For many residents of Bithlo, life is hard. Jobs are scarce and opportunity seldom comes knocking. Many residents lack the necessary education and training required to obtain full-time positions. The jobs they can find are often too far away to even consider walking and many lack a form of motorized transportation.

Many rely on LYNX to get from place to place, day to day. In 2009, LYNX replaced regular bus service to the area with their PickUpLine program due to budget constraints. This year, as the county faces a reported $70 million shortfall, LYNX funding may again be cut by an estimated seven percent, along with many other Orange County departments. The public transportation service operates without a dedicated source of funding and must depend on the counties it services to provide operating revenue on a yearly basis.

In the meantime, LYNX has provided the Bithlo area with the PickUpLine, a smaller shuttle vehicle where riders must schedule appointment times to be picked up and dropped off two hours in advance while traveling only within the line’s designated area.

Today that PickUpLine is the only form of transportation between the Bithlo and Christmas areas of East Orange County into the more industrious Waterford Lakes, Alafaya Trail and UCF communities. How has the change in service fared? Well, that depends on who you ask.

“It’s just very inaccessible,” says Tim McKinney, executive vice president of United Global Outreach, a local non-profit that has selected the Bithlo area for their revitalization efforts. “There are thousands of people that live east of Lake Pickett that are literally cut off from the rest of the world.” According to McKinney, the residents of Bithlo lose their connection to civilization, and to jobs, without a consistent service to take them back and forth at a convenient time.

“I challenge one of the county commissioners or the mayor to use the PickUpLine to go to and from work and function in their daily lives to see if they really were able to be productive,” says McKinney.

On the other hand, LYNX contests that the PickUpLine is actually a superior service to the residents of the largely rural area. “Instead of having to walk to a bus stop, they walk to their curb and the service picks them up and drops them off wherever they want to go within the service area, as long as they schedule the times within enough notice,” says Matt Friedman, manager of media relations for LYNX. “It’s actually a better service for these people at a cost savings to Orange County.”

That savings comes in the form of smaller vehicles that are easier to drive, less overall vehicle maintenance and cheaper operations costs. “You look at all the routes we have and if people aren’t riding them, we have to get rid of them,” says Friedman. “No one was been cut off; their service has been adapted.”

As county officials scramble to find budget dollars without adjusting taxes, the proposed cuts may affect public safety the most, something many residents are not happy about. “If it comes down to funding a bus or keeping my family safe, I’m sorry for everyone that uses the bus, but I’m voting to keep my family safe,” says Charles Lawrence of Lake Nona.

For Bithlo residents though, many were unaware of the PickUpLine services available to them. “I never got any information or knew anything about it until I ran into the driver at the store and asked him about it about two weeks ago,” says longtime Bithlo resident Linda Pate. A retired mother of three who is legally blind, Pate has missed six doctor’s appointments because of a lack of transportation in the past several months. “I’ve had to rely on other people to pick me up and drop me off anywhere I wanted to go; I had to fit into their schedules and give them gas money.”

Since finding out about the PickUpLine service, Pate has used the bus line without much complaint, save for the price. “People out here just don’t have very much money to do anything, myself included,” she says.  “You get to a point where the brick wall gets too high, and you can’t climb it. I don’t know the answers but I know some of the problems.”

Article by Corey Gehrold