Gillig Advantage 59096

Location: Downtown Sarasota Transfer Station, Sarasota, FL
Operator of Vehicle: Manatee County Area Transit (MCAT)
Date of Photo: March 15, 2019

Usually bus routes are operated by a single agency, for as one can imagine, coordinating service across multiple agencies is potentially quite challenging.  As it is, even within a single agency, the overwhelming majority of agencies often avoid splitting the operation of a single route among different garages when possible.  And the other split agency operation that I can think of (routes 400 and 402 connecting Jerusalem and Bnei Brak in Israel) was changed to have a single operator for each route in order to simplify the service.  Yet the bus route connecting Sarasota and Bradenton, one of the busiest transit lines on the Florida Suncoast, is a split operation between Manatee County Area Transit (MCAT) and Sarasota County Area Transit (SCAT).  In preparing the new Tampa Bay & Florida Suncoast section, I was unable to find any explanation for how this split operation came to be or any other historical information, though I did find proposed plans to have MCAT operate the entire route on its own.  

Do you know how this split operation on the 99 between Sarasota and Bradenton came about?  Can you think of another example of a route operated by multiple agencies like this?  If so, please leave a comment below, as I (and I’m sure others) would love to learn more about these unique operations.

For more photos of Manatee County Area Transit (MCAT) buses, please click here.