It's been a month in the making, but today WRTA will enforce its new policy aimed at increasing the safety of its riders.

"We have always been a flag stop where you can pick up the bus anywhere on the route, and we are moving to a traditional bus stop pick up. We want to make sure that our passengers are safe and our drivers are safe when they stop the bus," says Dean Harris, Executive Director at WRTA.

Harris says a number of incidents of riders walking into the street to drivers missing a rider on a route were the main reasons for the new policy.

Riders say the increased walk to fixed bus stops will be an issue.

"I don't like walking way down the street when I can just catch the bus on the corner on my street," says a rider from Youngstown. 

"I want to see if they can create a stop along the Warren express route because they just pass people up," says a rider from Warren. 

With hundreds of stops across the area, WRTA says in the next few months they'll study how their current routes work with the new procedures and make small adjustments from there.

"Some people are used to walking our their front door and going to their bus stop and they'll have to walk a distance but as time goes on we will adjust bus stops for better pick up locations but we based it on our data from where pickups were from before to consolidate them into better spots," adds Harris. 

You can find a complete list of WRTA routes and stops by following this link: https://www.wrtaonline.com/