Since 2002, we have had a special summer bus between Lebec and Pine Mountain, making stops in Frazier Park, Lake of the Woods and Pinon Pines.

Kern County’s Frazier Park Fixed Route helps people get to the clinics, the library, the bank, the market, the senior center, the skate park, the pharmacy, the hardware stores and numerous other shops, restaurants and businesses. It also connects with an express bus that goes to Bakersfield.

But nobody seems to know the Fixed Route exists. We need to use it now or we may well lose it. The county has already reduced Fixed Route service from six days a week to just two this year—Thursday and Saturday.

There has been no advertising and no publicity so we have a bus that’s running nearly empty—a good reason for the county to cancel it.

I urge you to give this valuable resource a try while you still have the chance to do so.

It also wouldn’t hurt to let Kern Regional Transit know that we want and need this service. Most of the Mountain Communities have Dial- A-Ride service year-round. However the summer Fixed Route is Pine Mountain’s only public transit. Schedules are available at the Pine Mountain Clubhouse, the Family Resource Center in Frazier Park and at www.mountainenterprise.com (in the right column under FYI).

Kornblum is a writer who lives in Pine Mountain.

This is part of the July 09, 2010 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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