Transit service sags under high demand

Long waits, late arrivals hobble system for seniors

More than 80,000 South Floridians rely on special county transportation services to get around, but having their calls answered and being picked up on time is becoming more of a challenge.

The paratransit agencies offer door-to-door service to older residents, to individuals with disabilities and to others with eligible medical conditions for $3.50 each way. Those are federally subsidized prices, with the average per-trip cost of the county services about $38 in Palm Beach County, $30 in Broward and $27 in Miami-Dade.

In Broward, complaints have poured in. People who called to schedule a trip were left on hold for 20 to 40 minutes. Others waited an hour or more for their rides to arrive.

Officials attribute the problems to a significant increase in riders, in part due to the region’s increasingly older population, and ironically, to success the programs have had in the past in becoming more reliable.

The programs — Palm Tran Connection in Palm Beach County, TOPS in Broward and Special Transportation Services in Miami-Dade — have taken steps to make the process easier. Callers can use an automated system to cancel or schedule rides; they can

arrange to have their call returned when there’s a heavy backlog. Or they can use online sites to schedule or cancel trips.

“The problem they told me was that there was just so many people now using the TOPS program, they didn’t expect that many calls,” Broward Commissioner Mark Bogen said.

The Sun Sentinel made a few random calls to the county’s TOPS line. One was answered in 2½ minutes, another in 31½ minutes.

To address the situation, Broward commissioners recently:

Approved a contract that will increase the number of call takers during peak periods.

Applied for a federal grant that would give the county 44 additional vehicles.

Endorsed a pilot program expected to start in January for 150 users that will let them call a taxi for short trips and pay for it with a county-issued debit card that will cover the cost up to $15 per trip.

That’s not only more convenient for the rider, who normally is required to schedule a trip a day in advance, but cuts the county’s cost at least in half and stretches its available dollars even further.

In Palm Beach County, an online site that will allow customers to schedule appointments is nearly ready. It will also let customers see how close the vehicles are to arriving. Miami-Dade implemented a similar system last year.

Palm Beach County is also trying to reduce demand for its special shuttles by offering free bus passes to people eligible for the special program who might not need one of the shuttles all the time. The free pass can be an incentive to use a regular bus for people who might find the $7 round-trip charge for paratransit too pricey for their budget.

Miami-Dade, like Broward, recently increased the number of contracted call-takers to handle the increased demand.

The three South Florida agencies handled almost 3.3 million trips in the 2017 fiscal year ending Sept. 30: 1.6 million in Miami-Dade, 888,000 in Palm Beach and 806,000 in Broward.

Palm Beach and MiamiDade’s totals were down slightly from a year ago, which officials attributed to Hurricane Irma. But lower September numbers in Broward did not offset its increases the rest of the year. Broward posted a 6.3 percent growth in ridership in the 2017 fiscal year, which followed a 22.9 percent increase in 2016.

Joe Harrington, spokesman for Palm Tran in Palm Beach County, said much of the demand is coming because of the graying population.

“Florida has one of the fastest-growing senior populations in the country,” Harrington said. Senior riders make up the vast majority of paratransit riders: 54 percent of Miami-Dade’s 28,000 enrolled riders, for instance, are 75 or older; 66 percent of Palm Beach riders are 60 or older.

Florida has had a substantial older population for decades; the difference now is that population is even older than it was before and less able to drive themselves, said Tomas Boiton, CEO of Citizens for Improved Transit, based in Palm Beach County.

Another difference is that many of today’s older residents live in single-family homes, not in large adult communities like Century Village and King’s Point, which have transportation for residents, he said.

“Those older adults that we were talking about 10 years ago were 65, now they’re 75. In 10 years, they’ll be 85,” Boiton said. “These individuals own their houses, they’re paid off, they want to live in place.”

At the Daniel Cantor Senior Center in Sunrise, it’s more often people in their 90s — not 70s — who need transportation, said center director Gail Weisberg. She regularly spends time on hold waiting to adjust trips for people using the center or to find out why a shuttle didn’t show up when it was supposed to.

“I was so frustrated with TOPS and the poor service I was getting,” Weisberg said.

Weisberg said the older riders who come to her center are less tech savvy and so some of the changes don’t do them much good. They still are more comfortable talking to a person when they need to schedule or cancel, she said.