An Alameda County Transportation Comission’s meeting was held on Dec 8, 2015, and several of the city’s managers attended the meeting. The commission, along with all of the city managers were concerned about these issues. “Although there is a diversity with public transit for the elderly and disabled in this county, there are many people who are not receiving services due to their geographic area or lack of enough seniors in the community” stated Naomi Armenta, who is the paratransit coordinator of ACTC. She continues to say that “Alameda County is striving to provide more transportation services, especially to this population, to ensure better safety, independence and quality of life” (Armenta, 2015). Another problem that Naomi feels
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In speaking with Shawn Fong, the program manager of the Human Services Department in Fremont, she said “ I want to use the funding we have to provide more services to our seniors; however, I am not in favor of lowering the age limit (which is now 80). I don’t feel that age is necessarily a predictor of impairment.” She feels that if the age requirement is lowered, it will encourage abled seniors to use extended services rather than relying on regular buses or trains (BART). She is a strong believer in spending some of the funding on teaching people how to use transit services and to find out what resources are available to them. There is a travel training program that Shawn uses in her city which provides one on one training for seniors and the disabled. Since Fremont is a large city , they depend on a type of paratransit service called MV Transportation. The city is discussing increasing the capacity as well as providing more routes for their seniors. They also are involvd with the taxi voucher program where a senior or disabled person, after applying for the program, buys vouchers at a reduced fare to use a contracted taxi company. This is the answer for Fremont for transportation service 7 days a week, 24 hours a day for those who need it. There is no wheelchair accessible vehicle at this time with the contracted taxi company. In addition to these services, there is an additional volunteer driver program where volunteers use theri own car to take seniors and the disabled door to door for doctor’s appointments and grocery store visits. This seems to be working well, however, there is a limited amount of
In speaking with Shawn Fong, the program manager of the Human Services Department in Fremont, she said “ I want to use the funding we have to provide more services to our seniors; however, I am not in favor of lowering the age limit (which is now 80). I don’t feel that age is necessarily a predictor of impairment.” She feels that if the age requirement is lowered, it will encourage abled seniors to use extended services rather than relying on regular buses or trains (BART). She is a strong believer in spending some of the funding on teaching people how to use transit services and to find out what resources are available to them. There is a travel training program that Shawn uses in her city which provides one on one training for seniors and the disabled. Since Fremont is a large city , they depend on a type of paratransit service called MV Transportation. The city is discussing increasing the capacity as well as providing more routes for their seniors. They also are involvd with the taxi voucher program where a senior or disabled person, after applying for the program, buys vouchers at a reduced fare to use a contracted taxi company. This is the answer for Fremont for transportation service 7 days a week, 24 hours a day for those who need it. There is no wheelchair accessible vehicle at this time with the contracted taxi company. In addition to these services, there is an additional volunteer driver program where volunteers use theri own car to take seniors and the disabled door to door for doctor’s appointments and grocery store visits. This seems to be working well, however, there is a limited amount of