Last fall, a majority of the county commissioners voted to end New Hanover’s direct financial support for Wave, which operates vans, buses and shuttles in New Hanover County and northern Brunswick County. Then in February, county and city officials took over the Wave board to evaluate and potentially restructure the financially struggling public transit agency. 

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For the next two weeks, we’ll have a conversation about transportation. Part one, we’ll talk with Julie Olson-Boseman, the chair of the New Hanover County Commissioners. She details her thinking around the issue. We also talk to Wave’s Vanessa Lacer about the system, the philosophy used to come up with the routes and how the public perceives the bus.

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Finally, in our second part, we ride the bus. We spent a cold and rainy Thursday morning riding Wave’s 101 with Sean Bynum from StepUp, Clark Henry, an urban planning consultant and a board member of the Cape Fear Economic Council. We picked the 101 because it has the highest ridership.