Introduction: Rachel Fichtenbaum
Okay! Three, two, one. Hi everyone, good morning! Welcome to mobility management in Massachusetts. I'm Rachel Fichtenbaum with MassMobility, here with my colleagues Jenna Henning from the MassDOT Rail and Transit division and James Fuccione from the Massachusetts Healthy Aging Collaborative, and we're so excited to have you here today and to talk with you about mobility management for the next couple hours. Next slide please.
So we are using the zoom webinar platform. If you have any difficulties today on the technical side, you can contact Ellie McCarthy, and Jenna has just put her contact information in the chat, so that's for any tech problems. With zoom webinar, that means that all attendees’ cameras are off, and you're all muted. We are recording this session and we will be able to share that recording. We encourage you to share your thoughts, so at any point during this morning’s session, if you have a question that you'd like to pose to one of the presenters, please go ahead and enter that into the Q&A box that you see at the at the bottom of your screen. Now, we may not have time to get to all of your questions this morning, but we will collect those questions, and anything we don't get to this morning, we will get back to you with responses. We also encourage you to connect with each other, with the other attendees, and you can use the chat box for that. So again, the Q&A box for questions for presenters, the chat box to connect with other attendees, and you can go ahead and introduce yourself in the chat so we have an idea of who's here. Feel free to share your name, your organization, your region, why you're interested in mobility management, or anything else you'd like us to know about you such as your pronouns. Next slide please.
So today's agenda. We'll start with the introduction: what is mobility management, why are we
talking about it. Then we'll have examples of how agencies here in Massachusetts are incorporating mobility management practices and strategies into their work. We're going to hear from an educator, an
Aging Services Access Point, a Council on Aging, and a transit authority. We'll also get the national perspective from the National Center for Mobility Management, and we'll hear from MassDOT about some funding opportunities available to support any mobility management projects that you might want to pursue. Next slide please.
So what is mobility management? Mobility management is a response to a problem, and that problem is that it can be difficult and confusing to find transportation options for older adults, for people with disabilities, and for others who lack access to transportation because there isn't one uniform transportation system. Instead, each transportation program is operated separately, managing its own eligibility procedures, its own operating procedures, its own geography/service area and hours, and so that can be confusing. The transportation options are decentralized and fragmented and can be hard to navigate. Next slide please.
So mobility management is responding to that, and mobility management is a set of tools and strategies to help people navigate those options and also to streamline community transportation options to make the whole system easier to navigate in the first place. Mobility management is person-centered, which means that mobility managers are really focused on the consumer: what they need, what they prefer, and thinking about which options are going to work well for that person. And a mobility manager is thinking about a family of services, which means not just focused on one particular mode of transportation but interested in anything available in a community that might be able to help someone get where they want to go.
Who can do mobility management? Some people have the title mobility manager, but plenty of people are doing mobility management who don't have that title. Anyone who is helping older adults, people with disabilities, and others figure out transportation is doing mobility management, and I think that includes most or maybe all of you who are attending this webinar today.
You can use mobility strategies whether you’re in an urban setting or a suburban setting or a rural setting. Now of course, it may look different. If you're in an urban setting with lots of transportation options, you may be more focused on helping people navigate those options and choose among them, versus if you're in a rural setting with few transportation options, you may be more focused on bringing partners together to try to fill in some of the gaps. Regardless, the moral of the story here is that you can do mobility management, and we hope that from this webinar today, you get some more ideas about strategies you could use, resources available to help you, and some inspiration. Next slide please.
So some of those key tools and resources that may be helpful to you. If you are looking for transportation options – what options are available to help a consumer – a great place to start is Ride Match, which is available online at www.massridematch.org. Ride Match is an online, searchable database of public and private transportation options. It was developed by one of the transit authorities here in Massachusetts, and we're going to get to hear from that transit authority later this morning. So this is a sneak peek. (Oh no back, please, thank you.) There are two different ways you can use Ride Match to search for options. One is by selecting your city or town from a dropdown menu, and the other is by using the trip planner where you put in where you're starting, where you're going, and you ca check off some common accommodations you might need, like if you're traveling with a wheelchair, and then you'll get a list of public and private transportation options with phone numbers and websites, contact information, and it starts with the cheaper options (like public transit and volunteer driver programs) and progresses on to more expensive options (such as taxi and livery services). Okay, next slide please.
Another important approach for mobility management is connecting with partners, so some resources for that here in Massachusetts. A bunch of years ago, MassDOT and MassMobility worked with local stakeholders around Massachusetts – including many of you on this webinar today – to develop Regional Coordinating Councils on community transportation, with the goal of bringing transportation providers, human service agencies, advocates, and others together to talk about these issues and to build relationships. Some of these councils are still active, and if you're not already connected into your Regional Coordinating Council, we definitely recommend reaching out to them, seeing if they're still meeting, getting on their email list.
We will be able to share these slides. We'll send out a follow-up email after this morning's presentation with the slides so you'll get this link and the other links you're going to see. You're also welcome to reach out to any of us who are co-hosting this webinar today. You can reach out to Jenna Henning at MassDOT if you want to talk about transit and mobility management or funding for mobility management. Reach out to me at MassMobility for more about general mobility management strategies and resources, or more examples of what mobility management can look like in Massachusetts. And reach out to James at the Mass Healthy Aging Collaborative if you're interested in incorporating mobility management or transportation into your age-friendly work. Next slide please.
Some additional tools: some websites that could be helpful. MassMobility has some web pages on the mass.gov platform on mobility management and transportation coordination; a webpage targeted to human service agencies highlighting funding opportunities to support mobility management, staff training resources, guides for implementing specific types of transportation programming, and support for outreach and marketing of your transportation services. We also publish a monthly newsletter highlighting what's new in mobility management and community transportation in Massachusetts and have published some reports that go into some of these topics in more depth.
So with that introduction out of the way, we can now dive into the local examples. We have a great lineup today, and this agenda really could have been a full day conference, but because we're in a virtual environment, we're keeping it to two hours, so we're not going to be able to get into all of the details of all of these great programs, but we hope that this will whet your appetite be a good sampler, highlight some new strategies and approaches as we all move forward with our mobility management work, so we're going to start by hearing from three agencies that are helping consumers navigate community transportation options. We'll hear from Sherry Elander with the Westfield Public Schools in Western Mass, Ruth Lindsay with SeniorCare in Northeastern Mass, and Maria Foster with the Brookline Council on Aging in Metro Boston. Then we'll hear from a transit authority that is coordinating transportation to streamline options, which will be Angie Constantino from the Greater Attleboro Taunton Regional Transit Authority. Then we'll get the national perspective from Judy Shanley with the National Center for Mobility Management, and we'll end with Jenna Henning from MassDOT highlighting some funding opportunities for mobility management. So if you get some new ideas from the webinar today and want to try to implement them, you'll have an idea of where to go to pursue funding for that.
So with that, James, you can stop the screen share for now, and if you want to bring up Sherry Elander's slide and I'll welcome Sherry Elander to turn your video on. Hi Sherry! You can unmute.
Sherry Elander: Interviewed by Rachel Fichtenbaum
Hello everybody! Great to be here, thank you, Rachel.
Yeah! Thanks so much for coming, for doing this. So, Sherry, could you tell us a bit about your job and your program?
Yes, well, first of all, I'm really excited to be here for many reasons, but one, I've been seeing all the people sign in in the chat, thank you, let's keep that going – it's great to know who's out there. I see some friends, colleagues from over the years, who we've been working side by side on this area of need for many years now, and so it's great. I know we'll be able to get some, probably some more ideas and information because it's really about what works for your community. So for us here in Western Mass, it's really getting to know the population, the community, the roads…you know, all of that kind of information is so valuable and so different in each community. So for us, we're grateful to be an integral part of the community where we have these connections.
Great and can you – what is exactly is a transition specialist?
Great, so a transition specialist is some… so in March 2012, 10 years ago, they passed legislation that folks like me who work with young people 18 to 22 – typically in a community-based setting – is making sure that their transition needs are being met. However, the Mass law is transition begins at 14 years old or earlier. So specifically, I work, I coordinate the program that's a community-based program for young people who have completed their four years of high school (whether it be in district or out of district), and so I support students in a variety of independent living skills, community integration, social safety, all those types of things that you need as an adult, and the transportation and travel training is one of the most important components of our program.
Great, can you say more about how transportation fits into your work?
Yes definitely. So in working with young people who previously used and relied on either their parents for transportation, walking to school, or using the school buses, we work really hard to transition our young folks from the model of the public schools into what real life is going to be, so we work with students beginning in high school. I attend their meetings, and we discuss the different options about fixed-route transportation, paratransit which is the ADA, which is the small white bus you see there, and also what their plans are in terms of if they are going to want to get their permit or their license, riding a bike, pedestrian skills. So we really explore what the long-term goal of each student's vision is and then we work around focusing on the travel options that would best suit their needs.
Great. Can you share some examples of that?
