Silver Express ready to roll

Driver John Storey had a tall order to fill recently - the very first passengers he had on the Silver Express shuttle were county officials.

Storey said he was nervous but he seemed up to the task.

And there really wasn't much to be anxious about - the riders chatted amongst themselves and enjoyed a free ride from the sheriff's office to Mullan and back.

The shuttle service is conducted by Northwest Medical Transport, a door-to-door medical transportation service that was once called Silver Valley Transportation, and it's funded by a $185,000 Federal Transit Administration grant that Shoshone County sought. The grant funding is good through March 2013.

"It's really a little bit of an experiment," Commissioner John Cantamessa said, "so hopefully people use it."

The more use the shuttle gets, he said, the better chance funding for it will be renewed in the future.

The Silver Express will fill the void left by the North Idaho Community Express bus program when the it folded in December 2010. During its time in Shoshone County, it was estimated that NICE provided 3,000 rides per year.

The shuttle runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Storey starts in Kingston across from the post office and winds the little white bus through the valley twice each day. There are 31 stops, which are marked with blue signs, and the route mainly follows frontage roads along Interstate 90.

The Silver Express seats eight comfortably and is wheelchair accessible. Storey plays the radio quietly, and it's a heck of a lot warmer in the bus than outside.

n For more information, call 1-855-495-7325 toll-free, or access the schedule online at www.ShoshoneCounty.org.