Kim Morris/St. Joseph News-Press

On her way to a day at summer school, 9-year-old Jennifer Nappe exits the Route 13 bus under the watchful eye of driver Camille Wilson on Thursday.

From the middle seat of The Ride’s Route 13 bus, Joanne Nelson gazed out the window across the aisle, chatting now and then with the familiar-yet-nameless faces of fellow bus riders.

After dropping off her 9-year-old daughter at summer school, Ms. Nelson waited patiently as the bus driver hurried to get her to Hy-Vee in time to make her connection with a different bus. Though she has been using The Ride for about two months now, the routes and interchanges are still a little confusing.

“I carry this everywhere I go,” Ms. Nelson said, producing a dog-eared route map.

A slow but steady flow of people with similar missions drifted on and off the Route 13 bus Thursday as it looped from Downtown to Hy-Vee and back again. Many of the multicolored seats remained empty until noon, even though St. Joseph Transit, which operates as The Ride, collected no fares in honor of national Dump the Pump day.

Jessica Briggs was one resident who took advantage of the fee-break to get a taste of public transportation. A newcomer to the St. Joseph area, she used the day to plot her route and time her ride since public transit is much different here than in her previous home of Phoenix.

“The bus system is huge in Arizona,” Ms. Briggs said, adding that, unlike St. Joseph, all the buses run on fixed routes.

Driver Camille Wilson, who said mornings generally are slow anyway, didn’t expect a big crowd Thursday since it’s hard sometimes to get people to ditch their cars for public transit. She said the biggest hike in ridership came gradually as gas prices first started to go up.

“Some of our slower routes, their ridership wasn’t that much,” she said. “Now they got quite a few.”

Kurt Janicek, resident transit manager, said that as of Thursday afternoon ridership was up 15 percent to 20 percent and lines to purchase monthly passes at a discounted rate were long.

The Ride currently operates from 5:15 a.m. to 9:15 p.m. on weekdays, but Mr. Janicek said St. Joseph Transit expects to receive a two-year grant for Job Access Reverse Commute services with the Federal Transit Administration. Beginning in October, the grant would allow a small number of buses to operate through the night.

“This is designed to target populations that live in low-income areas of the city and to get them access to second- and third-shift jobs,” Mr. Janicek said.

Extended service would benefit Kristal Allnutt, who said she sometimes must walk about five miles home at night if she has to work a late shift. A seasoned veteran of The Ride, Ms. Allnutt knows how to read the maps and work the system of eight routes so that she catches the most direct line to where she wants to go. She takes the bus every day to her job at McDonald’s and also uses it when she needs to go shopping.

“They go to all the main places in St. Joe,” she said. “I think it’s a lot better than a lot of other cities.”

Ms. Allnutt said she and her husband have monthly bus expenses that easily add up to more than $100, which she considers cheap when it comes to transportation costs. It’s convenient too, as the driver will drop Ms. Allnutt off at her front door if she is in a hurry for just 50 cents extra.

“I think it’s pretty fair,” she said.