Of course. So for example on the right-hand slide, there with the two young people standing inside and outside the paratransit, these are two young individuals who work on applying – there's an application process for the paratransit van called The Ride in other parts of the state – and so they work with us in getting their application in. They're found eligible, and so they use the paratransit as their primary form of transportation, so they no longer are, you know, waiting for the school bus every day to pick them up at the same time, dropping them off, picking them up, and bringing them home on a set schedule. Working with the paratransit provides them a lot of opportunities for time management, increasing their independence, increasing their responsibility for watching the bus. Typically in a school setting, there are people who say, okay it's time to go line up now! It's time to go out! Well, we have to reverse all of that, right, so we're kind of taking what they learned inside of a building out into the world.
So we have with those young folks in the middle top slide, you can see a couple of folks about to cross the street. We had been dropped off that day from the fixed-route bus (which is the slide down below, with the people in the middle there), and so we had gotten dropped off so again the travel training, pedestrian understanding, where we're at, landmarks, beginning to be able to explain where they are on the bus and to be able to again to maintain communication, so yeah. We have also students – because we have this wonderful bike trail that just recently got finished, we're working on bike safety and bike use as well.
Thanks, is there anything else you'd like to share about your work with students with disabilities and transportation?
Sure, I think the one other really key piece of information is we work closely with a local driving school, and we work also on exploring young people's ability to pass the permit test. Whether or not it is appropriate, we don't exclude anyone regardless of whether we feel they'll ever pass, right, because we work on the pedestrian skills as well so it all ties in for our students. Regardless of what form of transportation we're focusing on, there is unlimited amount of opportunities to learn about safety, learning how to communicate with people, again being independent. So that is also a component of our program.
Thank you so much for sharing about your program with us today! Jenna, have any questions come in the Q&A box for Sherry?
Or comments? Because I would love, you know, there's people doing great things across the state, and again what works for one community may or may not work for another and that's really what I have found the key is. The more knowledgeable about the area you're serving, the more connections you have: City Hall, you know, having the mayor and the City Council and everybody being aware of the needs of their community members has really strengthened and increased our ability to provide services.
So far, no specific questions for Sherry, though “great program and services” was a comment that was included.
I know sometimes it's hard to think of questions right off the bat, and that was a lot of good information, so I know that we'll be available to follow up with you afterwards, so yes, thank you, right, and so in addition the other ways again especially my counterparts to going to the grocery shopping right, so typically they don't do their own food shopping, so being able to get to the grocery store to purchase the items they need because we are a community-based facility, so we are not in a school building. So we have a really nice site that includes a cooking – I mean, sorry, a kitchen – different workspaces, and we are out in the community daily. We are downtown; we are in a really great spot for the past three years right in the thick of downtown. The PVTA station’s right across the street from us. I mean, come on, but believe me, where we came from before, we were basically in the middle of a field where Walmart – I could see Walmart from where we were, but we couldn't have no way to get there safely, so being able to work and especially working with the customer service at PVTA (Pioneer Valley Transit Authority). Over 25 years ago I connected with Dawn, who's still working there, and she really helped to open the door, and understanding my frustration back in the olden days before transition really became, you know, valued and understood. She really helped us with accessing PVTA really early on, and at that time they did not have the travel training program. Right now we do work closely with Renee and now Leland, and formerly Teri (hi, Teri!), and so we work very closely with the folks, and I really credit them to helping us to make sure that we have a high-quality assessment process because that's really the key to kind of making sure that we're following through the different steps that need to be done. We do task analysis so that we can identify where the gaps and services are, and work closely with Leland now from the local PVTA to help with his level of expertise to expand upon what we're seeing. It looked like a few questions did come into the chat if we have a little bit of time left.
Yeah, I'll defer to you on time, Jenna, but do you want to pose a question?
I guess I will just ask one of the three and then send them to you afterwards. So you know, if there are questions that aren't answered today, we'll be sure to compile the answers to them and send them along to you afterwards. But I guess here's one good question: what kind of training did you and your colleagues receive to become travel trainers?
Great question. So again, back in the day, when I started many years ago and there was not a travel training program at that time, I reached out to adult service agencies. I reached out to the Federation, I reached out to the Institute for Community Inclusion, any of the state agencies that I could latch on to, or adult service agencies working with DDS, DMH, finding out how their clients got to places and what it was. I also – prior to becoming the special ed teacher – worked as an adult, worked with adults with developmental disabilities as an outreach worker, so that was part of my job was to do travel training, so I basically reached out to different agencies, found resource books on what we could, and so we do the travel training based on our years of doing this. This is, gosh, 20 years now, so you know, I train my staff, but again, I defer to the experts for the cases that I feel need to have further assessment and the gray areas of students that may or may not qualify for paratransit services. So again, we work very closely with a variety of agencies and community folks who really are the ones who really help and support us in that area.
Fantastic, thank you so much, Sherry! Thanks for the great work you're doing and for sharing that with us today. Okay, so yeah, Sherry, I know that this is an incredibly busy time for school, so we understand if you need to leave us. Thank you so much for making the time to do this, and you're welcome to stay on and if you want to mute and turn your video off and thank you.
Thank you again, thank you everybody, and yes, have a nice day, everybody! Bye!
Thanks, Sherry! Thanks.
Ruth Lindsay: Interviewed by Rachel Fichtenbaum
And I'll now welcome Ruth Lindsey to turn on your video and unmute. Hi Ruth!
Hi!
Thank you so much. Yeah. So could you please–
Hi everyone!
Could you describe your agency and your role there, in your volunteer driver program?
Sure. So first of all, thank you so much for having me. I can't believe there's 235 people. This is wonderful, Rachel and everyone who planned this. Jennifer. I am, I work at Senior Care in Gloucester. We're an Area Agency on Aging in Massachusetts, and we provide services for older adults in nine cities and towns on the North Shore and Cape Ann. And our driver program assists elders who are age 60 and over and are self-mobile with volunteers driving their own vehicles, taking these older adults to and from their medical appointments either locally or out of town as far as Boston or, you know, within about a 50-mile range. And we recruit volunteers of all ages, but we do have an AmeriCorps Seniors RSVP program, so most of our volunteers are older adults. We provide training. Because we're AmeriCorps Seniors, we provide insurance, and we connect with our volunteers on an ongoing basis with information sharing, best practices…especially with covid, we've been meeting more and more to provide safety guidelines and PPE, and we have a very successful program with about 20 to 30 volunteers right now. We have 25 active volunteers, and we typically provide about 20 to 30 rides a week, so it's not a really big program, but it's very successful.
Great, thanks Ruth! And how do you incorporate other transportation options into your volunteer driver program?
So I’ve been with Senior Care for about almost 12 years, and when we first started, I worked alongside what we have a part-time coordinator who answers the phones from consumers and matches them with rides. And sometimes I would hear the person saying, oh no we can't, we just don't have enough volunteers, maybe try your Council on Aging or your Senior Center or try, you know, whatever the public transportation option. And they had a bunch of sort of postings up on their walls. So since then, we have developed a system where we refer people to other options in a more consistent manner. So we've developed a transportation guide that we have online, and when we sign up a new consumer, when they call, we ask them what town they live in. We tell them about what their options are briefly on the phone, but we're trying to make the call kind of quick and we want to provide them with the ride, so we follow up the intake by sending them a welcome letter letting them know all of the details about our program, and included in the letter is a page or two about all the options for transportation in the town where they live, so that could be a combination of their senior center, public transportation, Uber, taxi…we're not necessarily recommending all of the options, but we're giving them what their options are, so I'm definitely going to be looking more into the Ride Match because I think that that could be something we start really recommending more if it's become a more powerful tool. So you know, that's just something that we do. And most people don't have web, you know, access to the website or computers all the time or don't know how to use it or print from it, so that's why we mail them a page for their town.
That's great, thank you. Can you share an example of an older adult who you were able to help through this mobility management approach?
My volume is down, I think, and I had a hard time hearing that, sorry! Could you repeat that?
Here we go. Could you share an example of an older adult you've been able to help through your mobility management approach?
Sure. I mean, we have people call us who said, you know, they for some reason can't drive anymore. Sometimes it's long term, and sometimes it's short-term: they had an accident or a fall, so they suddenly need PT for five days a week, or you know, twice a week for five weeks. Sometimes people need chemo for a short period of time, but every single day. So that's one example that I'll just focus on is if someone calls us and they need to get to their chemotherapy for six weeks, every day of the week, Monday through Friday. We would have a difficult time doing that, you know, meeting that need, because we don't have enough volunteers typically. We will do our best, but what we'll do is we'll say, the Gloucester Senior Center has a program where taxis – with CATA, which is the local transportation for us, Cape Ann Transit Authority – will have taxis that can go to a person's home, bring them to their appointment, wait for them, and then bring them home, and the taxi is paid for through this this grant that we have going on between the Senior Center and CATA. So we, you know, first of all check with the consumer are they interested in that option, and then we'll assist by giving them either the phone number to call the Senior Center or we'll, you know, offer to have the senior center call them to kind of, you know, work it out so that, you know, you sort of do a little hand holding in the beginning but providing them with the opportunity to not just say, oh we can only do two rides, you know, good luck with the other three. But we make a lot of suggestions and we do a lot of kind of handholding at the beginning, but we try to work with our other partners and, you know, make sure that they're getting to those five appointments, every day for the next six weeks.
