Before dreaming of a shuttle to connect Honesdale to Scranton, brothers Christopher and Matthew Harms moved to Wayne County from New York City.
“So, I moved up here from the city probably about 12 years ago, and I always found it strange that there was never any type of transportation options to get to and from an airport, to go out to a restaurant,” said Christopher Harms.
The two started a business in town, Time Away Rentals, part of the Time Away Group. Christopher Harms said it’s a big provider of Wayne County’s affordable housing stock. They got the idea to expand into a taxi service from their clients.
“We started meeting tenants, [specifically the] elderly, y’know, that couldn’t get around or tenants that were having trouble to and from work,” said Christopher Harms. “And it was kind of born from that, where we were like, ‘There really is this need.’”
Wayne County’s Transportation Task Force, a Wayne Tomorrow! initiative, invited the brothers to the committee to share what they heard from their tenants and think of possible community solutions. Business owners and community leaders from other counties speak on the board as well.
Janna Genzlinger works with the Scranton Area Community Foundation. She said people’s lives in Wayne and neighboring Pike County revolve around owning a car. It’s hard to make a living without one. Genzlinger is the senior director of human resources at Settlers Hospitality.
“In this region, in the rural counties, Wayne and Pike, if you don’t have a car it’s often difficult to get a job. But how can you get a car if you don’t have a job? So there’s this catch-22 in the cycle, in the finances that are preventing people from being able to have the jobs that they want because they don’t have a car,” said Genzlinger.
New ways to travel in Wayne County
The Harms’ hit the ground running in late 2023 and started Time Away Transportation.
“So, we kind of just fast-tracked it. Submitted the paperwork to the [Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission] at the end of last year so we could be legal, not really expecting it to kick off quite as quickly as it did in January. Since then, we started with one vehicle and we are now up to five,” said Matthew Harms.
They plan to add two to three more drivers in the near future. Matthew Harms hopes to cover all of Wayne, Lackawanna and Pike counties. That’s where the idea to start a shuttle service came in.
Paying for a daily taxi service to work isn’t affordable for most people, especially in a rural area, said Genzlinger. And lots of people travel between Lackawanna and Wayne counties for work each day.
“And so, we envision each of the small towns and business districts connected through a shuttle and through, we hope, microtransit as well, so that folks can get door-to-door service at an affordable price,” said Genzlinger.
Microtransit works a lot like an Uber Share, said Genzlinger. People can reserve taxi seats, but the vehicle will pick up other passengers along the way. It’s a lot less expensive than a single fare ticket – for both the passenger and the county.
County-level transportation
But Wayne County hoped to start a shuttle service long before the Harms brothers joined the transportation task force. Officials from Lackawanna and Wayne have been searching for the finances to get a project started.
Derek Williams, task force co-chair and Honesdale mayor, said the county got the idea from the Scranton Area Community Foundation. Via Transportation, a public transit network, started working with Scranton to improve the COLTS bus system in 2023. Via looked into a shuttle plan to connect Scranton to Honesdale along Route 6, but estimated it would cost Wayne County around $2 million.
Wayne’s a rural county, said Williams. It can’t afford to spend $2 million on transportation.
“And as much as I would love for something like that to happen one day, I don’t think we’re in that position right now,” said Williams. “We have our county transportation providers doing their important work in offering subsidized rides to the elderly and folks with medical conditions. But kind of a full-on public transit in the sense that tax dollars are used to fund it, we don’t really have that opportunity right now.”
He said the private-public partnership between the task force and Time Away came up ‘organically’ and answered the county’s financial concerns.
Matthew Harms added the County of Lackawanna Transit System Authority (COLTS) is helping Time Away lay down the groundwork. The brothers since got approved for a basic shuttle route by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission and could legally operate a shuttle starting on July 15. Realistically, he said they’re more likely to open business at the end of the year.
Wayne County residents and Route 6 commuters can leave comments and suggestions on the shuttle project on the Route 6 Shuttle Survey. Williams said the results will be made public for any transportation provider who may want to work on the project.
A sample shuttle route is not public at this time. However, Williams said there will be at least one or two stops in Honesdale, one or two in Hawley, a stop in White Mills and one near the Route 6 Mall between White Mills and Honesdale. The survey will be live until September.
Matthew Harms said the survey is vital to the shuttle’s success.
“We can’t design something to this scale that’s going to fit every single person, but the more feedback people are willing to give, the easier it will be for us to make sure that the large majority is getting what they need and want to see,” said Matthew Harms.
For more information on the survey and project, go to the Wayne Tomorrow! Transportation Task Force webpage.
