1. Goals Development
Based on the St. Louis Region's 2015 long range transportation plan, Transportation Redefined, three broadly descriptive goals drive transportation planning efforts with respect to special transportation, or paratransit,
programs and services.
- Preservation of program and service resources
- Access to independent living opportunities and vital services
- Sustainable development of communities, programs and services
As with any large metropolitan region, a significant portion of the population depends on the continuing support of special transportation programs. Factors related to disability, age, income
and geography can render personal auto use and use of standard public transportation service difficult or impossible. Without the preservation and sustainable development of special service programs, many persons with disabilities, the elderly, and the urban and rural poor will experience greater isolation compared with levels of access and opportunity available to the rest of the population. Preservation of resources assumes that programs, services, vehicles and equipment funded through public programs which is maintained to some acceptable level. Access to opportunities and services means that these resources must be optimized to promote both economic opportunity and community vitality for the less fortunate. Sustainable development entails the planning of investments in programs and services that meet evolving demands and needs without overburdening the fiscal capacity to support essential services.
Research into service delivery and funding on the Missouri side of the St. Louis region has revealed dramatic increases in operations funding and fleet size, accompanied by a marked decline overall efficiency of services since
1990.
Judging from the growth in these services on the Illinois side, similar trends may prevail there. Primary influences on system growth and performance include an increased demand for personalized service and greater use of wheelchair lift equipped vehicles, and the lack of common oversight with respect to getting the most use from capital and operating assets. In general, paratransit operators tend to acquire vehicles, communications and computer equipment, maintenance equipment and services, and fixed assets for their own and exclusive use. In view of the substantial growth of paratransit funding, fleet size and service hours, the decline in efficiency points to the need for coordinated resource management, common communications and vehicle maintenance efforts, and common service quality control and data management functions.
At this time, resource management, communications, maintenance, quality control and data management functions are exceedingly fragmentary, and mainly depend on the resources and capabilities of each service provider.
The telephone, computer, radio communication, and vehicle acquisition and each agency does maintenance activities necessary to operate service annually, as are the resource management activities necessary for maintaining these infrastructures. Service order intake, trip scheduling, routing and dispatching take place without most providers having access to "real-time" information about the vehicle availability and unused capacity of other providers. Current fiscal operating practices make no provision, other than by narrow subcontract arrangements, for providers to avail themselves of other providers' unused vehicle space. Consequently, no oversight exists for making fiscal resources go further by collective reductions of overlapping fiscal investments or of slack in vehicle operations. As a whole, providers lack the organizational will and access to the sophisticated technology to make the necessary linkages possible.
Other related development issues persist. Vehicle maintenance remains subject to the abilities of each provider to afford and/or actually implement preventive, scheduled, and unanticipated tasks.
Training and support of drivers suffers because related programs are limited and many drivers are not high-wage workers. Providers experience a turnover rate consistent with poor training and poor pay. Losses in efficiency result from personnel turnover and inadequate training. With respect to information management, the technical means for impartial performance measurement and quality control have not been integrated into paratransit services on a unified basis.
Many agencies perform general and specific functions for the elderly and persons with disabilities with respect to key goal-related social needs, including independence, government responsiveness, lifetime education, employment
and economic equity, health, housing, safety and security, cultural inclusion and transportation.
Since the major focus of East-West Gateway programming takes place in the transportation field, development in all these areas will benefit if done in cooperation with a wide variety of service organizations that require transportation information and/or support services, or operate transportation programs to meet related organizational goals. A network of such state, regional, and county-level agencies should be maintained by East-West Gateway, and include:
- Archbishop's Commission on Community Health
- Area Agencies on Aging
- Mid-East Area Agency on Aging -- St. Louis, St. Charles, Jefferson and Franklin Counties
- St. Louis Area Agency on Aging -- City of St. Louis
- Southwestern Illinois Area Agency on Aging -- St. Clair, Monroe and Madison Counties in Illinois -- selected providers
- Bi-State Development Agency
- County/City Developmental Disabilities Boards -- Missouri
- Developmental Disabilities Resource Board -- St. Charles County
- Franklin County Board for the Handicapped
- Jefferson County Commission for the Handicapped
- Productive Living Board -- St. Louis County
- St. Louis Office for Mentally Retarded/Developmentally Disabled Resources -- City of St. Louis
- Franklin County Transportation Council
- Human Support Services -- Monroe County, Illinois
- Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT)
- Division of Public Transportation -- Chicago
- Institute for Disability Studies
- Jefferson County Community Assistance Network
- Madison County Transit
- Medically-Related Transportation Services:
- Abbott Services
- Medical Transportation Management
- Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT)
- Jefferson City -- Multimodal Operations
- District 6, St. Louis -- Planning
- Missouri Division of Aging
- Missouri Division of Medical Services
- Paraquad, Inc.