Great! And I know you've covered some of this, but I wanted to ask how do you share information about the other transportation options with your callers?
So yeah, we do mail them when they first start, a one-page document. When covid happened, a lot of things changed, so we actually re-mailed any time a person took a, you know – a new consumer started, they would get the new, updated document, but if somebody had been riding with us for a long time, we re-sent, you know, all of the information for their town. We have what I kind of referred to earlier is a transportation guide and it's a pdf. We would like to make it more searchable. That's just a goal that we have, but right now it's on Senior Care's website and it's listed by town. It's also got a section for veterans and for all communities because some programs are available across the board, so you know, you can use Uber no matter what town you live in if you have Uber drivers. But the website's really great because it's up to date. It tells, you know, like for example the Beverly Senior Center – during covid, the vans weren't running, and more recently they have been running, so we updated it and people can go online and check that out. So I’m…great. Did you want me to talk about how we updated, or?
Yeah, that would be great, please do.
All right, so we've made a quite an effort to outreach to all of the senior centers as much as we possibly can just to ask are there any updates? We actually have volunteers who we call ambassadors who do some of the groundwork for us. We ask them to read the paper, check for any information because sometimes you just hear about things, you know, from unexpected sources, with a new transportation option or, you know, in Gloucester we have something called Seniors on the Go, and so we don't always know about things even though we work at Senior Care and work with older adults. Sometimes you hear about it from a volunteer so we really, we have a system where we outreach constantly to check for updates and then we update the guide that way.
Great. Yeah and do you recommend this approach of sharing information about other options in addition to your service to other programs?
I definitely do. I think it's really, you know, it's just so beneficial to everyone because, you know, we're arming the consumers who are calling us with like, tools. They don't just rely on us; they now know that they can call the Gloucester Senior Center or they can call the Beverly Senior Center, whatever town they live in, they can call another resource, they can use the bus – that’s where, you know, I can see, you know, a grant we would love to have volunteers go out and actually ride a bus with someone and give them that kind of the bravery to try it because some people are nervous, some people are nervous about taking a taxi, but sometimes when you don't have an option, and that's one of your options. You'll do it, and then once you've done it, you'll do it again, so yeah, I think it's a great way. It's also really connected us with other organizations and created friendships and, you know, just leaning on each other when when we've needed the help. So I don't hear the coordinator saying “no, we can't help you” anymore ever, so that's a really great thing.
That is really great, thank you for sharing that with us! Jenna, have any questions for Ruth come in?
Yes, there are two questions that have come in. I will focus on one. This is one: did I hear you say you provide insurance for your drivers? I know that's a question that comes up a lot, so Ruth, yeah, take that one away.
So that's a great question. I know that's sometimes a stumbling block for many organizations. So because we are an AmeriCorps seniors program, it's a requirement that we provide insurance, so we provide supplemental liability and accident insurance for our drivers. So their own insurance would kick in first, but if something was above their – what their policy provided – then Senior Care where, our Area Agency on Aging, we would provide that that extra insurance. So when someone starts, we run a CORI and a driver check, and once that check is successful, we add them to our driver policy. So I hope that helps, and I’d be happy to talk to anyone, you know, if you want to send me an email about that.
Thanks, Ruth! MassMobility also facilitates a peer network for volunteer driver programs, so anyone who operates a volunteer driver program in Massachusetts, feel free to reach out if you're not already connected in with that group so you can connect with Ruth and other great programs. Any other questions for Ruth, Jenna, or shall we move on to Maria?
Yeah, I think to respect our time, it will – move on to Maria – there were a couple others that came up in the Q&A and again, I'll be able to share answers after the fact with those folks and everyone on the call.
So thanks, great, thank you so much, Ruth!
Bye!
Maria Foster: Interviewed by Jenna Henning
Oh right, and next up we have Maria Foster, who will be talking about the TRIPPS program. So Maria, we are ready for your video. Hello!
Hi!
So Maria, I guess we'll just start. Could you tell us a little bit about TRIPPS please?
Yeah, well first, I want to say thank you so much for having me, for MassDOT and MassMobility and the Mass Healthy Aging Collaborative for putting together this program. I'm excited to be here and excited to hear about all of these different programs. I see a lot of similarities between what we're doing and then getting a lot of ideas also, which is really nice. So TRIPPS is an initiative of the Brookline Council on Aging. It stands for Transportation Resources Information Planning and Partnership for Seniors. We've been in existence since about 2015 with initial funding from MassDOT, and really what we do is provide information, resources, and support to older adults in Brookline who are looking for transportation options. Our focus has been on older adults who are either not driving or are transitioning from driving to other modes, and 70 percent - I'm actually currently conducting a poll – about 70 percent of our older adults that I work with actually don't own their own vehicle, so that's sort of the program in a nutshell.
Great, thank you. And so how do you help those older adults learn about the transportation options that are available?
Sure, so – sort of similarly to what Ruth was saying – we initially published sort of a very thick, detailed resource guide that was printed. It's called the blue book, and it had sort of, sort of, all of the different options in our area. So when we would, sort of, distribute those copies both to older adults and to, sort of, providers and support networks as well, and I think what I found was that that resource guide, because it was so big, actually like because it had just, sort of, all of the different like actual transportation options but also sort of more information about like, the RMV and that type of thing, which I think was very helpful, but it was overwhelming, and so what I did was I sort of pared that down to sort of a two-page guide that we now have translated into a couple of different languages that both describes, sort of, what the resources are here at the Senior Center that we provide (because we do provide some subsidized transportation programs) as well as other options that are available in our area. And so that that shorter version now gets sort of passed to the clients that we are working with. And so, and then, we're just sort of a centralized place where folks can call us if they have questions about transportation – just answering any questions that folks might have, do those initial intakes of, sort of, where are you looking to go and how are you currently getting around, we provide that service here.
Great, that's wonderful! Thank you. So I know, sort of, you know, peer-to-peer is a really important part of the TRIPPS program and what you guys do with this work out of the Brookline Council on Aging, so can you tell us a little bit more about how older adults are involved in your programming?
Definitely! So they're sort of key to everything that we do. I have a volunteer group that I meet with once a week, sort of like what Ruth was saying. They are sort of mentors and guides for folks on a variety of different options. So the volunteers have, we've done trips on the MBTA, so that, you know, just to get people who are maybe new to using the subway or the buses familiar and comfortable with those options. We – in addition to that – I have, all of the volunteers have now been trained on how to help folks apply for senior Charlie Cards, so that's been another like sort of really great way that we've been able to, sort of, incorporate the volunteers. It gets them in, sort of, when people are sort of thinking about alternative options, and they're able to, sort of, answer any questions specifically about the MBTA but also about any other like sort of option that we have available, and that is an initial way that we sort of talk to folks who come in, you know. It's a really great way of getting that sort of first conversation about alternatives, and so we've been providing that service. And I have like, sort of, one example of the way that we've been – when we're been working with our volunteers, you know, early on in the pandemic when sort of everything was shut down, one of the things that they identified was a sort of real need for medical transportation that people felt really comfortable and safe in, so we started using our COA van, which had been, you know, getting people back and forth to the Senior Center, but while the Senior Center was closed, we were able to use that resource to get folks to medical appointments, you know, during a time when I think people really wanted something that was like sort of safe and familiar. And so that's another really great way that that, you know, I was able to sort of talk to the volunteer group that I work with about, sort of, what people were thinking about, and looking at needing. So I'm trying to think if there's anything else… the only the other thing that I will say is that, so I have this sort of formal volunteer group that we've worked with, many of whom have been there since the beginning. I also have an informal network of folks that I know who utilize systems so one example is The RIDE, you know, which can be sort of confusing for folks who – and that's the MBTA’s paratransit service for anybody that doesn't know – but you know, it can be confusing for newer people who have, you know, have just been qualified and so being able to just talk to somebody about how the system works. And you know, for folks – I have a, you know, a few people who use it really successfully, and also just, you know, providing information about pitfalls that they might come across. And so that sort of informal network is also I think really important: folks that I can go to sort of say, would you mind talking to this person, and so then sort of gets into that peer-to-peer connection also.
Oh, that's wonderful, thank you! So I know we touched on peer-to-peer, and another important thing that you guys do is, you know, you work with technology, so how are the ways that you incorporate technology into your approach to mobility management?
