The director of engineering of the town fielded calls to set up bus service to shops like the Wal-Mart Supercenter and the grocery stores near the Heritage subdivisions after the old grocery store, bordering the edge of the downtown historic district served Wake Forest's Northeast neighborhood closed. Several elderly residents in the northeast neighborhood don't have access to cars and have difficulty getting around.

On Tuesday, Keravuori will present Wake Forest's bid to connect Northeast to the other parts of town through a small connector bus route by the end of the summer.

"We have one route now and are now negotiating the stops itself," Keravuori said. "It hits the main corridors and the densely populated areas."

The service will run a small bus along Capital Boulevard to as far south as Wakefield, through the northeast neighborhood and through Heritage subdivisions.

Wake Forest has budgeted $100,000 for the first year of operation, said Wake Forest Deputy Town Manager Roe O'Donnell.

"We're trying to get this thing running by the first of August."

A 2006 study of how to rejuvenate the northeast area determined that public transportation was a dire need.

Currently Wake Forest is served by the Wake County's scheduled bus service, Wake TRACS, short for Transportation and Rural Access. Unlike city busses, TRACS transportation requires 24-hour advance booking and can cost anywhere from $2 to $4 for a one-way trip.

Wake Forest Mayor Vivian Jones has pushed for better public transportation as one of the town's top priorities for the year.

In addition to the the local route, Triangle Transit Authority and Wake Forest officials plan to start an express bus route in August that will begin at a park and ride in Wake Forest to Triangle Town Center and run from there to downtown Raleigh. The cost of the express route is estimated to cost $375,000.

"We're comfortable that people are going to like this route," Keravuori said.

"We're just tickled to death about it."

The public meeting on the proposed connector route will be at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Wake Forest Town Hall, 401 Elm Avenue.