- St. Clair County Transit District
- St. Louis City Department of Human Services
- St. Louis Mayor's Office on Disabled
- St. Louis County Department of Human Services
- St. Louis Regional Center for the Developmentally Disabled
- Missouri Department of Mental Health
- The United Way of Greater St. Louis
- Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis
The following classifications of activities apply to consortium facilitation involving these agencies as well as others that may need assistance with specific program objectives:
- CResearch
CAdvocacy
CResource evaluation
CGrants assistance
CProgram assistance to state/local government
2. Paratransit Supply, Demand and Needs Planning
Service level analysis serves as the starting point for East-West Gateway special transportation planning. To determine how well social service transportation needs are met, planners must first form a reasonable assessment
of the current level of service, and of how well current resources are used to manage demand.
The analysis of unmet present and future transportation needs of agencies and agency service users must first take into account the present level of service available.
In 1995 and 1996, East-West Gateway tracked 50 providers of paratransit services in St. Louis City, St. Louis, St. Charles, Franklin and Jefferson Counties in Missouri and St. Clair, Monroe and Madison Counties in
Illinois. These agencies operate an estimated combined fleet of 550 vehicles including small buses, vans, minivans and cars.
This includes public paratransit services operated by the Bi-State Development Agency in Missouri, provided by the St. Clair County Transit District in Illinois, and operated by the Agency for Community Transit in Madison County, Illinois. These services were developed since 1990 as a response to the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirement for complementary paratransit services. The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) requires public transit agencies to meet the requirement by providing demand responsive paratransit service in 1.5 mile wide corridors where fixed route bus service operates, or within a three-fourths mile radius of light or rapid rail stations. Despite the ADA requirement, private nonprofit agencies continue to operate the largest share of paratransit service in response to social service contracts and social service program requirements.
It is difficult to track paratransit agencies consistently. Personnel turnover and administrative challenges are common in social service transportation. Counting smaller agencies, there may be many more in operation, with
a total fleet size possibly approaching 600 vehicles in all eight jurisdictions.
In Illinois, the Transit Districts of St. Clair and Madison Counties act to provide and/or coordinate paratransit services through designated providers of complementary paratransit service required under ADA. Transit
district funds come from a local transit sales tax, and are dedicated to transit and paratransit service development. In Monroe County, Illinois, transportation for persons with disabilities is primarily the role of Human
Support Services.
East-West Gateway continues to program FTA Section 5310 capital funds for vehicles for nonprofit agencies providing transportation to the elderly and persons with disabilities in the Illinois counties, as happens on the Missouri
side. The 5310 program serves as the basis for supply and demand planning on the Illinois side. The major focus of East-West Gateway paratransit planning will be applied to the Missouri side of the region. Fragmentation
and service inefficiency remain the foremost planning concerns with the paratransit industry in the St. Louis region. Although the ADA paratransit services implemented by Bi-State and the Illinois transit districts have
greatly extended service hours for the disabled, pressures on the paratransit community to provide personalized service continually mount.
On the Missouri side of the region, these pressures and their effects are more pronounced, due to the general lack of a coordinating-district system with dedicated funding, or with control over the mixture of funds supporting services.
In 1995, East-West Gateway formulated and implemented procedures for the first in an ongoing series of paratransit assets surveys of Missouri side providers to determine the current state of vehicle usage, service funding level
characteristics, and fleet condition. The project was intended first as a new baseline study to follow up on the coordination plan of 1989-90 mandated for local regions by the 1988 Missouri Senate Bill 676.
