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The Luzerne County Transportation Authority has stopped using its new name — at least for now.
Authority officials announced Aug. 1 the agency would now be called the Northeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or NEPTA, as part of a rebranding initiative.
But some Luzerne County Council members have questioned the rationale for removing the county’s name, as well as LCTA’s power to make such a change without county involvement.
“At this point we have put it on hold pending the resolution of council’s inquiry,” authority executive director Norm Gavlick said Friday in reference to the name change.
Council has asked county transportation authority board members to attend Tuesday’s work session to discuss the name change, according to an agenda released Friday.
LCTA provides public bus service and vans that accommodate the elderly and disabled.
The authority switched back to its old logo on Facebook Aug. 15, and a new GoNEPTA.org site now redirects to the existing LCTA site.
County council appoints authority board members and provides annual funding the authority needs to obtain state matches. This year the county contributed $650,409 so the authority could receive $6 million in state funding.
Gavlick has said county involvement was not needed because the original name on the authority’s charter will remain.
For example, he said on Friday that bank accounts and checks will still be in the LCTA name, while public communications, advertisements and vehicles would contain the new title.
“It’s still the LCTA and always will be. We just filed a fictitious name doing business as NEPTA,” Gavlick siad.
He compared it to the Monroe County Transportation Authority’s use of “Pocono Pony” and the Central Pennsylvania Transportation Authority’s 10-county public transportation service called rabbittransit.
Gavlick said his authority’s new name was intended to put the county “into the driver’s seat” in consolidations he someday expects to occur with the Hazleton Public Transit in the Hazleton area, the County of Lackawanna Transit System known as COLTS and possibly other neighboring counties.
“It’s not a question of if consolidation is going to happen regionally. It’s a matter of when and how,” Gavlick said.
The authority’s upcoming construction of a new state-of-the-art center on a 12-acre site on South Pennsylvania Avenue in Wilkes-Barre bolsters the argument that a regional base should be here, he said. By taking ownership of the regional name, the county authority is in a leadership position focused on bringing the others “into the fold” without disagreements about which county or municipal names are in the title, he said.
“It puts our county council and our LCTA board front and center. The reasoning behind the name change was not in any way meant to disparage Luzerne County,” Gavlick said, noting Philadelphia and four other counties named their regional system the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA, back in the 1960s.
The county authority first submitted paperwork to the state to initiate the name change in 2015, he said.
Authority officials did not broadcast the plans because they did not want another transportation system to run with the idea, Gavlick said. Council members are expected to press the authority board for specifics about public votes to ensure approval complied with open meeting laws.
“Every one of our board members was aware of this,” Gavlick said.
The rebranding also was a key focus of the authority’s strategic business plan approved a year ago, and a copy of this plan was forwarded to county council members, Gavlick said.