AUSTINTOWN — Bus riders will await their chariots at a new location.

WRTA announced this week that the bus stop in front of Dollar Tree next to Walmart has been removed. WRTA Executive Director Dean Harris said the bus instead will pick up and drop off passengers along Mahoning Avenue, near the main entrance to the parking lot.

“This is a well-used stop, and we hate to inconvenience our passengers, but we don’t own the property. We must comply with the owner’s demand to remove the bus shelter and the stop,” Harris said.

He said the decision is due to complaints from the property owner, New Century Development Corp., about shoppers leaving debris and shopping carts in front of the store.

“They’re leaving (the carts) piled up there, and I guess it was disruptive to the Dollar Tree,” Harris said.

New Century did not return a call seeking comment.

Harris said the route has not been interrupted, but the company will put a covering over the stop sign in front of the store, along with another sign to let bus riders know the stop has been moved.

“We couldn’t find a good location in that plaza area, so we had to move it up to Mahoning,” Harris said.

The decision comes in the same week that WRTA revealed it will discontinue two major routes in Warren after failing to secure funding that had kept them operating for the past year.

WRTA’s 73-West route, which travels West Market Street to Tod Avenue NW to Norwood Street to Northfield Avenue NW to Parkman Road, and its 74-Elm Route, which travels High Street to Elm Road NW to the Walmart in Bazetta, will be eliminated May 3.

These routes, and two others, were eliminated in August 2023 when the state did not provide the federal dollars that paid for the bus services. The two routes were reestablished in March 2024 after the company obtained a $300,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Transportation matched by $148,178.50 each from Warren and Trumbull County.

“The City of Warren and Trumbull provided the local match and asked us to apply for the grant,” Harris said. “They did not request that of us this time, nor did they provide the local funding, so it’s hard to apply for a grant without the local match.”

Harris said the Warren Express route from Youngstown to Warren will remain in place, though some stops may be removed.

“Some of those stops overlapped, but some stops will be eliminated,” he said.