Yeah, so you know, I think this is something that, you know, I know we have all been seeing, but sort of ways that technology and transportation have been sort of coming together, and I really feel like for older adults, it's kind of an equity issue. Like I'd love to be able to say like, you know, there's information out there so that you don't have to sit outside and wait for a bus forever. So we started this, a program specifically with Uber and Lyft as we sort of saw the decline of the taxi industry in Brookline. One of our long-time volunteers Jane Gould started a class that we've offered both here in Brookline and to other Councils on Aging on how to use Uber and Lyft. As we sort of developed it, it became sort of a two-session class. The first is sort of classroom based and really provides the sort of motivation for why, sort of, older adults want to – you would want to – use this technology and this newer mode. And then the second class we actually go out on a ride, which I think really helps folks get over some, maybe some initial fears about the system. And so, you know, I think that was sort of our initial program. We still do that – we have a discounted Lyft program here, and so we will still do that type of, that type of sort of training for folks who are getting on our subsidized Lyft program, just to get them comfortable with the system. And we're currently – with the support of MassDOT – creating a series of videos and sort of how-to guides for ride-hailing, so for Uber and Lyft, and we're continuing on to talk about the transit app so folks can get some information about public transit and when their bus is coming and directions or how to get from point A to point B. And then the last program will be about Google maps so yeah, so you know, I think we're definitely seeing that as a need, you know, just sort of letting folks know that the information is out there and then they can sort of choose whether or not they decide they want to access that information or that mode.
Wonderful! Well, thank you so much, Maria. Do you have anything else you want to add before I maybe go into one or two questions?
I don't think so. I think, you know, I just go back to what, you know, Ruth was talking about. I think we follow sort of a similar pattern, you know, I think, I always try to look for ways to have that sort of initial conversation about alternative modes and so, you know, we have a medical transportation program that we've been running, and I do send out, you know, after they've taken that initial ride we'll send out information about, you know, other modes that are available for our two-page guide so that folks have that information. I think again, like sort of bringing in people to process Senior Charlie Cards, you know, I think that's another way of getting that sort of initial conversation, and then again sort of like involving the community that you're working with in everything that you do.
That's wonderful, thank you! Thank you so much. I want to be cognizant of our time so I think I'll save most of these questions till the end, but yeah, there are quite a few that came in for you, Maria, and I do want to say, since we're here now, a lot of folks are asking about the materials that all of these wonderful panelists are speaking on, so we'll be sure to share those after with everyone as well.
So great, thank you very much. Okay, and next up – if James, would you mind sharing the slides again? We are going to move to Angie Constantino. She is the Mobility Manager at GATRA, which is the Greater Attleboro Regional, the Greater Attleboro Taunton Regional Transit Authority – it's a tongue twister! That's why we use our acronyms like GATRA – and she'll be sharing the perspective of mobility management and action from that of one of the Regional Transit Authorities in Massachusetts and how they coordinate transportation to streamline options. So Angie, I'll go ahead and turn it over to you.
Angie Constantino
Thank you, Jenna! And for everybody, this is Jack. He's the mobility management mascot. So I'm going to talk a little bit about mobility management and how it relates to Regional Transit Authorities and how we work together on kind of getting services together in a kind of a holistic – with some examples. I first put up “not your mother's mobility” as a joke, and then I thought about it and I said, you know, it's not your mother's mobility anymore, but it is your mother's mobility because that's you know what she needs now, so as a joke but then it kind of turned out to be the title. Next slide, James.
So a little bit about GATRA. GATRA is one of 15 Regional Transit Authorities in Massachusetts. We cover Southeastern – a good portion of Southeastern Mass. We have 29 communities where the dark blue there on the right side. We create a little basket that BAT sits in the middle. So we are a really diverse mix as far as urban, suburban, and rural communities and transportation needs. So we cover everything from Scituate, you know on the South Shore, all the way around to like Wareham and all the way up on the left-hand side to the Franklin/Medway/Bellingham area. So we have a diverse area. James, next.
As I skip to – so in our 29 communities, we have fixed route transit service in our two major cities, and kind of somewhat smaller systems but a group of multiple routes, and two communities we also have intercity routes and multiple in-town routes, and then a new – a new – I'm gonna say new because in transportation it is new still – but we have a new kind of service that we've started: GATRA GO microtransit service. After the pandemic, we transitioned a few of our services that weren't really functioning well as fixed route services into microtransit services because it made a lot more sense in a suburban setting. So we have four separate services that aren't – one of them, two of them touch but – not really connected, so for four individual services and then we also provide paratransit/dial-a-ride service in all of our communities, but that service looks a little bit different in every community. Sometimes it's operated by Councils on Aging, and sometimes it's operated regionally or in groups of communities by private operators, so we have both and then we also do long distance medical. We have a Med Wheels program that runs from Taunton and Attleboro. We also have united local and long distance, we provide like next town over medical appointments but also trips into Boston or Worcester from the Franklin/Foxboro area, and then we also have a Boston Hospital bus that was suspended due to covid but we're hoping to bring back, which is more of a fixed-route service that runs up route 3 and serves Plymouth, Marshfield, Kingston. Those services, just a little bit about a quick overview of what we have. Next slide.
So I want to talk about two examples of some coordination that we did in our area. The first one is Wareham is, you know, a smaller town in Southeastern Mass, and they do not have – they're geographically separate from their metropolitan area or whatever word you want to use. But so Wareham services (like the DTA office, career center, DMV, all of those essential services are in New Bedford, and there are three, four towns in between Wareham and New Bedford, so it's quite a trek. It's 23 miles, and there wasn't really an affordable way to do it outside of a taxi service. So it was an issue that went on for a while, and we talked to our regional – so our Regional Coordinating Council talked to everybody or SERCCOT, we convened and GATRA convened a stakeholder meeting to kind of identify what those needs really are, what the timing is, where people really need to go, and we actually established a fixed route, and because of the way that the needs were, we run it four, well two round trips in the morning and two round trips in the afternoon, with kind of a gap in the middle. So the idea is that these two trips will get you to New Bedford, and then you have kind of a gap in the middle of the day to do what you need to do, and then get back so it seemed to work for everybody. We – GATRA – applied for a Community Transit Grant to start the service, and because of some logistical issues unions and pulling into places, so we had to – we partnered with the Southeastern Regional Transit Authority so that we were able – so if they were the operator, we were able to pull into their New Bedford terminal. So that was a huge, that was a huge need and a huge solution. It worked really well, so that New Bedford terminal is a connection to Peter Pan buses, DATTCO buses, and provides that Wareham-New Bedford Connection, and it really was, it really was working with the communities, figuring out – you know – where people, what people needed. It wasn't, and it's hard because it's kind of like a diverse group of stakeholders. So some people needed to get to DTA appointments, some people needed to get to work, and it was, you know, balancing how we get that far out and how we serve everybody with the same service, but it's been really successful. In the very beginning it was actually funny, more people from New Bedford were trying to get to Wareham because there had never been that connection, so people were going for services, but people from New Bedford were going to Wareham for like, leisure and stores and getting to the Cape, so it provided a connection there. James, next slide.
In our other service, this is a microtransit service, this regional area, so this is four towns in the northwest section of our service area, and before microtransit, the service had a fixed route that kind of connected all of the towns and served the Norfolk train station, and then we also had an in-town route in Franklin that kind of did a little loop, and they connected at the Franklin Big Y, but then in addition to that, we also had a regional dial-a-ride run by a private operator in these four communities, and then that local/long-distance service that I talked about earlier. So all of these services were in these four towns, and in particular, the fixed route connecting the communities really didn't have the ridership because it was trying to serve too many stakeholders in order to be effective, so we were trying to get everybody, work, you know, shop, everything on the same fixed route. It just wasn't – it didn't have the ridership. James, next slide.
So we transitioned it to a microtransit service, and it has been very successful. One of the things that we did that we're really happy we did is that we included the local and long distance medical transportation vehicles and scheduling into the microtransit service, so we have a private operator that's running the service as a microtransit, but those vehicles that we're using for those local and long distance medical for seniors and persons with disabilities, we include those vehicles as a shared fleet and that way we're able to, we're able to use those vehicles when they're not being used for long distance medical on the local microtransit and vice versa, so that worked out really well and made it more efficient, and then some of the highlights of the service is that the Council on Aging is paying for rides to and from the Senior Center so we have that, and then the town – I'm sorry, the Council on Aging – is paying for those rides and then the town of Franklin pays for rides for residents, and then we also have Dean College in the service area, and they love the service and use it very frequently to get from the Dean, Franklin, Dean College in Franklin to Gillette, Patriot Place, those kind of things, so it's worked out really well and we found microtransit is a much better service to serve all of those different niches of stakeholders versus a fixed route because it's – I mean, I don't have to explain that, but – yes, next slide.
And then lastly I want to talk about Ride Match real quick. Rachel mentioned it earlier (thank you, Rachel). So Ride Match is a one-stop, searchable directory of transportation options. It did start at GATRA (it feels like a millennium ago, but it's fine). It was started in 2009 and it started as GATRA simply saying a lot of things that all of you have said, like we need a list, we need something to keep track of transportation options whether it be public, private, grant funded transportation, we need something. So we created our own database and then made it a searchable database and they're like, what if we make it a website that you can log into and then, you know, it, you know, evolved into what if we make it public, what if we add our neighboring transit authorities, and then we're lucky to have MassDOT who came on as a partner and funded a lot of our upgrades and helped us expand to all of the state, and we added all the transit authorities, which is great. So James, next slide.
