BY JERRIE WHITELEY

HERALD DEMOCRAT

An increase in call traffic led Texoma Area's Partransit system to upgrade their phone system this month.

Director Brad Underwood said his staff identified problems with the old phone service from callers who said they were left on hold too long or couldn't get through. The old system, he said, had 15 lines and the new one has 26 incoming lines.

"They started working on it on Friday," Underwood said Tuesday afternoon. "And they are here today." He said Monday was the first day the staff had to work with the new system.

He said they hope the new system solves the phone issues because he knows there are people out there who want rides. The system, Underwood said, has experienced a significant increase in riders in the past few months.

In July, the system provided 14,444 rides and in August that number of rides jumped to 17,809 rides. By September, the number was up to 21,125.

He noted that the organization did start two fixed routes this fall but that does not account for all of the new riders.

"In September, we had 2,097 riders for the college routes," Underwood said. He said the people at both Austin College and Grayson County College are pleased with the response the fixed routes have received.

However, he said, the fixed routes are helping people other than college students. Underwood said knows of at least one rider who is using the fixed route to get back and forth to his job and another rider is using the college bus to get to a support job at one of the colleges.

"We have got a couple of Austin College professors riding back and forth to work," Underwood said.

With all of those extra riders, Underwood said, have come some concerns about the time it took people to get through to schedule a ride.

That led to the upgrade in the phone system.