Developing Coordination Policies for Paratransit and the Transportation Disadvantaged

Many social service agencies, for example, those serving the elderly, people with mental illness, or those in poverty and looking for work, operate their own van service for their own clientele. That type of service, if viewed regionally, is often duplicative and inefficient. The duplicative approach toward serving transportation-disadvantaged people has led to coordination as a policy response. However, key elements that policy makers need to consider are usually not well understood or delineated. There are four key factors and six subfactors that should be addressed in the pursuit of statewide policies of transportation coordination. The four key factors are to explicitly define what coordination means, to pursue efforts of coordination at the state level, to understand the political climate within which coordination policy will be presented, and to promote decisions on local coordination support. Finally, a new model of service delivery, the Community Support Organization, is presented as one way to better achieve positive results when coordination is pursued as a strategy for improving the efficiency and reach of local services to the transportation disadvantaged.