So this is just a little bit. We were awarded a grant to make it accessible, we compiled the list for Southeastern Mass, and we launched that public website in 2012. Next slide.
And then we did receive the Community Transit Grant included and to add our other RTAs, and it's also linked to google transit so if you go in and search on Ride Match, if you search from a town to a town that has a fixed route, that option will always show up first. So I need to get from this address – it's not just town, we added it so that it pulls google addresses now so you can put in a specific address to a specific address – and if a fixed route would be the most, with the best and cheapest option, it will show you that one first. And one of the other things it does is it tiers providers, so we'll always show you fixed route transit first and then it will show you public services and then it will show you like intercity buses, and you know not necessarily public but, you know, affordable transportation and then it will show you um private taxi operators in order of your results. It's a great resource. We have, so all of the RTAs are partners, and we have others that log in and update information. Anything can be in there. We – when a private provider asks us to add them, we make sure that they're a legitimate business with the state of Massachusetts, but we also have grant-funded transportation. That Med Wheels program I mentioned earlier is in there, is like a grant-funded service, and you can put in, you know, this service is for seniors or this first service is for veterans…you can put in specific parameters and when people go in and search they can check those boxes (you know, I'm a senior, I'm a veteran) and then if your program is in there – you know, I'm a senior, I'm a veteran, and I need to go from town A to town B – if that meets the parameters of the service you've entered, then it will show up for those people. So it's great, we'll put anything in it. We're happy to work with people to add anything in there. And I do – just as a last comment – I know, I think I'm over time – but as a last comment, I just want to mention – Ruth mentioned earlier in her presentation, she said, it's not a big program but it's very successful. And I think that's really important, because I think that mobility management and working on these things to kind of fix, fix those first-last mile – get people to the grocery store, all these little things that you might not think – like oh, that's not this big, you know intercity route that will take you from Boston, whatever, but these little programs are really important, and it doesn't matter if it's 20 people or if it's 200,000 people. You know, it's – if that program is successful and you're serving your people, I think that's important, and it's part of this whole – and Rachel will laugh because this is my new word – it's part of the toolbox. So this successful program is a piece of your toolbox, and doesn't have to be your only program, but it doesn't mean it's not successful if 20 or 30 people are your ridership numbers. That's my soapbox, and I'll get off the soapbox now.
Wonderful, thank you so much, Angie! And actually, we, you know, we are cruising along, and there are some questions for you, so I will direct them to you now. And this is a good one because it is applicable to every single person on this call who knows their transportation services in their area: how can we update our contact information in rideshare – in Ride Match?
Sorry, yeah Ride Match, absolutely. So you would email me – I will, I'm hoping that when this goes out,
Rachel will give our contact information for speakers and hopefully that will – you can email me. I'm your contact, Program Manager for Ride Match, and I can update that information for you.
Wonderful, thank you. And there are a couple microtransit questions, so excuse me while I dig through to kind of pull them out. So I know microtransit is a buzzword, sometimes, and we don't all know what it means, so when you say microtransit is it on-demand or a fixed schedule?
So our microtransit is an on-demand service. It's very much like Uber or Lyft. It's run through an app, and people have the choice, people have the choice to book the trip on the app or we also have a dispatcher who you can call (for people who do not have cellphones) but it's on-demand: pick you up where you are, drop you off, and it's within a geographic service area, so any address to or from within this specific – we call it a geofence – but this area. The trip is – you can do that, so on-demand is the answer.
And are you using contactless payments for your fixed route or dial a ride service or how do you collect fares?
We are still doing cash at the moment. We are working on GATRA pay, which is an app that should be coming out shortly, and it's through our farebox company Genfare so you'll be able to create an account and add a credit card or add money at our terminals and then you'll be able to pay with your phone. So we're working on that but at this very moment in time, it's cash only, but we are very close to having an app.
Wonderful, thank you. And then let's see, and then one more for you: how did you manage the transition from fixed route to microtransit? Did you have to hire additional staff or outsource?
So this is a difficult question to answer because the ones that we – the ones that we transitioned up until this point happened during covid, so we brought back some of our services as microtransit because it made more sense for those areas, but it was a struggle because we couldn't do our normal outreach. We couldn't go to the Councils on Aging, we couldn't go to the towns, and do you know this is how you use the app, so there was some initial confusion as you would expect, but since then we haven't had to I hire extra staff but we have – there's been a lot of requests for, could you come talk to my clients or my people at Councils on Aging and other agencies about how the app works, help us download the app, help us do that, so there have been some outreach sessions we've had to do. And one of our biggest struggles is that – especially on GATRA GO United, where in that area, we had the regional dial-a-ride, anyway, and we're using those same dial-a-ride vans – eight ten passenger vans – we did wrap them a different, like it says GATRA GO United on it, but people are used to seeing those vans associated with our regional dial-a-ride and they think it's just for seniors and persons with disabilities and they don't understand that it's open to everybody, so that's an ongoing struggle.
Great, well there – I, you know, some questions that keep coming up about microtransit. I don't want to get too bogged down in it, so I know that you're available to answer these after the fact if folks want to learn more about microtransit and how GATRA handles that, you know, technology-based app mode of demand response transportation. So thank you very much, Angie!
You're welcome.
Judy Shanley
All right, and next up we have Judy Shanley. She is the Easterseals Director at the National Center for Mobility Management, and she oversees education programs at Easterseals. She's here to provide a national perspective on mobility management. And thank you for the slides, James. So Judy, take it away.
Wonderful, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm thrilled to be with you. This – what an amazing group. I've learned so much. Just hearing from the initial panelists. As was said, I'm Judy Shanley, and I'm at the national office of Easterseals in Chicago, but I happen to live in Boston, Massachusetts. I got into this – as my title explains, I'm a transition person by background, so it's funny how you're ending with me as a transition specialist and started with Sherry. I got into the work associated with transportation because when I was working as both a rehab counselor and then as a transition specialist, it was really frustrating to have no mobility or transportation options for students. And so I had an opportunity to work at the federal level on a federal committee that looked at bringing agencies together around transportation, and I've never stopped focusing on transportation.
Easterseals is a national organization. We've got about 70 affiliates nationally. I hope you've taken advantage of the wonderful resources that our Massachusetts affiliate offers in Worcester. Next slide please.
So I am talking to you today wearing my hat as the Easterseals Director of the National Center for Mobility Management. We are a national technical assistance center funded by the Federal Transit Administration, and we're a partnership between the American Public Transportation Association, the Community Transportation Association, and my organization Easterseals, and our work is doing exactly what you've been hearing today. We help states and regions and communities develop continuums of transportation options in a coordinated and networked way. So on the next slide please – we provide technical assistance in a variety of ways. We've got tons of products and tools. We could do research for you specifically. We have on learning modules which are independent, self-paced modules that you can go through to learn about implementing coordination, implementing mobility management. We've got grant programs that you can take advantage of. We've got a national network of mobility managers across the country, an online platform that you can share and learn from each other, and we also have a regional liaison program which is the point person for you to access technical assistance – and for FTA region one, which is where Massachusetts is, I’m your point person, so excited to be here. Next slide please.
This doesn't surprise you. I – these are the voices, this is what I've heard about the transportation and mobility landscape in Massachusetts. I've been privileged to participate in a lot of different local meetings online, and these are some of the expressions that I've heard. We're siloed. We have choppy service. There's no one way to learn about services. It's inconsistent. It's fragmented. So that emphasizes and provides a rationale for the need for this coordinated work that you're all doing together today. Next slide please.
And nationally, that's not any different. We've got on the left side of this slide, there's all these federal agencies that provide transportation funding, there's all these programs that provide transportation services, there's all these places that people have to go, and who's in the middle? The rider, the individual who is angst because of all these fragmented services, so on the next slide – a solution to all of this is really coordination, really mobility management. Next slide, please.
We've found in our national work that coordination really can happen, and it can happen when the right people are at the table, but the more I think about it, the more I think everybody should be at the table. Whether you're a health care provider, where you're a business development person, transportation affects every sector of our society. There needs to be some sort of action plan or logic model associated with coordination to guide you through the work, and I won't have time to go through all of these, but if you go to our website at NCMM you could find specific information related to each of these activities, which is really core to facilitating coordination. Next slide please.
So how do you do this? You know, coordination is this fluffy word. What does it mean? There's two national initiatives going on. One is the Coordinating Council on Access and Mobility, and the second is states building mobility management networks, and these two strategies together really make coordination actionable, doable, and practical. Next slide please.
