Transportation programs that provide rides to the elderly, special needs, and disabled community have a variety of potential ways to provide those rides. Options include volunteer drivers that use their vehicles, in-house owned vehicles such as buses/vans/sedans, Uber/Lyft ride-hailing services, or taxi services. The cost of these transportation options varies significantly from volunteer drivers…
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The ubiquity of cellular 5G or 4G data service across North America is a boon for people to be connected at any-time and any-where. Whether you are in a car in the middle of Texas or on a highway in Alaska 98% of the time you are able to watch your favorite YouTube video without…
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Your and your team’s time is a scarce resource when running a NEMT (Non-Emergency Medical Transportation) service that is based on pillars of safety, reliability, and efficiency. If any one of those pillars becomes weak, your service’s success and ultimately your client’s satisfaction with your service can be at risk. To run your business in…
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Consider the analogy by Alan Cooper (creator of one of the most popular computer languages on the planet) who said “Building a software program is like making a pile of bricks. The pile is one brick wide and 1,000 bricks tall with each brick laid right on top of the one preceding it. The tower…
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Paratransit organizations have some of the most complex and demanding transportation scheduling requirements. With expensive-to-run vehicles, passenger requests constantly changing and hundreds of rides to route on a daily basis having software and dispatch automation is a necessity. Legacy software exists that has worked in this area for decades and although economically efficient for large…
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The needs of modern volunteer drivers can be complex and ever-changing under the influence of gas prices, competition for their valuable time, and how engaged they are in your worthy cause to provide transportation services. That means from time to time, you’ll need to take a look under the hood at your scheduling process to…
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With the passing of the American Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill in 2022, funding options for elderly, special needs, and disabled transportation programs have increased considerably for volunteer driver programs, Demand Response, Para-transit, and local community transportation programs. Although the exact distribution and management of those funds are still being worked out by the US Department of…
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81% of adults in the US who are 65 and older still have their driver’s license. As age increases, the percentage of active drivers decreases. That’s because with age comes cognitive and physical changes that impact the ability to safely drive and navigate roads. Senior Living homes understand this problem and actively take steps to…
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In a 2020 SPEDSTA survey of 150+ organizations providing transportation services to the elderly, special needs, and disabled community the #1 problem encountered was recruiting and retaining drivers and service providers. In the post-COVID era, this problem now impacts every part of the organization – from coordinators, managers, dispatchers, and volunteers. The figures are striking…
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Product “star” reviews are ubiquitous today and the ability to see the good and bad in any product or service is just a web click away. For example, most negative reviews on Amazon talk about after-delivery support. Suffice it to say if support is great, no one writes a review. If support is bad, however,…
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