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June 2009
Community transportation workshop explores options for increased service
Roland Mross
Robb Luckow
Community transportation and human service providers gathered for an annual workshop April 17 to learn about developments in the seven-county Twin Cities metropolitan area and across the nation. The workshop, held on the University of Minnesota campus, was sponsored by CTS and Hennepin County.
Community transportation serves individuals who cannot drive or who lack access to private vehicles due to low incomes, language and cultural barriers, advancing age, physical disabilities, or other factors.
In his opening comments, CTS director Robert Johns said that community transportation has traditionally operated “under the radar,” but must work to keep its issues visible in the face of competing interests such as light rail. Robb Luckow, community works project manager with Hennepin County, noted that community transportation has become increasingly complex in trying to overcome barriers to coordination.
Roland Mross, the Midwest ambassador for the federal United We Ride program, offered his perspective of activity on the national level. In his role of promoting coordination among states, Mross works with the federal Coordinating Council for Access and Mobility to address obstacles to coordination, such as vehicle sharing and cost sharing, through policy. A significant obstacle related to the country’s rapidly aging population is that of nonemergency medical transportation, Mross said. “The transportation component of the federal Medicaid program is a drop in the bucket,” he said, emphasizing that the program won’t work without funding for transportation.
Following Mross, Hal Freshly with the Minnesota Board on Aging made a similar point: “If you provide human services, it’s absolutely necessary that you get involved in transportation...Providers need to figure out how to get people to the services they offer, and coordination is key,” he said. Next, John Harper of the Metropolitan Council described an initiative to redesign how the agency sponsors dial-a-ride service operated by 14 programs in the metro area. In 2008, this subsidy totaled $3.1 million.
The Met Council hopes to redirect funding in 2010 to a new service delivery plan that will implement standard operating policies and procedures across all contracts and implement a single fare structure. The Met Council has also been examining standardization concepts, the use of one number for reservations and customer service for the entire region, regional branding, and the use of councilowned scheduling software.
Cole Hiniker, administrator for the Job Access and Reverse Commute (JARC) and New Freedom programs at the Metropolitan Council, told attendees about funding opportunities that could help facilitate some of the ideas being discussed. The JARC program, for example, has funded many reverse-commute bus services, vanpools, and dial-a-ride services to help people living in the central city get to jobs in spread-out suburbs, Hiniker said. “These [services] have been the most successful at making an impact on people’s lives.” He encouraged attendees to begin planning for the next solicitation for JARC and New Freedom funds, which will take place in late 2010. In a session titled “County-to-County Experience,” Alan Herrmann of Carver County and Gary Bruggenthies of Scott County described a collaboration to deliver seamless inter-county travel. Although the county line was “a physical and psychological barrier,” Bruggenthies said, both counties had management support to provide greater service to the fast-growing region. He and Herrmann pitched collaboration to their boards as a way to save money in the face of funding cuts and to increase service to constituents.
In the final workshop session, Debbie Anderson with St. Cloud Metro Bus described the St. Cloud Mobility Management project’s travel training. The training, which helps seniors and people with disabilities learn how to use a fixedroute bus system, covers how to read bus maps and schedules, plan trips, recognize bus stops and route names, pay fares, and prepare for other situations such as getting off at the wrong stop.
To date, Metro Bus has had at least 100 instances of individual travel training, group training, and partnered community programs. Through its partnership with St. Cloud’s Whitney Senior Center, Metro Bus sets up informational displays, organizes a travel club, and trains Somali elders, among other efforts, Anderson said. She also spends time “training the trainer” —working with therapists, social workers, and other human services providers and providing travel training to local school districts’ special education students.
For more about the workshop, see the Community Transportation Web site: www.cts.umn.edu/ct. The site, sponsored and supported by CTS and Hennepin County, serves as a clearinghouse for information on research and developments in transportation services for communities in need.