South Lane Wheels ends service after 44 years in Cottage Grove

South Lane Wheels is ending service after 44 years, closing a Cottage Grove nonprofit that linked riders across South Lane County with Eugene, Springfield and northern Douglas County. For people who used the door-to-door vans for work shifts, medical appointments and grocery runs, the loss lands immediately.

The cutoff hits hardest in places with few other options: Cottage Grove, Creswell, Dorena, Culp Creek, Saginaw, London and Lorane. Seniors, riders with disabilities and residents without cars now face a thinner set of ways to get across town or out to Eugene and Springfield. Some riders will need to ask family or friends for rides, pay more for transportation, miss appointments or cut back on trips altogether.

South Lane Wheels said it was established in 1982 as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) and described its mission as providing safe and economical transportation to local destinations and as far as the Eugene/Springfield metro area. The organization also said fares do not cover all operating expenses and that donations help keep it going, which helps explain why the loss of the service matters well beyond one route. Lane County planning materials show the transit network had already been changing before the shutdown: Route-Around-Town, a deviated fixed-route service once run by South Lane Wheels, was suspended in January 2019 in response to Lane Transit District’s MOD pilot.

The main public fallback is Lane Transit District’s rural shuttle program. LTD says rural South Lane County transit changed on July 1, 2025 after a grant-funded Metro Shuttle pilot ended June 30, 2025, and a separate two-year pilot began the next day and runs through June 30, 2027. LTD says that pilot still serves rural South Lane County and expands into additional rural areas, but with less service in South Lane. For riders trying to reach clinics, jobs or stores, that leaves a smaller system than the one South Lane Wheels had built over four decades.

The Connector service had been listed as running between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. and as provided by Lane Transit District and operated by South Lane Wheels. That history underscores how tightly the local transit network had been tied together before South Lane Wheels stepped out of service, and how many South Lane riders now have to start over with fewer choices.