By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Safe Ride has been temporarily shut down since the pandemic hit in March 2020, but officials do not believe the absence of the service has affected driving under the influence arrests.
Safe Ride was created in 2005 as a free service for the community. The bus picked up and dropped off riders anywhere within the city limits between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. in attempts to curb unsafe driving in Hays.
The director of the Ellis County public transportation program, which also coordinates buses for Safe Ride, said all public transportation riders are required to wear masks and social distance regardless of their vaccination status.
He said the service has been unwilling to attempt to force riders who may be intoxicated to wear masks. He cited an instance in which a rider in Kansas City broke the jaw of a 74-year-old bus driver in three places after the driver told the man he was required to wear a mask on the bus.
He said Safe Ride will not resume until the mask mandate is lifted.
The Federal Transportation Administration is scheduled to review the mask mandate in September, but officials said they will not lift COVID precautions until 70 percent of the public is vaccinated. In the Kansas, the public is 44 percent vaccinated.
Local officials believe the mask mandate will likely stay in place at least until the end of the year.
Since its launch, Safe Ride has provided more than 250,000 rides. In 2018, Safe Ride was averaging 2,000 to 2,500 rides per month.
During Oktoberfest, the service averages about 1,000 rides.
Hays Police Chief Don Scheibler said Hays saw a dip in DUI arrests in 2020. The city has averaged about 259 DUI arrests per year during the past 10 year.
Hays had 216 DUI arrests in 2020 and only four arrests in April 2020, which was the lowest number of DUI arrests in any month in that 10-year period.
As of the end of June, Hays had 131 DUI arrests, which would put it back on pace to meet the city's 10-year average.
However, Sheibler said he attributed the increase in arrests to other factors than the Safe Ride shutdown.
"I think prior to the pandemic, we saw a huge increase in the number of Uber drivers and Lyft drivers and more people taking advantage of those," he said. "Prior to the pandemic it would not be uncommon for you to see four or five Uber drivers outside of the bars on a Friday or Saturday night."
When the pandemic set in, people weren't going into bars, Scheibler said.
Enforcement also changed during the pandemic. Officers were focusing on emergencies and were being discouraged to make traffic stops or arrests. People were being released from jails in efforts to limit the spread of COVID-19, Scheibler said.
"Since people have started being vaccinated, people are more comfortable going out," he said. "Across the state, the chiefs are saying the same thing."
The Partnership for a Safer Community, which founded the program, has not met to discuss the long-term future of Safe Ride.
The partnership contracts with Access, the city's public transportation program, to provide Safe Ride at night. Safe Ride is paid for through a combination of Fort Hays State University student fees and Hays Municipal Court fees.
Safe Ride had already dropped Wednesday night service from its schedule before the pandemic because of decreased ridership.
The community is dealing with a different generation of people who socialize in different ways, Scheibler said. During the '90s, when Scheibler was first an officer, the downtown bars would be packed on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.
Younger people, who can stay in contact constantly through social media and their phones, seem less likely to frequent bars than their parents were, Scheibler said.
He also said the state has made the punishments for DUIs harsher, and people may be making smarter choices about safe driving than when the city was seeing more than 300 DUIs per year in the 1990s.
With the emergence of ride sharing and taxi services in the community, Scheibler said he personally questioned whether Safe Ride should continue to be publicly funded.
"I think the committee is going to continue to evaluate and see if the service is being used," he said. "It is not just for drunk and intoxicated people. Other people use that to get around."
He said the community will always have a need for public transportation, but he questioned if the buses still needed to run in the early hours of the morning.
"If there is private industry out there — businesses — that can handle this, we don't have to fund this with public money," he said. "Maybe we shouldn't compete with those folks."
Safe Ride's sister program, Access, which provides rides during the day, has continued to run except for a one-month shutdown in April 2020. Although the pandemic cut ridership in about half, the director said he still sees a need for the daytime program.