Innovative Rural Transportation: Leasing Vans to Cab Companies
2002
by Steve Brown
One hour south of Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, the Kenai Peninsula
begins. Major communities on the Kenai Peninsula are Homer, Cooper Landing,
Soldotna, Sterling, Seward, Nikiski and Kenai. The area spans 25,600 square
miles, 15,700 square miles of which are land. In comparison, the Peninsula’s
total land mass equals that of Massachusetts and New Jersey combined.
The population for this area is over 50,000 people. The central part of
the Peninsula has about two-thirds of the population and consists of Soldotna,
Sterling, Kenai and Nikiski.
The Kenai Peninsula Center for Independent Living’s main office
is in Homer, a scenic town that, like the rest of the Kenai Peninsula,
attracts many tourists each year. In the mid-1990s, the Kenai Peninsula
CIL expanded from Homer to the Central Peninsula. As a part of the expansion
process, the CIL brought in local and nationally-known advocate Duane
French, then with Access Alaska in Anchorage, to promote disability awareness
and to facilitate identifying community needs.
The Problem
During meetings held throughout the Central Peninsula, CIL staff repeatedly
listened to requests for accessible, affordable transportation. After
identifying this need, a group of providers began meeting to discuss how
to supply the needed transportation. In addition to the Kenai Peninsula
CIL, other groups represented included senior centers, developmental disability
service providers, mental health service providers, local cab companies
and representatives of healthy communities programs.
The group met for about a year but couldn’t come to any consensus
about how to resolve the problem. Everyone agreed that coordinated transportation
would be helpful, but programs that already had vans were concerned that
their clientele would not get the services they needed elsewhere. For
the same reason, they were unwilling to lend their vans to a coordinated
transportation effort.
Two members of the group had a different mindset from that described
above. Joyanna Geisler, executive director of the Kenai Peninsula CIL,
and Brent Hibbert, owner of the Alaska cab company, which serves the Central
Kenai Peninsula, were both frustrated by the group’s lack of success
in presenting a workable transportation proposal. Joyanna expressed her
concerns to Brad Bernier, who then worked at Access Alaska. He suggested
acquiring transportation that could be operated by a cab company. That
was the spark that led to this program.
Several government agencies have historically provided vans to not-for-profit
organizations. Joyanna wrote a grant to the Alaska Department of Transportation
and Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority to acquire a van. The Alaska
Mental Trust Authority is a group that holds monies specifically to assist
groups representing consumers with mental health, developmental disability,
Alzheimer’s and related dementia diagnoses or those with chronic
alcoholism. The Kenai Peninsula CIL received eighty percent (80%) of the
funding to obtain a van. That was the easy part.
The problem has always been that agencies willing to expend funds to
purchase a van will not provide operating funds to keep the van on the
road. To solve that problem, and as part of the same grant request, Joyanna
asked for funds to contract for services and subsidize rider contributions.
The proposal was successful. The funding agencies granted capital and
contract funds. The program began in the autumn of 1998.
The Plan
The CIL leased the van to the cab company at no cost. In return, the
cab company gave all CIL consumers of their transportation services a
cost break. The CIL administers the program, selling coupons to consumers
to use the lift–equipped van and the thirteen (13) other vehicles
owned by the cab company. The van is used solely for individuals needing
lift-equipped service. Individuals who can access a regular cab will do
so. The cab company charges $5.00 for a $7.00 ride and the rider pays
$2.00, while the CIL, through its DOT grant request, covers the remaining
$3.00. Kenai Peninsula CIL administers the coupon program, but the cab
company is in charge of all driving, maintenance and repair and operations,
including dispatching.
Everyone contributes in this program: private enterprise gives a reduced
rate, the consumer pays $2, the State of Alaska pays $3 and the CIL administers
the program free of charge. The result is that affordable, accessible,
on-demand transportation is available to CIL consumers.
After successfully operating this program for the past three and one-half
years, the Kenai Peninsula CIL is confronted with a new dilemma. The Alaska
Department of Transportation and the Mental Health Trust are now becoming
enamored with and funding what they consider to be a public coordinated
transportation system. This is not a fixed route bus system, but vans
and mini-vans which are in theory available to anyone. The problem with
this system for the Kenai Peninsula CIL’s clientele is that it doesn’t
work.
The new state public coordinated transportation program is geared to
the working population. Ninety percent (90%) of those using the CIL cab
program are not working and fifty percent (50%) of these individuals are
already over the age of sixty-five. The CIL is currently searching for
new monies to maintain operations.
The Success
The program has been an unconditional success from the CIL’s vantage
point. Each year when grants are submitted the program receives many letters
of support. Mental health and developmental disability providers, who
at first resisted this program thinking their clients were incapable of
participating, now say that these same clients can’t do without
the program.
From a quantitative perspective, the CIL can serve 150 individuals for
$60,000 in the Kenai/Soldotna area and 50 to 55 people in Homer for $30,000.
This program has also facilitated the cab companies in Homer and in Kenai/Soldotna
becoming Medicaid and Medicaid-waiver transportation providers.
From a qualitative point of view, the transportation program has doubled
the number of people (mostly elderly people) the CIL serves in the Central
Peninsula, in some cases preventing institutionalization. It has been
a great public awareness venue and, most importantly, it has provided
affordable, dependable, accessible transportation.
Thanks to Joyanna Geisler for her contribution to this article.
Contact information
Joyanna Geisler
Executive Director
Kenai Peninsula CIL
PO Box 2474
Homer, AK 99603
907.235.7911
EMAIL: sail-sitka@gci.net
http://www.peninsulailc.org
Steven Brown
Institute on Disability Culture
Center on Disability Studies
University of Hawai'i
1776 University Ave., UA4-6
Honolulu, HI 96822
SBrown8912@aol.com
http://hometown.aol.com/sbrown8912/
About the Author
Steven E. Brown is currently a Resident Scholar
at the Center on Disability Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Brown,
founder, Institute on Disability Culture (IDC), earned a doctorate in
history from the University of Oklahoma. He directed an independent living
center in Oklahoma, organized numerous community coalitions, and served
as training director at the World Institute on Disability Research and
Training Center on Public Policy in Independent Living. He founded the
not-for-profit Institute on Disability Culture with his wife, Lillian
Gonzales Brown, in 1994. Since then he has become an internationally sought
speaker, trainer, and writer.
Brown's publications include dozens of articles and the books Independent
Living: Theory and Practice, which has been translated into several
languages; Investigating a Culture of Disability: Final
Report, the result of a prestigious Switzer Fellowship from the
National Institute on Disability Rehabilitation and Research of the Department
of Education, the first funding of its type for research into the field
of Disability Culture; A Celebration of Diversity:
an Annotated Bibliography about Disability Culture, Second Edition;
and Celebrating Passion, Relentlessness, and Vision:
the Manifesto Editorials. An award-winning poet, Brown has published
five books of poetry, Dragonflies in Paradise: An Activist's
Partial Poetic Autobiography; The Goddess Approaches
Fifty: Poems; Love into Forever: a Tribute to
Martyrs, Heroes, Friends, and Colleagues; Pain,
Plain--and Fancy Rappings: Poetry from the Disability Culture;
and Voyages: Life Journeys.
In recent years, Brown has conducted writing workshops and residencies
with groups of all ages, especially with middle and elementary school
students. He has written a children's biography about disability rights
pioneer Ed Roberts, distributed a monthly online newsletter and continued
to publish articles about disability culture and disability rights in
a variety of publications. He has conducted trainings throughout the United
States and Europe on a variety of disability related subjects.
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