AUBURN – A new Lewiston-Auburn bus schedule will remain on the shelf at least until March.

A glitch in the federal funding request has delayed the new schedule and a free downtown shuttle for four months, and transportation officials say they don’t know when the problems will be ironed out.

“We’re waiting for written confirmation from the Department of Transportation,” said Lewiston-Auburn Transit Committee’s Marsha Bennett. “We have verbal confirmation but we don’t want to start until we get it in writing.”

The new schedule creates two route systems, one in Lewiston and one in Auburn.

The two systems are connected by the free downtown shuttle, which will run from the Lewiston terminal on Bates Street to Central Maine Medical Center, then to Auburn’s Great Falls Plaza before returning to Lewiston.

The shuttle is being paid for with an air quality grant through the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Authority.

The state had listed the grant improperly last summer and officials didn’t catch the mistake until the fall.

That meant a delay in getting the money to the transit committee.

“It wasn’t an easy mistake to undo,” Bennett said. “They take public comments on the change and reevaluate it.”

The new schedule was set to start in mid-November and Bennett, and the transit committee began promoting it earlier in the fall. Many riders were confused when the schedule didn’t begin on time.

Bennett said they won’t make that mistake again.

“We won’t begin promoting the schedule until we have written confirmation in our hands,” Bennett said. “As soon as we have that, we’ll take the next two weeks to advertise it and promote it.”

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