So I mentioned the Coordinating Council on Access and Mobility, CCAM. There's a federal effort to engage the 11 federal agencies that have anything to do with transportation to better coordinate and make service more efficient. CCAM has a strategic plan, high-level officials associated with these 11 federal agencies that are indicated in a chart on your right, collaborate to figure out which of their programs fund transportation, which services can be provided through their particular agency and their grants, and on the next slide I encourage you to really look at CCAM as a way to build your mobility management network, whether it's regionally or on a statewide basis, because when you have a state that really supports this collaboration between Departments of Health and Human Services, Departments of Education, Departments of Veterans Affairs, with the Department of Transportation, that results in building operational mobility management networks and results in increased efficiency, quality, and good policy and practice. On the next slide, please, these are the benefits – not surprising to you – more trips, I mentioned the efficiency, there's shared funding. I'm gonna give you an example in a minute. You've heard about some of these multi-modal services that are being offered where it's not just the same type of transportation but you're mixing fixed route with microtransit with on-demand kind of services so a variety of vehicles that are part of this continuum and a variety of funding and administering sources. Next slide, please.
So I wanted to give you a state example. On the next slide, I'm going to be talking about New Hampshire. New Hampshire has done a tremendous amount of work associated with building mobility management regionally. On the next slide, please, this is their vision. They wanted to facilitate ridership. They wanted to make it easier for riders to access service. They also wanted to start braiding funds. They just recently got a CDC, an HHS CDC grant in to the tune of a million dollars, to provide mobility management regional networks, and so what they did is really tapped into other state agencies in New Hampshire to look at the programs that those agencies could fund and so New Hampshire is an example where they brought all of these non-DOT, non-transportation entities together to figure out how to build a network that could be sustainable, and it results in a happy customer. Next slide, please.
Here's a rural example, and the next slide, it's Calhan, Colorado. They too mixed funds. It was a grassroots effort, started similarly to some of the programs that you've heard about today. They receive money from HUD, they receive money from FTA, they started a fixed route, like a deviated fixed route program that was really driven by the customer, driven by the community, and driven by the needs, and it's sustainable because they have so much participation. And this program is very similar to things that you heard this morning. Next slide, please.
So the notion of mobility management and coordinating and partnering with people that you've not previously worked with is really about doing innovative things, and this is a quote from Susan Scott in a book she wrote Fierce Conversations: “If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.” So this gets you out of that stuck mode. This helps you think creatively and innovatively. Next slide, please.
Here are some CCAM resources. I didn't have time to really delve into the topic of the coordinating council, but there's one really, really cool tool that they have is called the program inventory that lists federal programs that could be a source of funding for your transportation service, whether it's buying vehicles, whether it's supporting volunteer driver programs or vouchers. I encourage you to go to these resources and learn about how other federal agencies outside of DOT can support your work. Next slide, please.
There's several national technical assistance centers similar to the National Center for Mobility Management, and all also provide free resources and technical assistance. I encourage you to tap into these resources. The next slide. A bunch of us technical assistance resource centers had created a repository of coordination resources and that's called TACL: the technical assistance coordination library. It's a one-stop shop for coordination. It's free and accessible. We've got a variety of tools, so please visit TACL and acquire some tools that may be useful in your own setting. On the next slide I believe is my – just my parting thoughts to you. Always think about the connection between coordination and mobility management. I know I talk about mobility management as a way to operationalize coordination, put it in practice, put it in the real world. Also continuously examine what you do: how you're putting in place, what are the characteristics, the features, what makes it work, what doesn't make it work, and Rachel and Jenna are not surprised to hear me say that always assess and measure the outcomes. Look at outputs, think about number of rides, think about vehicles, but also think about the impacts. We know that health and human services resources support people's access to health care, which mitigates health consequences. The whole social determinants of health, we know that transportation affects access to jobs and thereby affects the economy so always measure, assess, and measure outcomes. And on the left side, I think I have my contact information. I look forward to continue the dialogue, and I applaud all of you for being here and participating in this important work so thank you.
Great, thanks so much, Judy. And one question came in that I started typing a response to, but I think I'll let you answer it and then also give you the chance to plug sort of the glossary of key terms that NCMM has. So the question was, what is a deviated fixed route?
A deviated fixed route is, it's a combination of a fixed route where a transportation service may go from point A to point B, but it could deviate based upon customer needs, based upon an on-demand kind of service where customers have a need to go to a particular place during a particular time of the day so it necessarily doesn't follow the same route every day, it's really driven by the needs of the customers and communities.
Great, thanks so much. Looks like no more questions for you right now, Judy, but we know you'll be here so when folks are able to process all that great information you can go ahead and answer them again in real time.
Jenna Henning
All right, and so I am up next, so James, if you want to go ahead and throw on those slides for me. All right. Hi everybody! Again, as Rachel said in the beginning, my name is Jenna Henning and I am the Manager of Grant Programs at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and for the Rail and Transit Division, and I'm here to talk to you today about funding for mobility management. So you've heard from a lot of great programs and you probably have some ideas percolating about, you know, what can be done to improve transportation and access and mobility in your geographic region, but one of the sticking points I know is funding. So I will share a couple of resources that are available to help sort of get these ideas off the ground, or help you flesh them out more. Next slide, please.
All right, so the Community Transit Grant Program (or affectionately we refer to it as CTGP) – and that is how the Commonwealth of Massachusetts disperses Federal Transit Administration section 5310 and state Mobility Assistance Program funding to provide and strengthen the transportation services available to meet the mobility needs of older adults and people with disabilities – we allocate this funding through an annual competitive grant process, and I linked at the bottom of this page to the CTGP website on the mass.gov. I encourage you if you are interested in this program to take a look. There's a lot more information there than what I will provide today, and as I said before and will say again here, to answer any questions that you might have. Next slide please.
So who is eligible for the Community Transit Grant Program? Nonprofit organizations, municipalities (including Councils on Aging), and Regional Transit Authorities, so many of you who are located in Massachusetts and are on this forum here today. Next slide please.
Ineligible projects, so what is eligible for Community Transit Grant Program. One of the things we fund outside of mobility management projects are vehicles, so that's basically wheelchair-accessible vehicles. If you want to replace a vehicle in your fleet that's reached its useful life or if you're interested in starting a transportation program or expanding one that already exists, we do the procurement for the vehicles, so you couldn't just reach out to us and say hey, I'm interested in this passenger van. We have a menu of options from which you would select, and if you're interested in seeing what that looks like, please feel free to email me, and I'll send you our accessible vehicle guide.
Operating projects. So that's basically any expense for running or supporting a transportation option that fills an unmet need or encourages use of public transit. So that is another eligible expense under the Community Transit Grant Program. And finally, what we are all here for today: mobility management. So these are activities to help coordinate transportation services, help riders navigate mobility options like, such as travel training and planning grants. In a couple of slides, I'll provide you with some examples that are programs or mobility management programs that have been previously funded through Community Transit Grant Program, and you did hear from some of them today earlier. An important thing to note is that you know any activity or project for which you apply has to be covered in your region's Coordinated Public Transit Human Services Transportation Plan. It's a tongue twister! We call it the CP-HST plan. These coordinated plans identify the transportation needs of older adults, individuals with disabilities in your region, and it provides strategies for meeting these needs and sets regional priorities for transportation investments and initiatives for human services and public transit coordination. There's a link there that goes to all of the regional coordinated plans in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I encourage you to take a gander there and sort of investigate the plan for your region. It's a great way to see, you know, what gaps are there and maybe what services already exist to provide transportation, and can definitely help you on your way to creating a really great and robust mobility management system in your area. Yeah, next slide please.
All right, and one more sort of nitty-gritty thing I wanted to point out about the Community Transit Grant Program: the funding is not provided at 100 percent, so you are required to come up with some local money in order to match the grant funding. So for operating expenses, it's matched at 50-50, so if you submitted a budget for a hundred thousand dollars we would provide fifty thousand dollars, and then fifty thousand of it would be up to you to come up with. For capital expenses, which includes mobility management, that's matched at 80-20, so if it was a ten-thousand-dollar request, we would provide eight thousand dollars of it and you would be responsible for that two thousand. There's lots of different, and there's lots of eligible sources for your local match. I included some at the bottom of the page that I'll go over, but if you're interested in learning maybe more about what could be considered an eligible match, please reach out to me and I'll be able to assist you more. So some examples include agency contracts, private or foundation donations, local government appropriations, and then if you're interested in a non-cash match, we also do allow some in-kind like donated goods or volunteer services. If you have questions about an in-kind, that's kind of a tricky one so please do reach out to us. Next slide please.
