TAHLEQUAH, Okla — The Cherokee Nation has received a transit grant worth $10 million dollars that will help build a brand-new Ki Bois Area Transit System (KATS) facility in Tahlequah.
KATS is a public transportation system that’s worked with the Cherokee Nation for almost 20 years.
Charla Sloan is the transit director of the organization.
“We cover 12 counties,” she said. “We provide transportation for what a lot of people know as Sooner ride, which is Medicaid transportation, or just somebody needs to go the grocery store, go the doctor’s office, go to jobs, we do anything.”
Sloan said the grant will help tremendously, as KATS has outgrown its old building and needs a new one.
“The idea is to have our own maintenance shop up here that will save us a lot of Deadhead miles and time taking vehicles back and forth; we can just work on them up here,” she said. “The other thing that we needed was a place for the drivers together for training. We just we didn’t have any space.”
Right now, the company is renting temporary space but will move to a new 200,000-square-foot transit facility on Airport and Main in Tahlequah’s Industrial Park.
Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr., said this grant will help to fill a huge need in the community.
“It’s a priority because if you are a person who has a transportation barrier, and many of us take that for granted,” he said. “We have a way to get from Point a to Point B.”
He said many people don’t have the luxury of running basic errands because they don’t have transportation at home.
He said that because of the nation’s partnership with KATS, the organization completed 115,000 rides across northeast Oklahoma for those who needed them.
“Anywhere in the country, if you lack transit, it’s a problem,” he said. The rural areas, I think, historically have seen underinvestment in transit; you often see some attention, necessarily, on urban areas for transit. We need that, but we feel good about doing our part to meet some of these needs, and this new transit hub will just help us do more.”
The Cherokee Nation is working on renderings for construction on the new transit facility.
It should be complete in a few years.
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