New transit models lift disabled, carry rural workers to work
All of the support systems that help connect people to jobs — education, training, child care, even dress-for-success programs — could be useless if people can’t get to the job sites.
Likewise, people with cognitive disabilities might receive excellent in-home care and support, but without independent access to transportation, their lives are limited to what others can do for them.
All of this makes several new transportation initiatives in central Ohio especially encouraging.
Empowerbus, a Columbus-based startup, was founded by two alumni of Teach For America, the nonprofit organization that encourages high-achieving college graduates in various fields to spend a few years teaching in America’s neediest schools. Founder Aslyne Rodriguez’ initial idea was for a school bus that would include onboard teaching and learning while kids were driven to school.
Realizing that kids’ success in school is affected by the stability of their families — including parents’ employment — Rodriguez shifted to the idea of connecting people with jobs.
In a time of low unemployment and in a place where jobs are going unfilled because workers can’t get to them, it’s a brilliant fit. Employers in need of workers pay most of the cost for the rides, with workers chipping in about one-third.
Empowerbus started in 2017 with a pilot program focused on driving Somali immigrants and others in the Northland area to jobs at participating companies in New Albany. It picks people up house to house, so it relies on clusters of workers in one area going to jobs clustered in another area.
With that model, it can fill gaps in COTA’S regular route system. In Licking County, state and local Job and Family Services officials helped
arrange a match between Empowerbus and warehouse and manufacturing employers in the booming western part of the county. Residents have access to higher-paying, full-time jobs and employers get workers they can count on — a perfect complement.
Even rural areas that aren’t close to concentrations of jobs, such as those in New Albany or western Licking County, can give residents more options by investing in transportation options. Hocking Athens Perry Community Action will soon begin a pilot program adding regular bus service between Athens, Nelsonville and Albany to its existing routes in Chauncey and the Plains. In Knox County, the Job and Family Services agency launched the Village Express service in June to take riders from Danville, Fredricktown and Centerburg to and from Mount Vernon.
In Columbus, the federal-grant-funded Smart Cities initiative has given rise to high-tech innovations aimed at managing traffic and enabling technologies such as driverless vehicles. One pilot program, though, highlights the human benefits of smart transportation.
Working with a commercial app called Wayfinder, Smart Columbus and Ohio State University have tailored it to help cognitively disabled people ride regular COTA routes more independently.
A caregiver can plug in a rider’s destination and add other instructions and the rider’s phone will prompt him or her when to get off the bus or transfer to another one. It also can track the rider’s location in real time, allowing a caregiver extra peace of mind.
Because much of life in the American Midwest is based on the assumption that people can drive their own vehicles, people who don’t fit that model long have been left behind. It’s good to see communities working to change that.