The city of Cottonwood will be offering lower fares for military veterans who want to ride Cottonwood Area Transit, a bus system that travels regularly around town and links up with other transit systems in the Verde Valley.
“Our veterans have put their lives on the line for our country and this is a small thing that the city can do for them,” wrote Bruce Morrow, Cottonwood’s transportation manager. “It would give them access to transit at an affordable rate at a time when many veterans might need a little extra help.”
Veterans will now be paying the same rate as senior citizens after the Cottonwood City Council approved the new rate structure at its Sept. 15 meeting.
“We have received numerous calls from veterans asking about this,” Morrow wrote. “It is [a] belief that by making the rides more affordable for veterans, more would be likely to ride and the difference in the fare would be made up in the extra riders that this would bring onto the buses.”
The discounted fares are also applied to students.
That means it will cost 50 cents to ride the CAT system and $1 to board a Verde Lynx bus, which connects Cottonwood with Sedona.
To read the full story, see the Wednesday, Sept. 23, edition of the Cottonwood Journal Extra.