Results showed a 65 percent increase in total fleet size, a 223 percent increase in operating funding, a 28 percent increase in total one-way person trips, a 170 percent increase in operating hours, a 128 percent increase in trip cost, a 53 percent decline in annual trips per annual hours, and an improvement in overall fleet condition which translated to an average odometer mileage drop of 18 percent.
The new study, completed in 1996, also applied a federally recommended means of extrapolating paratransit trip production norms based on population density, to obtain a sense of future demand and need.
With inflation factored in at a conservative level, the results showed $434 million would be required to maintain current levels of service on the Missouri side of the region through 2015, and more than $60 million extra would be needed within the same period of time to markedly improve service levels to meet expanding needs. More than 13 percent of the $434-500 million range would be needed for equipment capital, which could amount to as much as $69 million. These figures were formulated using data collected before the recent implementation of the Missouri Medicaid Non-Emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT) Program. Services funded by NEMT are likely to involve greater paratransit use for very personalized door-to-door and bed-to-bed trip demands. Such levels of usage will put further pressure on funding programs.
These dynamic changes in paratransit usage signify profound changes in demand patterns. These demands will exert continuing pressures for systemic change, and the need to assess their impacts will be essential.
Therefore, it will become standard operating procedure to conduct an assets use survey of Missouri agencies in the region on a biannual or other appropriate basis as staffing and agency needs dictate. The purpose of this procedure includes the assessment of ongoing changes in demand for service, based on system use, in addition to the potential analysis of future demand based on available population forecast information. As planning needs dictate, GIS (Geographic Information Systems) software may be applied to the analysis of paratransit supply and/or demand.
Two kinds of needs influence East-West Gateway paratransit planning: agency needs and consumer needs. Programs generate demands for the services they offer, whereas changing or newly recognized needs may require new
programs and services. Needs can be distinguished from service demands by seeing needs as not necessarily precipitated by the availability of any specific programs.
In accordance with this distinction, special transportation needs planning should have two integral facets: organizational cooperation, matched with strategic information application.
First, consortium facilitation and assets evaluation can contribute to defining unmet or new service agency needs. These needs overlap with at-large consumer needs. An example lies in recognizing the need, among major political jurisdictions and funding agencies, for region-wide development of sidewalk curb-cuts for wheelchair users who might otherwise have to use more expensive door-to-door paratransit assistance instead of bus service or curb-to-curb paratransit service. Making curbside service more practical should lessen the burden on funding programs, such as the recently developed NEMT Program, to pay for expensive door-to-door service. The result could be a greater aggregate client access to the program because fewer trips need to be made by providers with lift vans who assist clients in getting past inaccessible sidewalks. This would maximize transportation dollars (and service) through taking best advantage of potential funding match arrangements. A related need consists in improving linkages between ambulance resources and paratransit resources. Ambulance services tend to be used for less-than-emergency purposes when consumers encounter difficulties obtaining paratransit services that can help them effectively negotiate barriers that exist where they need to travel for medical purposes.
The second facet of needs planning takes into account the categorical data collection process within the U.S. Census, which includes information related to age and disabling conditions. The second facet of needs planning
also entails examination of potential opportunities for direct research on specific groups.
While the Census is a central source of data, it is however decennial data. Its accuracy at the end of successive decades may be limited when applied to areas of high growth or other kinds of change. Some Census categories that could be useful if they were correlatable are not based on data collection that allows for meaningful correlation. One example might be the correlation of disability and access to private autos. Also, the applicability of using Census data to reach inferences about the current travel needs, expectations or patterns of any specific group is negligible.
The consortium planning approach provides opportunities for strategic inclusion of planning for special needs within major investment studies and with respect to investment programming. During 1996, work with Paraquad, the
Washington University Occupational Therapy Department, and other parties identified the need for interactive, kiosk-based Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technologies at MetroLink stations, to assist persons with
disabilities, as well as the general public, with information about local station area features, and levels of access to trip destinations in adjoining communities. This strategy was then incorporated into the
Cross-County Corridor Study, the major transportation investment study for the corridor including areas surrounding major roadways and potential transit rights-of-way in the populous areas of St. Louis County. The
strategy can be replicated for other investment studies. ITS technologies have a very diverse and multimodal range of applications.
