Omaha’s Metro Transit celebrates Nebraska Public Transit Week

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – While most of use cars to get around, it’s important to remember public transportation.

Gov. Jim Pillen declared this week Nebraska Public Transit Week. Its goal is to raise awareness of how public transit benefits communities.

Kristin Buckner brought her three children to check out the Books and Buses event Saturday at Gallagher Park. Metro partnered with the Omaha Public Library system and city parks and brought one of its new electric buses.

Inside Calvin, Walter and Nora Buckner are having fun, singing songs and reading books — but most important of all, they also learned how bus transportation contributes to a community’s quality of life.

“We love coming to storytimes,” Kristin said. “We heard about this one being on the bus and we just thought that it would be the perfect thing to do on a Saturday. We don’t always get to ride on buses, and this was a great opportunity to come and check it out.”

This marks the 10th year of Nebraska Public Transit Week. Metro officials thought it would be a good idea to go out into the community and offer some other perks.

“We’re doing a free-fare day on Monday to give back to the community,” said Annie Pigaga, Metro Transit’s communications specialist. “We don’t exist without them, so their support is important because if no one rides the bus, the buses don’t run. It’s really important to maintain transit. There are some people that choose to ride when they feel like it, who may have one vehicle in their family. There are some that don’t have an option. It’s important to have those running. We get people to jobs, to school, but also to the fun things in their life. We get them down to the park, we get them to the movies, we get them to museums.”

And students in Kindergarten through 12th grade still ride the bus for free.

For the Buckner kids, Saturday was a chance to actually sit behind the wheel of a state-of-the-art electric bus and learn about the network of bus routes that keep people moving in a city as spread out as Omaha.

“We think it’s really important that kids learn how to ride the bus just like we learn to drive a car at 15 or 16,” Pigaga said. “We want to make it fun rather than only a necessity.”

Kristin Buckner agrees.

“We’ve ridden some buses and we always point them out whenever we see them around town. Maybe they’ll one day need to get around on a bus and now they’ll know how to do it.”

Metro is also partnering with the RiverFront for Earth Day activities on Sunday and next Saturday, April 27, at Elmwood Park.

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