daunting task initially but Shop4ties made it a fun project. Our staff truly love the shirts because of the pictures of our buses on them. Our staff is already asking if we can do another MTA themed shirt again.