Since paratransit services in all parts of the region are fragmented and not well-connected with fixed-route transit services, ITS strategies should be considered as technologically complementary to funding coordination initiatives.
During 1996, and into 1997, the Missouri-side paratransit assets study data and methodology have been used to complete appropriate portions of subregional transportation studies in St. Charles and Jefferson Counties. As
the need to do such studies arises in the future, any data and techniques available from paratransit assets analysis efforts will be tailored to the needs of the studies.
3. Transit Planning
Short-range transit planning for persons with disabilities and the elderly remains substantially covered under a separate category within the East-West Gateway Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP) by the Bi-State Development
Agency.
For several years, the work under this element has resulted in annual Complementary Paratransit Plan Updates and the administration of routine meetings of the Bi-State ADA Advisory Committee. Several agencies and consumer groups, and East-West Gateway, have participated in these processes. Since the bus fleet is approaching or has reached full requited route-level wheelchair accessibility, and the federal period for full implementation of complementary paratransit service ended in January 1997, the original purposes of the committee have largely been met. Nevertheless, strategic customer service issues including those relating to system capacity needs should continue to be addressed within the Bi-State UPWP effort.
4. Performance Measurement
Transit performance measures are addressed by Bi-State through the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Section 15 reporting mechanism.
This mechanism also allows for inclusion of complementary ADA paratransit service data. This system, and the Bi-State UPWP planning component, have resulted in the compilation of much service and ridership measurement. The East-West Gateway assets study also included Bi-State Call-A-Ride public paratransit services. The Bi-State Section 15 record keeping program, the UPWP planning component, and the East-West Gateway paratransit assets survey additionally serve to meet the management system monitoring requirements for FTA grantees as defined under the Public Transportation Management System (PTMS) requirement of ISTEA.
With respect to paratransit, assets survey methods should retain a number of specific measures, including total fleet size among providers, number of regular vehicles versus those with wheelchair lifts, level of annual operating
dollars, level of annual trips, total operating hours, estimated cost per trip, estimated cost per hour, average monthly trips per vehicle, average odometer mileage, and percentage breakdown of trip purposes.
The current benchmark paratransit service measure is one-way person trips per month per vehicle.
The assets survey for the Missouri side of the region showed and average per-month level of 341 trips for a total paratransit fleet 38 percent lift equipped. When evaluating projects, East-West Gateway staff will use this as a general guideline. When applicants request grants for regular vehicles, monthly trips per vehicle should reach or exceed this level, especially in urban areas where high mileage is not often requited to reach a destination, as in some rural areas. Likewise, when lift vehicles are requested, agencies should be encouraged to reach or exceed 200 trips per vehicle per month.
Other than these foregoing measures, there exists no reporting paradigm or standard performance measurement methodology for paratransit providers in the region.
To some extent, the Illinois transit districts have imposed standard reporting on their ADA providers, as Bi-State has implemented it with their Call-A-Ride services. Common procedures and formats are, however, lacking among the providers in the region. Many providers are also grantees of FTA and state programs, and participate in the East-West Gateway Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) as part of the eligibility process. Accordingly, it has become standard planning practice for East-West Gateway to host a strategic grants planning conference on the Missouri side for all paratransit providers who may be eligible for grant programs. The conference provides an information and training component with a view to standardizing performance measurement. One of the fundamental goals of the conference is the promotion of increasingly consistent standards of performance evaluation that form the basis for the allocation of capital investments.
5. Cooperative Strategy Development and Implementation
Interagency consortium planning has also identified sidewalk curb cuts for wheelchair access as a generalized need in the St. Louis region for persons with disabilities, regardless of transportation mode choice. At the
national planning level, there has been a degree of recognition for the need to plan communities for the elderly which integrate vital services and functions, e.g., housing, shopping, medical and dental care.
With these themes in mind, planners should seriously consider the strategy of leveraging grant awards for projects for communities that have met or exceeded ADA obligations and fostered sustainable and integrated development for the elderly.
