Four new Smart Way buses will be purchased at a cost of close to $2 million to carry passengers between the Roanoke and New River valleys.

The Roanoke City Council, acting as the board of the Greater Roanoke Transit Authority, approved the purchase Monday.

The Smart Way ride service, run by Valley Metro in Roanoke, connects downtown Roanoke and Virginia Tech with stops in between, for $3 one way.

Assistant City Manager Jim Grigsby said the buses should be in service by December or January. Riders can expect a $1 increase in the one-way rate then. City officials had recommended the rate increase take effect on July 1, but Grigsby said the Smart Way Advisory Committee "had asked that we hold off on the increase until we put the new buses in service" -- probably in the same December or January time frame.

"That seems like the natural time if you're going to do an increase," Grigsby said.

Bev Fitzpatrick, who chairs the advisory committee, said he hopes the committee will stage a public hearing in the summer or fall so citizens can voice their views on the Smart Way service.

The four buses are priced at $490,000 each, for a total of $1.96 million. Most of that cost will be covered by federal and state funds, but the Smart Way localities will pay about $253,000 in a local match. That money is already in the transit authority's budget, Grigsby said.

The new buses are intended as an upgrade to the five-year-old Smart Way fleet.

Grigsby said the new buses, made by Motor Coach Industries, a Schaumburg, Ill., bus manufacturer, will be about 45 feet long and carry 57 passengers each. They replace the current Freightliner models, which are shorter and carry only 30 passengers.

The new buses should also have longer life spans, he said, running about a million miles instead of the 350,000 miles slated for the current buses. The current buses have already exceeded that by more than 50,000 miles.

Grigsby said the decision to delay increasing the Smart Way rate won't affect Roanoke's fiscal 2010 budget, either. Officials were able to negotiate a decrease in insurance rates that saved the city between $6,000 and $7,000 -- about the same amount that would have been generated by the rate increase.

Staff writer Jeff Sturgeon contributed information to this story.