With an assist from federal funds, Monterey-Salinas Transit is rethinking its bus routes.

For the first time in about 20 years, Monterey-Salinas Transit is set to overhaul its bus routes throughout Monterey County, and while some regions are envisioned to see less coverage, the remaining routes would run more frequently and be better timed with one another, significantly decreasing wait times for riders making connections.

“This is something we should be doing every five years,” says Michelle Overmeyer, MST’s director of planning and innovation.

The reason it took so long, Overmeyer says, is money, and in this case, the approximate $344,000 to carry out the system-wide analysis and envisioned overhaul came from the $52 million of federal funds the agency received for Covid-19 pandemic relief.

The new vision was set by MST’s Board Operations Performance Committee over the past few months, which directed staff to prioritize increasing ridership over coverage by ramping up the frequency of buses traveling in places where people live and work, and by focusing on coverage in areas of the greatest need of public transit.

The draft plan for the route overhaul will be made available to the public in advance of the MST board’s Sept. 13 meeting.

Among the proposed changes: service to Big Sur (which currently runs three times a day) will be discontinued and service in Carmel Valley will be reduced, while the frequency of routes in urban centers will increase – buses would travel every 15 minutes from Seaside to Cannery Row, and Salinas City Center to Northridge Mall.

The proposed plan will also focus on two existing transit hubs, in Salinas and Monterey, where buses would arrive 10 minutes after the hour and depart five minutes later.