#402 Beach Island Flex
Beach Island Flex – Route #402
Image, Left, part of the most beautiful and expensive Bus Stop waiting area on the CARTA system.
A stress and automobile free trip out to the front beach on the Isle of Palms or Sullivan’s Island is as simple ans calling Tel-A-Ride Flex Reservations at (843)724-7420 to arrange a pick up time at least two hours in in advance and taking the #40 Bus out to Mount Pleasant Town Center where you can either have an immediate connection and trip to anywhere on Sullivan’s Island and most location on IOP or wait on one of the scheduled runs to the Front Beach District at the Isle of Palms. Official CARTA Map and Schedule for #402 Island Flex in PDF Format.
Here is the trip from downtown Charleston to Mt. Pleasant Town Centre on Google.
The 402, otherwise known as the Bus to the Beach, is the crown jewel of the CARTA system.The #402 connects to the #40 Trans Mount Pleasant and #401 East Cooper Connector lines at Mount Pleasant Town Center, allowing you to shop on your way to or from the beach.
Students at the College of Charleston can use their Student ID as a bus pass to reach the beach for free using this route. See our College Student’s Bus to the Beach guide.
At our last check, the #402 Island Flex bus was not included in the Google Transit system, so you’ll need to use the schedule or call reservations to figure out your trip from Town Centre to the Beach.
Out to the Beach
The fare each way from the mainland is $3 for adults, with discounts for senior citizens, the disabled and children. Accompanied children under 6 ride free. Those with a CARTA multiday or student electronic pass can realize huge savings. Passes are on sale at the Visitors Centers in Downtown Charleston and at Waterfront Memorial Park in Mount Pleasant as well as Piggly Wiggly at Sea Island Shopping Center on the #401 route or Seaside Farms on the #4o2 route. You can take coolers on the bus, but please keep them on the small side. Bikes can go on the front bumper bike rack. Boogie Boards, Umbrellas and Chairs can all be rented for modest prices at the IOP Beachfront Park, so you don’t have to lug everything out there.
You can take a towel, change of clothing and handbag out to the Isle of Palms on the bus. You can change there, so you don’t have to wear your bathing suit on the bus. After your time on the beach with your rented chair and umbrella, you can shower off at the wonderful open air showers at the park or the free municipal showers near the Hot Dog Stand. Now that you’re clean and fresh, you can enjoy lunch or early dinner at one of several restaurants on IOP. Then on the way home, with no road rage, you can stop over at Town Center to do a little shopping. You end it all with an Ice Cream with our friends at Carvel, waiting for the bus back downtown at one of their tables. Honestly, try it once, you’ll never pack a cooler, fight traffic and arrive home hot and frustrated with salt dried all over you again. This is how most of the world goes to the beach and you may enjoy it a lot more than the large scale expedition in the Ford Expedition. I can promise you your kids will like it more. My son and I enjoyed the beach this way for years.
East Cooper CARTA Riders has been speaking to elected officials on the Isle of Palms about lockers for visitors so people won’t feel it’s necessary to bring a car to the Island to lock up their cell phone inside of. This is the result of reader suggestions.
The #402 bus runs once every two hours to the Isle of Palms County Beach front Park from a stop in front of Verizon Cellular in Mt. Pleasant Town Centre (Image, above, right) and two stops along Hungryneck Blvd., on the South Side of Town Center. The #40 Trans Mount Pleasant bus stops at the same location, east and westbound. The #401 East Cooper Connector stops on Hungryneck about 150 sidewalked feet South of Carvel ice cream as it travels West.
Current Route Performance Issues
CARTA telephone operation for reservation and dispatch is struggling. East Cooper CARTA Riders has received a number of reports of inadequacies in phone response and communication with drivers. We strongly recommended calling in any reservation’s early or relying on the scheduled pickup times. When you call, you want to speak to the Tel-A-Ride reservation clerk. The number is (843) 747-0922.
Faster Trips by Reserving a Ride
You can also call CARTA dispatch at (843)724-7420 for a reserved pickup in a limited mainland service area between the scheduled pickup times and request transport to places on both islands other than the front beach business area on the Isle of Palms, including Wild Dunes, Wild Dunes Yacht Harbor and Sullivan’s Island. This bus also serves Seaside Farms and Franke at Seaside on the Mainland. You can often find the bus waiting at Town Center to connect and take riders who have called in a reservation out to the beach. The bus is usually connecting to the mainland at least once an hour. Dispatch is often overloaded on weekends so call several hours ahead. Please report issues using our feedback form.
The good news is that there are lots of runs between the mainland and the islands besides the scheduled ones, Before you request a specific time, ask them if someone has already requested a nearby pickup at a time near yours. There are often reservations to meet the #40 so there is generally little or no wait a lot of the time. You will help everyone if you ask dispatch about pickups sceduled near the time and location you need. Often a minor adjustment in your travel time can produce a more efficient operation for everyone.
Carvel Ice Cream in Mt Pleasant Town center put a bench our for riders and has a long tradition of catering to the comfort of those waiting on CARTA buses on their corner. Here is the Google Place page for Carvel at Town Center. Note however that the stop is in front of Verizon, about 100 feet North.
