It was about that time when Kyle Creamer slid into his seat and flipped open a laptop computer. Across the aisle, Bruce Rakes settled in, chatting with an older woman who was folding bus schedule pamphlets decorated in bright orange and green. The woman, Jean Villalva, was wearing a loud button that matched her pamphlets. It said: "I commute the Smart Way!"

That might be, for now.

But Villalva, a retiree who volunteers for Valley Metro, and her fellow Smart Way Bus riders might be an endangered species.

The future of the bus, the only one that travels between Roanoke and Blacksburg with a few stops in between, hinges on funding. As the Smart Way, managed by Valley Metro, hits its first anniversary of paid service Tuesday, it's beginning a countdown to the day the cash flow could go dry.

Grant money geared toward giving the program its test run is slated to run out within the next year, putting Valley Metro in a position to apply for further grants and to ask area municipalities for matching cash, said Dave Morgan, Valley Metro's general manager.

But program officials first will have to convince area governments - and maybe Virginia Tech - that the bus is worth the just under $400,000 Morgan says the service costs.

Its average of about five riders per one-way trip this past year makes Blacksburg Mayor Roger Hedgepeth skeptical.

"To use taxpayers' money to fund a bus that runs back and forth with one person or five persons, that's not a good way to spend the money," he said.

But for consumers like Creamer, a 44-year-old Roanoke resident who uses the bus to get to his classes at Virginia Tech, the Smart Way is the best way.

Creamer says he's been the only person on the 29-seat bus at times. One day last week, he was one of six riders on the early ride to Blacksburg.

Not only does the 80-minute ride allow him to do schoolwork in the morning, at $3 one way, but it also costs him less than driving his car, he said.

A small but loyal

core of riders

Creamer and what he described as a "handful" of other regular riders helped make up the Smart Way's passenger total for the year: 22,981 paid rider trips between Aug. 2, 2004, and June 30, said Donna Chamberlain, Valley Metro spokeswoman for the Smart Way program.

At $3 per trip, that's a maximum of $68,943 in rider-fee revenue, although the actual number is less because some passengers pay for a $100 monthly pass. Valley Metro did not provide complete revenue data for this story.

Morgan said it costs, not including driver salaries, about $47 to run the bus for each of the 134 weekly trips it makes on its current schedule. That's a cost of $6,298 per week to operate the service, or more than $325,000 annually.

To break even, the bus would need to carry 16 passengers each way. But its projected ridership for the coming year is still only about five people per run, Morgan said. Current ridership numbers indicate the Smart Way isn't going to be able to support itself anytime soon.

David Woodall-Gainey has seen ridership vary between one and 15 to 20 people since he began riding the bus in September. A software developer with Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture, Woodall-Gainey often spends his mornings with a small cast of familiar characters.

When the bus is most packed, he said, it's because of students. Or, of course, football.

Debby Freed, Virginia Tech's alternative transportation manager, said one of the major benefits of the bus service is as an airport shuttle for students, who can't always cough up parking fees at Roanoke Regional Airport or don't have cars.

On game days, the bus has carried loads of riders to and from campus. Chamberlain noted 403 passenger trips, Smart Way's daily record, on Nov. 18 - the day Tech played Maryland.

Freed has seen no downside to the Smart Way, but she couldn't comment on whether the university would be willing to fund part of the initiative in another year.

Other officials also said it's too early to decide whether the effort is worth the money it takes to keep the bus on the road.

For Chamberlain, year one definitely has been a victory. "Is it possible that we need more ridership?" she said. "Absolutely. Do we have a loyal core now? Big absolutely."

Towns, cities still

favor smart travel

After Valley Metro received a state demonstration grant a few years ago, Morgan and Roanoke City Manager Darlene Burcham began discussions with the New River Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization, which manages public transportation throughout the New River Valley. The demonstration grant money, with matching funds from Roanoke, carried the program through its first year, Morgan said.

Even after the MPO approved the bus, members of Blacksburg Town Council scoffed at the idea of running a route between the valleys. Hedgepeth, who sits on the MPO, said he thinks there might be better ways to get people from one valley to another.

But he said he's willing to wait and see the bus through its second year, while the program is supported by grant money from a Federal Transit Administration program for nonurban areas, again with matching funds from Roanoke.

The MPO is just starting to look at Smart Way data for the last fiscal year and will probably discuss ridership data at an Aug. 18 committee meeting, said Dan Brugh, the planning group's executive director.

If the bus doesn't make it past next summer, Woodall-Gainey isn't going to give up on alternative transportation. He car pooled for about 15 years, and he'll try to return to sharing rides, even though he said it's less convenient than just hopping on the bus.

Though he and Rakes are part of the potentially endangered Smart Way club, they're also members of a burgeoning group in the Roanoke and New River valleys: sticklers for alternative transportation.

Valley Metro, the Blacksburg Transit Authority and Roanoke's Ride Solutions all have programs to promote car pooling, public transportation and area park-and-ride lots.

And they have a pool to tap into. According to 2000 U.S. Census data, about 1,200 Montgomery County residents commute to Roanoke for work and a few hundred people travel from Roanoke to Montgomery County for their jobs.

Chamberlain has seen a similar pattern with the Smart Way, which she said draws about 51 percent of its passengers from Blacksburg and only about 18 percent from Roanoke.

As it is, Erin Hofberg, program manager for Ride Solutions, which operates in Alleghany, Botetourt, Craig, Franklin, Roanoke and Montgomery counties, has seen steadily increasing ridership of and interest in the Smart Way. Hofberg also has a list of 212 registered area commuters in about 80 car pools - the most she's ever managed.

This heightening interest in alternative transportation might have something to do with the continual climb in gasoline prices, which have jumped about 38 cents nationwide during the past year, according to the Energy Information Administration, a statistical branch of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Chamberlain saw a particular ridership jump in March, when the EIA recorded U.S. gasoline prices of more than $2.

But Hofberg said saving money, saving time driving and even saving the environment often aren't enough to spur people out of their routine. "I think a lot of it is that people have a hard time breaking old habits, and if you have a car, you want to drive it."

Once people take a chance on the Smart Way, though, they seem satisfied, Chamberlain said. And they often come back for another ride. Hofberg, who manages survey data for the bus program, said almost 70 percent of riders are very satisfied with the service.

Chamberlain said she thinks local municipalities will want to buy into it once they try it.

"I'm betting if we can get the mayor of the fine town of Blacksburg to ride our bus a couple times, he'll find he'll like it."