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GREENSBORO - PART's regional commuter network is growing so fast that it is asking leaders across the region to help it buy four new buses.

The group's board of directors agreed to buy the buses Wednesday if the Triad's six metropolitan and regional planning organizations cover the $1.5 million price tag.

The buses would augment a half dozen already on order by the transit agency, a partnership of 10 counties across the region.

"We want to expand (service) to all our 10 individual partners," said Brent McKinney, the executive director of PART, which stands for Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation. "We're saying, 'Give us some money so we can go to work for you.'"

PART will use its own money for the first six buses. It gets revenue from commuter fares and from local taxes on such services as car rentals.

Money for the additional buses would come from federal grants allotted to each of the planning groups to fight pollution from traffic congestion.

Those groups supervise transportation projects in different parts of the region and include separate city-focused groups in Greensboro, High Point, Burlington and Winston-Salem, and their regional counterparts for the Piedmont Triad and Northwest Piedmont.

Some already have used significant parts of their congestion grants, but all have amounts ranging from $224,000 to $4.1 million that they have not decided how to use.

PART hopes each group will contribute a share of that to the regional bus network, which provides service from outlying park-and-ride lots and between the Triad's various city-run bus systems.

Like many transit agencies in an era of high gas prices, PART has seen a ridership boom.

In addition, in recent months, it started commuter bus service to Davidson and Randolph counties. And it begins express routes Oct. 13 in Stokes County and Oct. 27 in Yadkin County.

In coming months, McKinney said, he hopes to begin serving Davie County and Mocksville, start another commuter route south on U.S. 421 to Julian and Liberty, and provide more service along N.C. 68 and to Alamance County.

PART can do some of that with the six buses already on order, but not all, he said.

The Greensboro Metropolitan Planning Organization is using part of its $8.6 million congestion-fighting allotment for such projects as upgrading its traffic-signal system and operating the HEAT program that provides bus service to the city's college and university students.

It has $1.9 million remaining, but the local MPO has tentatively decided to use that to expand Greensboro Transit Authority's evening bus service, said Tyler Meyer, Greensboro's chief transportation planner.

Meyer said the city MPO could revisit its informal agreement to allocate all $1.9 million to GTA or perhaps find money elsewhere to help PART.

In other action, the PART board voted Wednesday to increase the fee for its monthly commuter pass from $50 to $60, a move expected to raise about $84,000.

The increase will take effect Jan. 1 . It should be enough to pay for about one month's fuel for PART's fleet of commuter buses, McKinney said. The pass allows commuters an unlimited number of rides on PART buses for four weeks.

When it takes effect, the pass would still give commuters riding PART to and from work each day a 25 percent discount from the standard, one-way fare of $2.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com