The Strait Area Transit Co-operative is meeting with its municipal and provincial partners in an effort to get its bus service up and running again.

The non-profit charitable organization shut down its transit service in March because it didn't have enough money to stay in operation.

Bert Lewis, a Port Hawkesbury municipal councillor and a board member with the Strait Area Transit Co-operative, said the municipalities of Port Hawkesbury, Inverness County, Richmond County and the province of Nova Scotia have all committed to a study to determine what form a rural transit system should take to be viable in the long term.

The study is expected to cost between $25,000 and $30,000 and take a few months to complete.

Lewis said with that commitment, the Strait Area Transit Co-operative's volunteer board members will meet again to discuss the possibility of getting buses back on the road while waiting for the results of the study.

"I'm hoping that will be one of the outcomes. But obviously, I guess there's a number of options," he said.

Lewis said those options include no service, the same full service as in the past or something in between.

"We'll be faced with, 'How do we meet any kind of a service in the short term?' That's what we'll be looking at. The study, when it comes out in three months time or two months, hopefully will have a model that will be sustainable over the long term," he said.

"I'm hopeful that in a very short period of time we'll be able to have some transportation solutions in place for those who had been using it in the past and are looking forward to using it again."

The Strait Area Transit Co-operative is made up of a volunteer board with support from financial partners and sponsoring organizations.

Officials with the Municipality of the County of Inverness said they will wait to see what kind of plan the transit board comes up with before it puts forward money to get the bus service running again in the short term.