pages: CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities/2019-01-16.pdf, 3
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CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities | 2019-01-16 | 3 | ITEM 2-B COMMISSION ON DISABILITY MEETING MINUTES Wednesday, January 16, 2019, 6:30 PM go and get your business done and not have to wait a full hour for the bus to get back. There's another bus coming in a half an hour, so that's working well. Also the shuttle was renamed through a survey of residents and it previously was called the Alameda Paratransit Shuttle. And through a voting process it's now the Alameda Loop Shuttle and it does go in a loop so that makes good sense. Victoria Williams: The next page shows the shuttle status and you can see that the average monthly shuttle boardings have increased from 449 in 2016 to 451 in 2017 up to 686 in 2018. Now, we have two buses so we still need more than that. But Arnold was on the bus the other day when it was full, 18 people, he called to tell me. So it's getting there. The cost per trip however, is more expensive. It was $16 when we just had one bus and a $16 per trip average when we had one bus and now it's $21. And the funder, Alameda County Transportation Commission, is the agency that the money comes through. They have guidelines, it's called the Paratransit Program Implementation Guidelines. They want us to be under $20 but they give us two full years, two full fiscal years to get there. So we've made it through the first fiscal year, we still have another fiscal year and we're already at $21 so we think it's going to be great. Victoria Williams: The next page, this is the taxi service status and we are using a local Alameda taxi provider that has a couple of accessible taxis in the fleet. We are also in the process, this is the exciting news, we're in the process of negotiating for an emergency wheelchair breakdown service. Alameda County Transportation Commission funded such a thing and they even controlled it, managed it, ran the program for several years and they've stopped running it so there is nothing in the whole county. Some cities have fire departments who can do that, ours can't. So we're negotiating right now with the same transportation provider that we use with those accessible cabs to be able to offer that. We don't have everything finalized, we're looking at a pilot project where we start it small and become successful within bringing people home within Alameda and then expanding it probably to the county like the other programs. The other two taxi programs serve people who need to go to any kind of appointment throughout Alameda County. Victoria Williams: And the second exciting thing, but it's not too close yet, we're exploring Uber and Lyft-type shared services. Some of the larger cities in the county have started that already so we're watching to see how it goes for the big cities before we try something like that. Let them work out all the problems and then we'll tag on to that. But it's exciting. We've just done a survey and lots of people have cell phones, not everybody does, but there are concierge services that are go- betweens, GoGoGrandparent and Arrive are two that I recommend to people and so it's happening, transportation is happening. You don't have to have a car anymore, that would be a great goal. We don't have to have a car, we have all of these options. Victoria Williams: Go to the next page about the taxi services. You can see that we've increased those trips. In 2014, there were 48 premium taxi trips a month, that's an average. And now there are 174, so you can see that one's been well-received. The MRTIP program again, that's the trip to come home from your medical appointment. And it's primarily put together for those folks who use East Bay Paratransit to get to their appointment. East Bay Paratransit is a shared ride service that you have to call a day in advance. Well, most of us don't really know exactly when our doctor's appointments are going to be finished so it can cause some stress if your ride comes and you're not out to meet it and the ride leaves without you. So this is a service where you call the taxi company 03/13/19 Page 3 of 16 | CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities/2019-01-16.pdf |