At 4:00pm October 14, the Wetzel County Board of Education members cut the ribbon on the recently opened bus garage. The project, years in the making, began last fall and has now been completed.

The new facility is located behind the Wetzel County Technical Career Center. The former bus garage was in need of many repairs and the size was insufficient for a fleet of 45 buses. The estimated cost of the project was six million dollars.

Board President, Linda Fonner had this comment on the facility. “The new Wetzel County school’s transportation hub is a phenomenal accomplishment. This has been needed for many years. Our drivers, aides and mechanics have a safe place in which to work. This in turn makes our county’s transportation safer for students and staff.”

Transportation Supervisor, Treasa Loy, stated the new garage will have four mechanics on duty. Two on the early shift and two in the afternoon. The facility gives the staff the ability to perform all mechanical work necessary to maintain the fleet. Jobs such as engine repair and transmission will be removed by the staff, but sent out for work to be performed. This is more of a time saving requirement, due to some specialized equipment that is needed to work on internals of engines and transmissions.

Wetzel county has 31 regular bus routes which are run each day. Last year they transported 1,300 students to the county’s seven learning centers. During the course of the year, buses travel nearly a half million miles safely and efficiently, due to the first-class service buses will receive at the transportation center.

One new addition to the garage is an automatic bus washing bay. Buses during the winter months travel roads that are heavily salted. This wash system will help to protect the undercarriage of the buses and reduce corrosion damage, increasing the safe transportation life of the county’s bus fleet. With the opening of the new Bus transportation center, the county’s 45 buses will have the ability to be cleaned from top to bottom with the addition of the washing center. The modern wash center uses state of the art sensors and photo eyes to determine each bus’s size and shape. With these elements, the rotating washing unit will move around mirrors or any items that can protrude from the bus.