AMHERST — A year-long trial by University of Massachusetts Transit and the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority is expanding weekend bus service on Route 31, bringing riders on the Amherst-to-Sunderland buses directly to the shopping malls in Hadley.

The agencies recently announced the change that will extend the bus routes from The Boulders apartments stop on East Hadley Road to the malls, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays during the academic year.

This extension will operate during UMass full semester weekends as part of a collaborative pilot program. It emerged during discussions between UMass students and administration officials as a way of reducing the time to get to both Hampshire Mall, which includes Target, Trader Joe’s, Cinemark theaters and other stores, and Mountain Farms Mall, which has a Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble and several other stores.

With the change, a one-seat, direct ride will be provided from Sunderland’s Cliffside Apartments and Sugarloaf Estates to Cowles Lane in Amherst, the UMass campus and Amherst center, and the apartment complexes on East Hadley Road, with the extension heading to the Hadley retail and shopping centers. This eliminates the usual bus transfers for major residential portions of PVTA’s Amherst and Sunderland service areas.

“This service extension offers fast and dependable transportation, significantly improving access to shopping and recreational destinations, making it more convenient and accessible for many area residents,” Brandy Pelletier, PVTA’s spokesperson, said in a statement.

For many years, residents who depend on public transportation have been concerned about transferring to Route B43 to get to the Hadley malls, adding significant time, as much as 30 to 40 minutes, to their commute.

In 2015, Healthy Hampshire, a nonprofit collaborative looking at how people get around the region, identified those living on East Hadley Road as having to take a circuitous route through downtown Amherst to a second bus that goes to the malls to do some of their shopping.

That prompted seven in 10 families to cut through a cornfield, on private property, to get to the Norwottuck Rail Trail, using that to walk or bike to the malls instead of riding the bus. This was done even though one of the users called it “hair-raising” to get to the bike path because of the difficult terrain.

UMass Transit and the PVTA say they will continue to work collaboratively on assessing the pilot program’s operational feasibility. If the test is successful, the extension may be considered for future inclusion into the PVTA network, though that will depend on funding, available resources and a vote by the PVTA Advisory Board.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.