Available social services, research, and social services transportation funding programs cannot address many of the social needs related to the lack of physical and economic mobility. While technological development and
coherent public fiscal planning for special needs are likely to bring progress, population growth and aging are in turn just as likely to make progress difficult.
Poverty, unemployment, underemployment, and the auto-dependency of most communities are hard felt by persons with disabilities and the elderly. Some estimates place unemployment among persons with disabilities as high as
70 percent.
Among minorities, the rate of unemployment of persons with disabilities is even higher. Lack of economic mobility and integration of vital services into communities in a way that minimizes necessary travel also limits quality of life for the elderly. For these reasons, East-West Gateway must support programs that address needs and issues not addressed by, but nevertheless related to the processes of making public investments in transportation facilities and services. The major means of such support will come in the form of staff time and resources.
In the first half of calendar year 1996, much time was spent designing and marketing a symposium called "Breaking the Silence."
This event promoted dialogue and solution-seeking on violence as a causal and existential factor with respect to disability. Co-sponsors included the Consortium on Disability and Violence, Paraquad, Inc., the St. Louis University School of Public Health, the Saint Louis University Department of Policy Studies, the Saint Louis University Institute for Leadership and Public Service, the Institute for Disability Studies and the United Way of Greater St. Louis.
For Fiscal 1997/98 East-West Gateway staff activities are supporting efforts to implement the FIRSTOP Community Transportation Access Project.
This project was initiated by the St. Louis Archbishop's Commission on Community Health (ACCH) and Barnes-Jewish Hospital. The project consists in a plan for centralized and automated client-to-transportation-service needs matching. Funds were applied for from the Easter Seals/FTA Project Action Program to initiate the program, but were not forthcoming. East-West Gateway will therefore provide staff and technical assistance resources to ACCH members on an as-needed basis.
During the final Fiscal 1997 quarter, staff time began to be spent in support of the Metropolitan St. Louis Urban League's Minority Leadership in Disability Advocacy Project.
This program presents a promising opportunity for the melding of established civil rights advocacy and disability rights advocacy. Staff involvement in this initiative will continue into Fiscal 1998 and focus on assistance with needs assessment and mobility policy issue resolution.
East-West Gateway has also entered into discussions with the Institute for Disability Studies regarding future possibilities for shared public policy reform research on problems related to mobility for persons with disabilities.
6. Advisory Process, Agency Participation and Funding Coordination
East-West Gateway maintains and facilitates an advisory process to support the implementation of specific funding programs.
Projects which are funded through this process should serve to represent overall and specific planning objectives.
The Section 5310 process addresses agency participation and coordination on the Illinois side, on a case-by-case basis.
By contrast, the lack of centralized information and coordination relative to paratransit programs in Missouri necessitates an additional level of advisory planning. The key components of this planning include regular meetings of the Special Transportation Management Authority (STMA), regular meetings of a providers' network subcommittee of the STMA, and the annual strategic paratransit grants conference. The STMA is the advisory body to East-West Gateway and regional decision makers on strategic planning and project programming for special transportation services. Representatives of the City of St. Louis, St. Louis County, and Franklin, Jefferson and St. Charles Counties, major state funding agencies, the Bi-State Development Agency, the Bi-State ADA Advisory Committee, and service providers and consumers form STMA membership. Typical scheduling of the strategic grants conference takes place in March. This makes the conference late enough in the fiscal year to have resolved most project programming issues for the current period, and early enough before the next fiscal year to allow agencies to prepare capital grant requests and coordinate them with operating resource plans.
The STMA review and the conference processes focus on the four funding programs central to paratransit services in Missouri. These are the Section 5310 Capital Assistance Program for Elderly and Persons with Disabilities,
the Section 5309 Discretionary Capital Program, the Missouri Elderly and Handicapped Transportation Assistance Program
(MEHTAP, which supplies operating match) and the Section 5311 Small Urban and Rural Transportation Assistance Program.
7. Program Evaluation
On the Illinois side of the region, the basis for paratransit planning continues to be the
FTA-IDOT Section 5310 capital program for private nonprofit agencies providing transportation to the elderly and persons with disabilities. East-West Gateway requires copies of all applications to IDOT for these funds and extracts service level information as appropriate for the purposes of assisting agencies with client transportation coordination issues and geographically representing fleet distribution and other selected service level information.
