In the past, if you missed the bus on routes such as 168, you had to wait for an hour for the next one to arrive.

Now, thanks to a Regional Mobility Grant from the Washington state Department of Transportation, the number of buses has doubled on routes around Maple Valley and Covington and decreased the head way to 30 minutes.

But there’s a catch.

In order to keep the extra buses and the alternate routes there has to be a demand for it. Using allocated funds from the grant, King County Metro Transit is working on a campaign, along with Maple Valley, Black Diamond and Covington, to increase awareness and ridership on the bus routes.

Linda Thielke, a spokeswoman for Metro Transit, said they will have a mail campaign in addition to offering free tickets for residents to try out the routes.

“It’s not necessarily low,” she said concerning ridership. “It’s just it could definitely handle more passengers and people are not aware of what they could actually handle with it. We look for ones that have decent ridership, but could handle more passengers.”

In addition, they will have information on their web site, online ads, print ads and inserts with utility bills that are mailed out.

Specific routes they are targeting in Maple Valley and Covington include 149, 164 and 168, which Thielke explained are near light rail stations, or enable people to commute without having to use a car, such as Route 149, which goes from Renton to Maple Valley on state Route 169.

Maple Valley Mayor Noel Gerken stated his objective is to preserve the buses Metro Transit has provided for routes such as 169.

“The goal is to keep that route the half hour head way when the grant expires,” he said. “If we can increase ridership, it would be a lot easier to keep those extra buses. That’s the bottom line. If we can get those buses packed we’ll be able to keep them.”

Derek Matheson, the city manager for Covington, explained that the grant was the result of an alternative analysis which was conducted in 2008. The analysis found there was a high — and unmet — demand for transit service in the South King County area.

According to the grant description, “The proposed project will improve transit capacity and level of service in the congested SR 169 and SR 516 corridors by operating extended and more frequent transit service between seven cities in southeast King County.”