Answer:

Public policies at the federal, state, and local levels can foster coordination through funding requirements, offering incentives for improvements in coordination, and requiring transportation and human service providers to demonstrate strategies and efforts to coordinate resources at the local level.

Interested organizations and individuals can contact their state to ascertain what plans and actions are being planned and implemented for human service transportation coordination at the state and local levels. Locally, consumers should be actively involved in the planning and development of human service transportation services, including the development of policies and programs at all levels.

Efforts to expand the availability and accessibility of transportation services should cut across age and disability boundaries and seek to include such rider groups as individuals with disabilities, older adults, and individuals with lower income.

Answer:

Transportation coordination can take several forms depending on how organizations share vehicles, facilities, or services. Most common examples include: 

• Incidental Use
  • The limited non-transit use of project property that does not conflict with the original authorized purpose of the project property or the recipient’s ability to maintain satisfactory continuing control.
• Shared Use
  • Instances in which an entity, separate from the recipient, occupies part of a facility or shares the use of equipment (including rolling stock) and pays for its pro rata share of the construction, maintenance, acquisition, or operations costs, as applicable. 
• Charter
  • Transportation provided to a group of people by a recipient at the request of a third party for the exclusive use of a bus or van for a negotiated price.

Learn more about these examples on FTA's transportation coordination webpage.

Answer:

• Greater access to funds is provided by:
  • Tapping a wider range of funding programs
  • Accessing a greater variety of staff and facilities
  • Employing more specialized and skilled staff
  • More cost-effective use of resources is created through:
  • Productivity increases
  • Economies of scale
  • Eliminating waste caused by duplicated efforts
  • More centralized planning and management of resources
• Greater productivities and efficiencies will:
  • Fill service gaps within communities by offering services to additional geographic areas and individuals within existing budgets.
  • Provide additional trips for community members, thus enhancing their quality of life.
  • Generate cost savings to some participating agencies in special forms of coordinated transportation service
• More centralized management of existing resources results in greater visibility for transportation services to:
  • Riders
  • Agencies needing trips for their clients
  • The community
  • Funders
• And results in:
  • Reduced consumer confusion about how to access services
  • Clear lines of authority
  • More professional (comfortable, reliable, and safe) transportation services

Answer:

Coordinating individual human services transportation programs makes the most efficient use of limited transportation resources by avoiding duplication caused by overlapping individual program efforts and encouraging the use and sharing of existing community resources. In communities where coordination is made a priority, citizens benefit from more extensive service, lower costs and easier access to transportation. Coordination can improve overall mobility within a community, particularly when human service agencies are each providing transportation to their own clients. It works by eliminating the inefficiencies within disparate operations and service patterns that often result from a multiplicity of providers. Greater efficiency helps to stretch the limited (and often insufficient) funding and personnel resources of these agencies. When appropriately applied, coordination can lead to significant reductions of operating costs (per trip) for transportation providers. People in need of transportation also profit from enhanced transportation and higher quality services when operations are coordinated.

Answer:

Federal fund braiding for local match, also referred to as federal fund braiding, is when federal funds from one grant program are used to fulfil the local match requirement of another federal grant. This provides federal grantees the opportunity to share costs of a transportation project across multiple federal programs. All statutory and regulatory requirements, such as eligibility and reporting, must be met for both programs. Federal fund braiding encourages greater coordination at the local level due to the additional reporting requirements that grantees must meet when receiving funds from two federal sources.

Additional details on federal fund braiding are available in the CCAM Federal Fund Braiding Guide (third dropdown on the Program Inventory page), which defines fund braiding for local match and outlines acceptable arrangements for transportation projects.

Answer:

Human services transportation (HST) includes a broad range of transportation service options designed to meet the needs of transportation disadvantaged populations, including individuals with disabilities, older adults, people with disabilities, and/or individuals with lower income. Individuals have different needs and may require different transportation services depending on their needs, the size of the community they live in, and the options available. 

Public transit, available for all, is one form of HST. Other HST providers serve limited populations such as agency or institutional clients or schools. HST providers include public and private providers of transportation services, social service agencies, community health centers, aging and disability organizations, public health departments, behavioral or mental health centers, criminal justice programs, veteran’s transportation programs, vocational rehabilitation programs, schools, advocacy groups, faith-based communities, and more. 

HST includes, but is not limited to:

• Dial-a-ride (i.e., responding to individual door-to-door requests)
• Human service agency transportation  
• Mileage reimbursement to volunteers or program participants 
• Neighborhood shuttles 
• Non-emergency medical transportation funded by Medicaid or other sources
• Public transit (including paratransit)
• Transportation vouchers (e.g., transit passes, taxis, etc.) 
• Volunteer transportation services 
• Escorted (i.e., door-through-door or hand-to-hand) transportation services

Human service agencies that provide transportation services have uniquely different missions. One agency may provide employment services while another may focus on the delivery of health care services as their primary mission. Coordinating HST can be highly beneficial to local communities.
 

Answer:

The Coordinating Council on Access & Mobility (CCAM) is a federal interagency council that works to coordinate funding and provide expertise on human services transportation. Human services transportation fosters personal mobility by connecting people to their homes, jobs, education, medical appointments, and all their communities have to offer.

The CCAM focuses on programs for three targeted populations: individuals with disabilities, older adults, and individuals of low income. The CCAM was:

• Established in 2004 by Executive Order 13330
• Referenced in a note to 49 U.S.C. 101 since 2006, which identifies the CCAM as supporting several objectives of the USDOT
• Given tasks by Congress in 2015, in Section 3006(c) of the 2015 Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act.

The CCAM works to improve federal coordination of transportation resources and address barriers faced by states and local communities when coordinating transportation. Led by the DOT Secretary, its mission is to issue policy recommendations and implement activities that improve the availability, accessibility, and efficiency of transportation for CCAM’s targeted populations.

Answer:

Executive Order 13330, signed by President Bush on February 24, 2004, established the Interagency Transportation Coordinating Council on Access and Mobility (CCAM), which was originally chaired by former Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta. The Council’s purpose is to coordinate the 130 federal programs across nine federal departments that provide funding to be used in support of human services transportation. The Council is comprised of 11 CCAM members, including the U.S. Departments of Transportation, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, Housing and Urban Affairs, Agriculture, Justice, and Interior and the Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration, and the National Council on Disabilities.

Answer:

The Transportation Technical Assistance Coordination Library (TACL) offers a centralized platform and sustainable methodology for accessing resources from a wide range of transportation technical assistance centers and FTA.

For additional technical assistance information and resources, visit the FTA-Sponsored Technical Assistance, Training, and Research Resource Programs webpage.