With respect to the Missouri side, a monitoring and evaluation approach has been devised for the FTA-MoDOT 5309 and 5310 Programs, as well as the MoDOT 5311 and MEHTAP Programs.
Because the 5311 Program applies mainly to rural service, and is currently restricted to providing operating funds to a few designated operators, any related local planning efforts are informational and connected to the other
programs.
The 5309, 5310, and MEHTAP programs need coordination and review annually, since many of the same agencies access them to support transportation for their clients and passengers.
The Missouri Section 5309 Program
Eligibility for the 5309 Discretionary Program, per MoDOT administration, extends matching funds (80 percent) to nonprofit agencies who will operate transportation for the general public and/or all persons with disabilities in
their service areas.
This funding is subject to yearly Congressional appropriation decision making. To date, no eligible agency has been excluded from the program. Over Fiscal 1996 and 1997, eight applicants applied and were programmed through the TIP for 94 vehicles, five base radios, 35 mobile radios and three computer systems, at a total projected cost of $2,639,900. Since all Section 5309 equipment gets deployed in the service areas of the public transit services operated by Bi-State and OATS, as well as in areas served by Section 5310 and MEHTAP recipients, under served need and coordination should be leading concerns.
For Fiscal 1998 and following program years, East-West Gateway staff and STMA members arrived at an evaluation process and criteria for screening and recommending projects.
Under the process, a designated STMA review team will meet in June or July with potential recipients to review proposals according to the following criteria:
- CNeed justified in terms of meeting under served need
CCoordination with other providers (including Bi-State and OATS)
CCost efficiency/effectiveness
CConsistency of projects with long-term plans for sustainable services
The East-West Gateway deadline for 5309 proposals is mid-May. Together, the criteria speak to the long range planning themes of resource preservation, access to opportunity and sustainable community development.
Following the team interview with applicants, the STMA will forward qualitative evaluation results to East-West Gateway as a recommendation, recommendation contingent on certain provisions, or no recommendation finding for each project. While this process is unlikely to render any project ineligible, it is designed to encourage a consensus on needs, coordination, effectiveness and planning consistency among interested parties.
The Missouri Section 5310 Program
In contrast to the 5309 Program, the Section 5310 program provides 80 percent match through an annual formula process for vehicles operated by nonprofit private agencies specifically to provide transportation for persons with
disabilities and the elderly. Recipients may serve only their own program clients, if they are either disabled or elderly.
Every year, MoDOT quotes East-West Gateway a funding mark, consistently around $350,000, which may result in the purchase of 13 or 14 vehicles in 1997 dollars. This level of funding represents 50 to 60 percent of the equipment requested. East-West Gateway and the STMA try to program projects totaling an amount close to the mark. Some projects and vehicles become eliminated from eligibility in this process.
The STMA review criteria for Section 5310 projects predate the current long range planning focuses of Transportation Redefined by a few years, but are consistent with resource preservation, access to opportunity and sustainable
development. The 10 criteria are applied in a 100-point variously weighted rating system in which a set level of points must be attained for TIP eligibility, and are as follows:
- Operating experience
- Need justification
- Service coordination
- Vehicle replacement/addition:
- New start
- Expansion
- Upgrade
- Replace depleted vehicle(s)
- Replace inoperative vehicle(s)
- Recreation trips 20 percent or less
- Service five or more days and/or 40 or more hours a week
- Number of persons served
- Market size
- Undeserved demand met
- Availability of other service(s)
The East-West Gateway deadline for Missouri Section 5310 applications falls on July 1, consistent with the MoDOT deadline for the program. Historically, a designated STMA review team has rated proposals and vehicles. This
review has resulted in funding recommendations.
The March strategic grants conference offers substantial technical assistance to 5309 and 5310 applicants in terms of scheduling and review process information.
A Support Booklet is made available every year by East-West Gateway staff to potential applicants under the competitive 5310 Program. This booklet offers detailed explanations of the TIP rating system, and interagency contact requirements.
