CHARLESTON, W.Va. — One of West Virginia’s largest public transportation systems is continuing to move closer towards construction on a new and modern facility.
Kanawha Regional Transportation Authority (KRT) announced last December it was receiving $21 million from the Federal Transit Administration, earning the grant after submitting its third application for it.
KRT Executive Director Sean Hill said it was a transformational grant to receive. He expressed gratitude for West Virginia U.S. Senators Shelley Moore Capito and Jim Justice, First District Congresswoman Carol Miller, the Kanawha County Commission, and the state leadership. “This was a group effort,” he said.
The current KRT facility is located at the intersection of 4th Avenue and Stockton Street, with the parking lot just across Stockton. Hill said the brand-new facility will switch places with the parking lot.
There were several reasons to invest in a new maintenance facility, Hill said.
“We’re trying to future-proof it, in a way,” Hill explained. “Our old facility is about 85 years old; it’s built for street cars. There are some realities with a building of that age that you can’t fix. Our concern, number one, was the safety of our employees. Number two, can we be as efficient as possible with our vehicles? Because when a vehicle is down, that directly impacts our riders.”
KRT officials are in the process of designing the new facility with architects and engineers. Hill said they are in the 30-to-100 percent design phase, a process that will take most of 2026.
“What we’re looking at in the next few years is having the ability to work on our vehicles more efficiently, making sure that our maintenance employees are as safe as possible, and that comes back to our passengers, when they notice that our buses and our vehicles are up more often than they’re down. [It’s] extremely overdue, really proud of our team for working hard, and thankful for the partnerships to get this pushed across the finish line to get funded,” Hill said.
Construction will not be as direct as tearing down one facility, then building another. Hill explained that KRT needs to stay operational during construction, and so it will be a long process.
“We’ve got a lot of moving pieces to make sure we can continue to operate our existing facility, while building another facility on the parking lot across the street at 4th and Stockton,” Hill said. “It’s a lot of moving pieces, but I’m confident with the team we have in place, and with our architecture and engineering firm that’s working with us, we can make it happen.”
Hill estimated that construction on the new facility would wrap up in 2028.
Safety Levy
Hill said that voters can help KRT operations during this year’s primary election. He said that around 60 percent of KRT funding comes through the safety levy that gets voted on every five years.
The safety levy will be on the ballot May 12th on Election Day.
Hill said KRT has a campaign to inform people about what the authority does.
“I can’t tell people to vote for [the levy], but I can say that it’s vastly important to us,” Hill said. “We want to continue to be good partners for the community, making sure that we’re showing up, whether that’s the actual bus service that you think of, whether it’s these outside-the-box ideas to save money like KRTplus, whether it’s the fuel program, or whether it’s, ‘hey, it’s a really cold day or a really hot day’ and KRT shows up and has a cooling bus or a warming bus, or we come pick you up at the Regatta.”
KRTplus is an Uber-like ride share service that KRT offers which covers six zones: Southridge, Kanawha City, South Charleston, West Charleston, East Charleston, and South Hills.
KRT’s fuel program is the Kanawha County Fuel Consortium, a contract it has with around 100 Kanawha County agencies to provide fixed gas costs as the pump.
“We want to be the best community partners we can be, and spread those public funds as far as they can go,” Hill continued. “The KRT Safety Levy is a way that we do that, that’s really important to us and we’re looking forward to that getting renewed on May 12th.”