The Park
Isle of Palms County Park has lifeguards in season, changing rooms and fresh water showers. You can board the bus free of salt and sand after your day at the beach. In a rare advantage for those who are not auto dependent, the park is open and free to pedestrians and bus riders. The City of Isle of Palms also operates a shower and changing facility a few hundred feet to the west of the Park, adjacent to the Hot Dog Stand and Flag Poles. Restaurants and beach businesses fill a three block beach front business district selling everything from burgers to fine, local seafood.
Those who insist on pushing a dinosaur juice powered personal vehicle through the snarled beach traffic have to pay to park it nearly everywhere out here.
Bus stop at Isle of Palms County Park
Enjoy the Beach, Skip the Drive
Isle of Palms County Park- Full details on the clean, pleasant, wonderful beach front park on the Isle of Palms.
Not only does this bus line go to the best location accessible on the CARTA system, but the #402 features the system’s most beautiful bus stop as well. Shaded benches line the path to between the Park and Corner Stop with a functional water fountain for the thirsty children. Not enough? Just across the street are two more benches in a shaded pocket park next to an impressive bronze sea turtle sculpture with a view down through the entire, festive beach front commercial district. Flags wave in the ocean breeze. Music can be heard from the bars and restaurants. Rental bikes roll through the streets. If there were not cars and no Sullivan’s Island, the Isle of Palms would be paradise.
If all of that and sugar like beaches lining the Atlantic Ocean surf are enough for you, you’re there when you get to the Isle of Palms. Stay twice as long as you planned, have a meal and remember the beach isn’t working until you’ve been there long enough to not wonder about when you need to go home. It can be crowded, but a stroll down the beach in either direction will soon reach lots of unpeopled sand.
However, there is more. If you call in a reservation to CARTA, the Island Flex will take you to any part of the Isle of Palms or Sullivan’s Island that you like. Elsewhere on the Isle of Palms there is the Wild Dunes Resort and international guest workers will often be your companions on the bus. You can also reach Wild Dunes Yacht Harbor, with its Facebooked feral cat colony and boating facilities, including an Eco Tour business.
Sullivan’s Island, beach front history and the Lighthouse
Across Breach Inlet, the calm surface of which hides lethal currants is Sullivan’s Island, the most expensive zip code in the Southeastern United States. The island is saturated with history: victory in the revolution; the forward base of the Confederate Submarine Hunley, first to sink an enemy surface ship in warfare; and the architectural remains of 200 years of harbor defense.
The streets of Sullivan’s Island are called stations, referring to the time with the Coastal Railroad brought visitors out to the beach from Mount Pleasant, across Sullivan’s Island to the Isle of Palms. Getting to the beach before CARTA was a rich transit adventure. Street Cars through Charleston, the ferry Sappho across the Harbor and finally the long, slow trip by rail across the waterway to the beaches. This fondly remembered transit system stopped operating before WWII.
Fort Moultrie
Fort Moultrie is preserved by the National Park service. It was once home to an unhappy enlisted man who was inspired to write the Goldbug named Edgar Allen Poe. It fired some of the first shots of the bombardment of Ft. Sumter and provided precision cover fire to blockade runners racing into Charleston in the teeth of the Federal Blockade. The island is an expensive, but charming community of about 700 households. Remarkable architecture abounds, including homes built in WWII gun emplacements, as concrete hurricane proof scrubbing bubbles and the stately homes of the old officers row built when part of the island was a military base with gun emplacements protecting Charleston Harbor.
The Fort has an informative visitor’s center with restroom facilities and is well familiar to the bus drivers who bring visitors who make a reservation there. However, if you prefer, it’s only a 25 dollar cab ride from Charleston unless you get stuck in traffic, each way. Full information on the Fort is available on the National Park Service web page for Fort Moultrie
The inland commercial district on Sullivan’s is funkier and has a softer, wooden character. There are people who refuse to drink anywhere else. Please remember there are people on Sullivan’s Island who need to sleep and grow grass. If you stroll through their neighborhood singing at 1 am, urinating in their flower beds and decorating their yards with empty beer bottles they shall be stirred from their pricy beachside bliss to summon the town constabulary to arrest you and arrange punishment for your sins. However a little decorum and a polite greeting and you may become and remain as happy as they.
About the time the bus stops running, high above the other structures on both Islands, the beam of the once mighty Sullivan’s Island Lighthouse can be seen. Still operating at lower power under the protection of the National Park Service and Coast Guard, the light is the last structure of its type constructed in the US. It is our nation’s most modern, full sized lighthouse. CARTA will take you there to. Station 19 and Flag Street is a great place to walk out to the beach here. The flex bus drivers know it well. That’s the location of the final shot in our It’s Gonna Be a Good Day video. The bus sign show in that shot was a temporary prop.
The Way to Retire
In 2011, the East Cooper Flex Bus, which was struggling to serve about 60 square miles of service area, ended up on the budgetary chopping block, precipitating the community effort to create and build support for our new route system. The flex was far too expensive per passenger to operate. It looked like it had no future. However, the CARTA board, led by its two island representatives, decided to keep the flex service on these two small, compact beach islands and an adjacent strip on the mainland.
If you have to be retired, why not retire to the beach, where between the warm surf, the old fort, and the shining light? That’s where you’ll find the remaining flex bus, continuing over a century of transit service to the beach, operating as the #402.
It’s a good route, the best we have. It will do until we get that rail all the way out to the sand again.
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Don’t miss bus to the beach day on May 7, 2011 at Town Centre, Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island.