JOHNSTON, R.I. — Around shift change on a recent evening, Amazon workers trickled out of the new facility off Route 6. Many headed to their cars, but some walked over to the new bus shelter on the property.

Sima Adeeb was among a dozen or so people waiting to catch a ride. She started working at Amazon three months ago, and she takes the 28 bus most of the time to get back and forth between Johnston and her home in Providence.

Amazon provides Adeeb with a free Rhode Island Public Transit Authority pass. On days she doesn’t hop on the bus, she has to call a rideshare, because she doesn’t have her license or friends who can drop her off, she said. But that can get expensive.

RIPTA service to the facility on the 28 and 10X lines started in January, and with that service, Amazon agreed to buy $90,000 of fares annually for the next decade.

The coordination between Amazon and RIPTA is part of the authority’s plan to increase revenue by capturing more commuters in a moment when funding is desperately needed: RIPTA faces a $32 million funding gap in fiscal 2026. CEO Chris Durand has said that partnerships like the one RIPTA has started with Amazon, while they won’t be a panacea for those monetary woes, could help.

Louis Nunez, another Amazon worker, takes the 10X to and from work nearly every day.

“It’s the only way I can get to work,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been able to take this job.”

Nunez doesn’t have a car, and he can’t afford the $10-$14 a rideshare would cost each way.

In a previous job working at a moving company, he said, not having a car was a huge challenge, and often the bus wouldn’t take him directly where he needed to go.

Now, Nunez lives close to Kennedy Plaza in downtown Providence, so it’s an easy one-seat ride between work and home.

Durand has said there about 30 people riding RIPTA each way between the Amazon facility and the bus hub, attributing the success of the program to coordination with Amazon for bus service when shift times start and end.

Building on some of that momentum, RIPTA is now looking to adjust its service to the Electric Boat facility in Quonset, a bus line that has gone through several iterations since its establishment.

According to a RIPTA, a rider analysis completed last fall, the QX had the fifth-lowest ridership of all RIPTA lines. “On average, the Quonset Express served 24 passenger trips on weekdays, with an average of 6 passengers per trip,” the study noted. RIPTA staff hope the modifications will change that.

Currently, the line starts in Pawtucket, stops in Providence, and heads down to North Kingstown.

RIPTA is proposing starting the route in Woonsocket and having it leave much earlier to catch morning shifts.

Edward Brown, RIPTA’s executive director of service planning and scheduling, explained the changes at a recent hearing in Woonsocket.

About a dozen people showed up at the Woonsocket Public Library to ask questions and comment on the route shift.

Brown noted that fewer people attend hearings on positive or neutral RIPTA changes. The proposed QX modification doesn’t impact RIPTA’s budget, but the hearing was mandated by state law because it constitutes a service change, he said.

If RIPTA’s board approves the changes, the QX will start at the Clinton Street Park ‘n Ride in Woonsocket. (Pawtucket riders can take the R-Line to Providence and catch the Quonset bus there, Brown said.)

“Does this mean that someone can go to the QX Park ‘n Ride in Woonsocket and take the bus into Providence?” someone in the audience asked.

“Yes, but it’s going to leave at 5 o’clock in the morning,” Brown replied.

“So this is really, really the first shift,” the audience member noted.

The idea of shifting the location and time of the route’s start is to capture more workers heading to Quonset, Brown said, and thus more revenue.

Public comments will be presented to RIPTA’s board of directors, which is scheduled to vote on the changes at its next meeting. If approved, the service in Woonsocket would begin June 21.