PROVIDENCE — Next month the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority will start operating in Foster again more than a decade after the only bus stop in town was removed.

Beginning April 3, RIPTA is extending service on Route 10x to a park-n-ride lot across the street from the Foster police station. There will be paratransit service at the stop, CEO Scott Avedisian said at a March 15 RIPTA board meeting.

He noted many people in Foster had reached out saying they no longer drove and that the new stop would enable them to get to Providence without the help of family or friends.

“That’s wonderful, that’s independence,” RIPTA board member Heather Schey said.

Avedisian said that after attending a March 1 public hearing on the possible expansion of service to Foster, residents and potential riders are supportive of the new stop.

“It’s the first public hearing that I have ever been to, through 30 years of public hearings, and the entire audience was 100 percent in agreement,” he said. “It wasn’t even a question.” 

The last time RIPTA operated in Foster was 2006, when the property where a Danielson Pike park-n-ride lot was sold and the stop removed.

The addition of the Foster stop, which cost the agency $24,000, will mean RIPTA operates in 37 out of 39 communities in the state. Avedisian said the agency is working to get service into the last two municipalities, New Shoreham and Little Compton, by the end of the year.