The STMA review team for each program, 5309 and 5310, consists of the major local government representatives on the STMA, as well as a selected provider representative who does not participate in whichever program is under
review.
In addition to these processes, all 5309 and 5310 applicants may appeal funding recommendations through standard public participation processes established under the general Transportation Improvement Program (TIP). The
review process provided for the 5309 and 5310 Programs and provided through the TIP has been designed to ensure fairness during the resolution of difficult resource allocation issues.
The MEHTAP Program
With regard to the MEHTAP Program, as time allows, East-West Gateway staff plans to analyze projects in terms of funds proposed and the levels of performance presented by the proposals.
These measurements should be compared with actual funding levels and economies, and the results compared with the prior funding cycle or with prior cycles. Tracking proposed funding levels and economies has proven more feasible in the past than has the tracking of actual economies. Staff may also choose to index applicants by trip purpose and correlate MEHTAP applicants with applicants and recipients of the 5309 and 5310 programs.
MEHTAP-matched services accounted for more than $800,000 in total operating dollars for St. Louis paratransit providers in the 1996 program year. Allocation criteria and decisions are applied and implemented at the state
level and result in few denials and a wide variety of program efficiencies. Roughly half of the funds support Area Agency on Aging services.
Efforts to locally coordinate management of this program with the capital programs are important. These dollars can also cross-match Medicaid NEMT-HMO funds and create significantly greater levels of service for the medically indigent. But the fiscal mechanisms and capacities of these programs are not well understood by all agencies eligible to use them, and more needs to be done to maximize the performance value of these program resources. The MoDOT deadline for MEHTAP applications usually falls a short while before the grants conference, owing to different scheduling requirements for all four programs. However, for applicants who might be new to the MEHTAP program, MoDOT will consider deferring full submittals until after the conference. This arrangement should be formalized annually.
8. Recommendations for the Future Planning
Funding and service fragmentation, spiraling costs, lack of common performance measurement and lack of standard industry technologies and practices represent fundamental challenges for the paratransit industry in St. Louis.
The absence of a broad-based professional framework for improving the strategic management of services on the Missouri side of the metropolitan area constitutes the most pressing policy issue in the industry. Although this is obvious, critical aspects of the situation remain beyond the scope of the various institutional mandates and practices responsible for the perpetuation of current norms.
Existing East-West Gateway supply, demand and program based special transportation planning has increased the level of information about and coordination of programs and services. However, new initiatives need to be taken
to increase the level of strategic operations planning among the stake holding agencies. Accordingly, a higher level of organizational effort should be considered.
A designated representative of the STMA from a local political entity or local agency funding transportation ought to permanently fill the STMA position on the East-West Gateway Transportation Policy Committee (TPC). The TPC
advises the East-West Gateway Board on transportation development and policy issues. A routine STMA linkage with TPC activities would serve to give special transportation needs more recognition as major regional policy
decisions are being made.
In coming years, East-West Gateway will explore and conduct planning to increase opportunities for institutional cooperation resulting in the formation of a Transportation Management Association, or TMA, for paratransit
operators and consumers.
Association membership would consist of funders, paratransit operators and vendors, state and local government agency administrative and fiscal decision makers, and consumer representatives. The association should be directed by an independent nonprofit board of local social service agency representatives and service consumers. Association staff and resources might be derived from a mix of various contributing sources, including East-West Gateway, the local agencies, and from reimbursements for association services determined on a consensual basis. Services and efforts of the association would be designed to lead to benefits for all providers and consumers in the following functional areas:
- CCentralized transportation information/referral
CCommunication technology and standardization
CScheduling, routing and dispatching technology and capacity
CITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) planning and implementation
CPreventive, routine, and emergency maintenance quality and capacity
CStandardization and consistency in driver and personnel training and education
CRecord keeping standards
CPerformance monitoring and measurement; service quality control and
improvement
CCost-effective procurement of goods and services:
CFuel
CParts, tires, tools, equipment, vehicles
CInsurance
CSubstance abuse related services
CSubstance abuse policy development
CConsumer assistance, information and education
CEvaluation of customer satisfaction
CComputer data infrastructure development
CFunding program information and coordination
CAlternative funding research and development
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