All right, so we are approaching the fiscal year 23 Community Transit Grant Program. It's just confusing enough, because I know we are in calendar year ‘22. I won't go over all of the specifics here for this timeline, but I will point out the important ones for this grant program, especially as it relates to mobility management if that's what you're interested in applying for. So this month, we are now in February, we will announce the dates for the grant program this year. That includes mandatory application trainings in late April or early May. They're mandatory – oh sorry, it's okay, I know the timeframe – they're mandatory for all new applicants, and we encourage even those who've had applied in the past to attend. It's a great refresher, and the application can change from year to year so it's a way to keep up to date on all of those differences. And then the application itself is open from about May to June 2022, so you have two full months to complete the application itself. I will say the disclaimer here: it is lengthy and can be rather cumbersome, so it's some, if it's something that you're interested in, I encourage you to reach out to me sooner rather than later attend those application trainings and open the application and start working on it as soon as it becomes available. And sort of skipping ahead, the awards are finalized and you would be notified one way or the other by the end of the calendar year so November, December. And then the mobility management funding is available starting January 2023 so it's about a full calendar year, a little less since we're in February now, until the funding would be available. And again, it's an annual opportunity so I know it might seem like there's not enough time to gather all your thoughts and all of your community partners now, but I encourage you to start thinking about it and working together. This money is available every year. Yeah, next slide please.
All right, so just a couple mobility management project examples for you all. Today you heard from Angie and Maria, and they fit into some of these categories below, so one example is travel training. The Berkshire Regional Transit Authority, you know, received funding last year and in previous years to cover the cost of salaries for their travel trainers, as well as some instructional and advertising materials for the travel training program.
Managing mobility options and resources – Angie talked about Ride Match and how they were awarded funding at GATRA in 2015 to sort of make that program (not national, that would be cool, but it's not) just statewide and so that's an example of an option or resource. And then Maria Foster, TRIPPS out of the Brookline COA, they were also awarded Community Transit Grant Program funding for both their transportation, sort of, training program for older adults and, as well as previously when they worked on that sort of resource guide and then short-range planning and technology. I know that a lot of times there are ideas that people have or they're not quite sure if they're feasible or is this really an unmet need in the CHST plan or, you know, how would we address this need, and so planning studies are a really great way to sort of work through those ideas. I am thinking of, you know, maybe one or two years ago, a Regional Planning Commission's sort of affiliate (because planning authorities are not eligible for these funds on their own), they applied for money to study whether a volunteer driver program would be a feasible option in the Montague region. So that's another great way to utilize these funds. Next slide please.
All right, and of course there are many more things in the Community Transit Grant Program that are available to you in order to provide funding for mobility management. I linked to the funding website from Judy's organization, the National Center for Mobility Management. This webpage is a great listing of various resources that are available for funding, other funding opportunities. Right. There at the bottom it links to a webpage that is overseen by Rachel Fichtenbaum, and that is, I would say one of the more comprehensive web pages out there at least for Massachusetts-based organizations, for funding. It talks about private foundation funding, national grants, state grants, and sort of different ideas that would help you to gather money for your mobility management program. And I believe those are all my slides so I will go ahead and turn it back over to Rachel. Thank you!
Q&A and Discussion
Great, thank you Jenna, that was great information. We do have a question that has come in for you and Judy actually. Can you give an example of how to successfully work with CCAM programs for funding or matching funds? This person says, I know it exists and have told others, but I'm not really sure how to tap that resource.
Yeah, this is Judy. It's pretty ironic when we talk with non-DOT colleagues around the country, often they don't know about CCAM, and so what I've done with some entities – and you could do this too – is sit with that program inventory resource that I suggested and talk with the representative of that program about the particular grant programs they have and see whether they do in fact support transportation. Many non-DOT professionals don't even know about the possibility of their programs being able to support transportation, and the other thing is if you could find examples nationally, and that's where NCMM is such a good resource to people because we could hook you up with other people around the country who may be using funds from other sources that you could use as a model as you're approaching your CAM representative or the agency, the CCAM agency. So those are just two things offhand that I think you could do to help educate people.
Thanks, Judy. Oh yeah, go ahead Angie.
Sorry, my thing is not an answer to the question but just a comment on Jenna's presentation, just real quick. I did wanna – this is called a transit life hack, I'm gonna share a transit life hack – Jenna talked about community, the Coordinated Human Service Transportation Plans and how when you apply for funding it needs to be in there. I just want to expand in my previous life as a planner. I just wanted to explain that a little a tiny bit. So if in your life you say, “oh but this is a need that's not identified in the plan,” or “since the pandemic, this changed and this is a need but we can't get funding,” so maybe reach out to, reaching out to the people who wrote that plan and getting on their mailing list so that when they update the plan you can go to forums and community meetings to get your need in. The plan is absolutely – holds a lot more weight than you think it does and going to those public meetings about that plan is really important and can provide backup for a lot of different funding sources, not just Community Transit Grant. I just wanted to slip that in.
Thank you, Angie. So we have some time now, so I think we can open this up for a general Q&A. So please continue to type any questions you have for any of the presenters into the Q&A box, and I'll invite any presenters who want to, you're welcome to turn your videos on. Now we'll just sort of have a conversation and see what these other questions are. I see one for Maria: do you have information to share on how you run the classes to teach senior and disabled residents on how to better understand Lyft and Uber?
So generally, you know, Councils on Aging will reach out to us to offer the program. It is free, I mean, we just sort of, you know, do it because it helps us, sort of, know like the issues that folks are having, and you know, it's just been part of the work that we do for a really long time. So generally, we just set up, just like a regular program at a Council on Aging, a time. We've done them virtually during the pandemic, although we did do an in-person one in November. We'll come, and we'll do one session, and again, it's that sort of classroom portion. So Jane Gould, who is our instructor, and I will come up. We again sort of talk about the motivation piece, like why is this technology, why has this technology been developed, and you know, why would it be useful for older adults to utilize, and then we go through the app itself, I'll sort of, how to use it. I also have now, one of my volunteers is actually a former Lyft driver. She stopped driving during the pandemic, but she's an older adult that lives in town and she's a Lyft driver, so she's always a good sort of spokesperson, and then we will go back a second time and actually take a trip, usually in the community itself, someplace that people are familiar with, and you know, have a, you know, take a trip there. We usually pair up so folks are with a partner basically that can provide moral support and potentially technical support, and then we all sort of arrive at a particular destination, have a cup of coffee, talk about the app, and then go back. So that's generally how it works. When we're in person – I think we can certainly offer the initial class virtually, if folks are comfortable with that, so.
Thank you, Maria! And Judy, I saw you put something in the chat. Do you want to elaborate on that at all?
Yeah sure, we're asked to address that topic often, and we've done some presentations. I remember one for transition professionals and another one was with an organization that serves people with visual disabilities, so I could pull those together, Rachel, and send them to you if you want to send them out to folks.
Great, thank you.
Sorry, I also have a guide that I'm happy to share also, to Lyft, so that we developed as part of a grant program, so happy to share that as well.
Wonderful! Here's another question about mixing funding streams: what would you recommend as the best starting point to reach out for guidance on additional funding for our local private van service serving multiple towns, which is completely funded by the local Council on Aging but also used by people with disabilities and currently uses up all of the Council on Aging funding they get from the state?
That's for me, I assume; this is Judy. I think going through that program inventory, looking at what programs may be available, knocking on the doors of the administrators, the state administrators of those programs, and identifying whether it's viable that those programs can be used to complement your existing funding. FTA produced a braiding guide, so, and it, to identify the programs that could be used to both as a match and for blending resources, so that would be useful for you to also consider as you're looking at these varying streams of funding.
I think you can also do two things. You can also talk to your Regional Transit Authority about using maybe some of their funding or streamlining some services with neighboring towns to see if expanding it or working with other agencies would make sense. You could also see if there's a TMA in your region, a non-profit that might be a very helpful person to kind of accept funding from multiple sources in order to help pay for the service, or help apply for different funding streams because they would be like a different niche, like if a nonprofit's involved so some of those things might be good.
I'll also – this is Rachel for MassMobility – I'll also invite anyone with sort of specific, how/what do I do in my specific circumstances questions to reach out directly and we can provide some technical assistance. Sometimes it's a little easier when we know like the exact circumstances that you have. So I'm gonna – I think everyone on this on this webinar got many emails from me, but I will put my email in the chat and welcome anyone to reach out directly as well.
Rachel, this is Judy again. The CDC participation in ACF (the Administration for Children and Families), participation in New Hampshire came about because they were at the table, they were listening to the kinds of services that were needed. They also turned their head when they heard about the impacts of if they contributed funding, how that would affect outcomes for their populations of people that they worked with. You know, for ACF they were working with TANF recipients and when they contributed funding and they helped build this mobility management network, outcomes for TANF recipients improved and every agency, regardless of where you come from, has an interest in ensuring really good outcomes for the populations that they serve, that you serve, and so that was really the impetus for HHS, both CDC and the ACF folks, to really contribute not only in spirit but monetarily.
Great, thanks! So helpful, Judy, to have you here so we can learn from other states. Angie, for your microtransit operations, how many people are using the app versus calling in?
The answer to that question is very specific to the service area. So we started the microtransit as two, several different pilots, so we're currently using two different apps, two different softwares. One of the softwares covers three of the service areas one; one covers just one (which is very hard, don't suggest that, try not to have that happen, as a – there's some advice). So we have four different microtransit areas, and some of them are very heavy in app usage. Our Coastline – GATRA GO Coastline – which runs in south Plymouth (it's part of a – just not even the whole community – it's part of the community, but it's Plymouth, so Plymouth is three times the size of a normal town that – whatever, so, the southern half, they have crazy high app usage, which surprised us. They're like 70 percent, I think. It's high! But then on the other hand, that service that I highlighted in my presentation, GATRA GO United, which transitioned from the regional DIAL-A-RIDE has a very low app usage. In fact, just based on our app usage stats, you can see when the college is in session and when it's not in session. It spikes rather dramatically when college is in session. I don't have an exact number on that, but when college is out of session and we're talking about just general public, it's pretty low app usage, and they have a lot of people that call in. So I think it depends on the area and your – I don't even know if I can say demographics because the people who are using the Coastline, the riders that are using the Coastline services are a lot of seniors, and they're heavy, heavy on the app usage in Plymouth and not heavy in Franklin so I'm not – I don't know if there's a rhyme or reason, but it, I think it depends.
Thank you. We have a Council on Aging and someone else, maybe two Councils on Aging, mentioning the difficulty of rides into Boston for older adults that can be, that can be expensive does anyone have any thoughts or reactions on that?
My biggest suggestion on that front would be – it is extremely expensive and there's also not a great way to do it, which makes it hard, right, so you need, you know, we've struggled with, you know, if you have like a fixed route like I talked about our Boston Hospital Bus, but you have to get that bus in there, you know, right after traffic or plan on the bus getting there for like 10, and then you know it has to get out before afternoon traffic happens, which results in a very small appointment window, which is difficult, but then you also have, you know, appointments being all over the place, and we have Councils on Aging who are trying to just for their one town meet the needs of their constituents by, you know, just running up and down trying to get, so that's difficult. So in my experience, the best way to do it is coordinate with surrounding towns. So it might not look that, you know, in our United service area we have a set schedule: Monday we go to Boston, Wednesday we go to Boston, we go to Worcester and then we’ll also go to like the Brockton Veterans Agency, so we're going in, it's geographically. We divide it by five days, but you know it doesn't have to look like that. It can look like, you know, I, you know, work with your touching towns and then, you know, try to get some sort of appointments merged together and then just go up that way but in success for reducing costs I think the best way is that you have to coordinate. You can't just try to do it yourself, and even if you can get grant funding to go up, you're still, it's still a lot of money. It's a lot of your money or it's a lot of grant funding money to try to just focus on your one group so coordination, whether it be with surrounding towns or an RTA or piggybacking on other people's trips is really – whatever way that works for you is the best way to do it. It has to be coordination because there's no good way to go in and out of Boston, unfortunately, at least in our experience.
And I’ll jump in on that too a little bit. You know, coordination and collaboration is definitely key, and an example comes to mind of Northern Essex Elder Transport, which is a volunteer transportation program that operates out of the Merrimack Valley, and they serve I think it's 14 Councils on Aging, and they successfully recruit and train and have volunteer drivers who do take folks into Boston for medical appointments, so a little more cost effective than providing, you know, a bus service but definitely has its own barriers as well, so I'm happy to share information about that if that's of interest.
Great, thanks for these insights and certainly also welcome Councils on Aging to reach out directly to work on your specific, your specific challenges and opportunities. I have one that I am going to answer. The question is: we have patients who live in New Hampshire but cross the border into Massachusetts for cancer treatment, and if they need transportation it's nearly impossible to find it for them. Do you know of any agencies that cross the border? I think depending where they're coming from in New Hampshire, I know of at least one volunteer driver program in New Hampshire that does do rides into Boston. But if you're not already connected in with them, there is actually a group of folks led by Lindsay Nicholson at the American Cancer Society who are working on this issue of medical transportation for people in New Hampshire coming into, well in this case it's the Merrimack Valley issues area, so I guess I don't know what part of Massachusetts, where on the New Hampshire border you are, but I would love to connect you in with them if you are not already, and with the folks I know in New Hampshire who are interested in this issue as well. Anyone want to add to that one?
Great, I have time for one or two more, I think. Here's an interesting one: I am a transportation researcher in an academic institution. I wonder what kind of contribution academic research can make to help the work of institutions attending the talk today. Is there any kind of knowledge gap you often find as you design your mobility strategies? Anyone, thoughts? Have thoughts on the role that academia could play?
This is Judy. You know, as a national center, we're always looking for research and evidence. It supports the technical assistance we provide. We routinely turn to TCRP and Transportation Research Board as sources for that, but we're always interested in outcomes. We're always interested in programs that have, that are deemed to be effective. Instead of just offering a suggestion about a program, it would be ideal if that program had some underlying evidence that it really impacted someone's health, someone's ability to access jobs, economic stability, all of those things that we know are really important to life, and that's where researchers can help us. Partner with your local transportation people to come up with ideas as well.
Thanks, Judy. Here's a question: we recently started our travel training program. What tips do you have to draw interest to the program? I know whether or not you do travel training, I think outreach and publicity is something everybody in community transportation has to do a lot of work on. Anyone have any thoughts?
I mean, we don't do formal travel training, but I feel like the thing that that we really try to do is make it fun. And so I think, you know, that's a way to attract people to it, like we're actually like picking places that folks want to go, and so often it's more of, you know, like a, you know, interesting, fun outing, and then we sort of insert the transportation knowledge into that. And so you know, that could be a potential way to attract folks.
Thanks, Maria. We also have someone asking about the Cape. Are there volunteer driver programs on the Cape and any transportation guides available on the Cape? So we did try to cover quite a few different regions of Massachusetts in today's webinar, but unfortunately, we were not able to cover every single region of Massachusetts. I'm definitely happy to connect and share thoughts on the Cape. In general, I would say reach out to the transit authority, the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority. I know there are some Councils on Aging, I believe, that do some volunteer driver programs on the Cape. There's also at least one Village that was operating a volunteer driver program prior to the pandemic. And Ride Match again is a great place to go to find out what are the transportation options in any particular region. Any other things?
Yeah, I would say that the Regional Transit Authority does run a Boston Hospital Bus. They run theirs five days a week, and it leaves, it travels from Hyannis and has a few stops. It goes up, it stops at the Sagamore park and ride it goes up Route 3 so there are, they do run to Boston quite often. And then they're – I mean, the transit authority themselves – would be best for questions but they do have long distance medical.
Thanks, Angie. And so maybe one more question before we go into our closing remarks. We have a big question about coordination: so we can provide folks with a transportation toolbox, but the toolbox is large and complex! So is there any movement to perhaps find ways to merge non-emergency medical transportation with paratransit and other essential purposes because we're doing a lot of medical rides through non-official types of transportation services and just wondering if there is a way to merge that?
Yes, Judy. So agreed, FTA just recently concluded non-emergency medical transportation work group where they had brought in CMS and FTA and providers to talk about how to make the process more efficient and make it more accessible to people, and they're supposed to be producing a policy brief that's going to create flexibilities in NEMT transportation, so fingers crossed that that is produced shortly and we all can learn from it and figure out what it means to creating efficiencies at the local level.
Closing Remarks: Rachel Fichtenbaum
Great, thanks Judy! James, could you bring up the last few slides we have in the slide deck? So where do we go from here? So one exciting thing to keep an eye out for is that the MBTA is currently working on incorporating more mobility management into their efforts. So they're creating a mobility center supposed to launch in July that will bring together The RIDE eligibility and their travel training program, and they're also working on incorporating more mobility management into that. So our colleague Aniko Laszlo and her co-workers are actively working on this right now, figuring out what that's going to look like. They expect to know more later this spring, and once they know more, they're going to schedule a webinar and so anyone who's interested in hearing about that, you can sign up at tinyurl.com/MBTAmobilitycenter. We'll also share that link in the follow-up materials if you are interested. And that’s whether you're in the MBTA service area or outside of it, if you're interested, they said you would be welcome to attend. Next slide please.
We'd also love to continue the conversation with you, so we're gonna have a few informal sessions to continue the conversation for Massachusetts-based attendees. We'll send out the details on that when we send out the follow-up email later today. We ask that you just sign up for one of them so we can try to keep the group to a size where we can actually have some discussion, and that'll be next week and the week after that we'll have those. Also going back to what I said at the beginning, if you're not already in touch with your Regional Coordinating Council, definitely recommend reaching out to them to see if they are still active and to get on their list. Next slide please.
And we also welcome you to connect with us directly. So the hosts, the presenters, all of us are available for follow-up conversations as you think about everything that we all heard today, and as we move forward together thinking about how we can expand mobility through mobility management in Massachusetts. Next slide please.
So thank you so very much to all of today's presenters, to the co-hosts, and to all of you! Please share your thoughts – please evaluate today's forum at the evaluation, which I just put in the chat, and it's at www.surveymonkey.com/r/mm-ma-eval. That will also go out in the follow-up email. Most of all, thank you so much for everything you're doing to expand mobility here in Massachusetts and for taking time out of your busy day to join us for this conversation. So thank you all so very much!