Kansas Rides Website Provides Statewide Information About Public Transportation

There’s a new website in town.  Kansas Rides, which can be found online at www.ksrides.org, was created to support the efforts of public transportation agencies across the state to provide more information to current and prospective customers about service options.

Transit services across rural Kansas are provided by a multitude of local providers.  It is necessary to have a unifying theme or identity for all public transit services to increase coordination and public awareness.  Kansas Rides was developed as just that.  Transportation resources representing about 80 counties are listed on the website.  Counties will continue to be added as information becomes available.

“We’re very pleased with the new website and trust the public will be to,” said Michelle Griffin, Mobility Manager for north central Kansas. “We hope it provides users with a positive and informative channel through which they can learn more about public transit in Kansas and how we can help them improve their public transportation experience.

The idea behind this new resource is to provide a one-stop shop for people needing to know about public transportation services in their area.  On the website, you can do the following:

  • Get help finding a ride – organized by county
  • Sign up for news and updates
  • Learn about regional transportation options
  • Find social media links
  • Learn about possible employment opportunities
  • Meet regional Mobility Managers

This website does not take the place of local transportation websites, but just adds to the information that can be accessed by people across the state.

Mobility-On-Demand: The Future of Transportation

Ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft have been largely viewed as a threat to public transportation agencies, stealing customers and much-needed revenue. These fears are not unfounded. An October report by the University of California, Davis Institute of Transportation Studies found that urban ride-hailing passengers decreased their use of public transit by 6%.

Read more here:  http://www.metro-magazine.com/management-operations/article/726862/mobility-on-demand-the-future-of-transportation?utm_source=email&utm_medium=enewsletter&utm_campaign=20171226-NL-MET-Express-BOBCD171220004&omdt=NL-MET-Express&omid=1100000033

Research Report – Aging in Place in Small Urban and Rural Communities

A new study published by SURTC investigated the current state of aging in place in small urban and rural settings throughout the country and quantified the costs for residents to live at home and ride public transportation versus moving to an assisted living facility. Overall, simulation results showed that the cost of assisted living was almost always higher compared to other alternatives. Homeowners without mortgages had the lowest costs followed by apartment dwellers and homeowners with mortgages. Policy makers should consider the potential cost savings from aging in place found in this study. Seniors and their families can potentially save thousands of dollars annually by remaining at home and utilizing home health and public transportation services.

The full report and executive summary can be found at the link below:

Aging in Place in Small Urban and Rural Communities

For more details, contact Del Peterson at Del.Peterson@ndsu.edu.

81 Connection 2018 Monthly Passes, Punch Cards and Tickets Available to Purchase

Salina, Kansas – Monthly passes, punch cards and tickets are now available for purchase for the new fixed route bus service from Belleville to Salina, 81 Connection, for use by passengers in January 2018.

Additional fare options are available for frequent riders.  A six trip ticket strip (6 tickets worth $1.00 each) will be available for $5.00.  A punch card with 24 punches worth $1.00 each can be purchased for $20.00.  A monthly pass for unlimited rides during the current month can be purchased for $50.00.

Locations to purchase these options include OCCK Transportation, 340 N. Santa Fe, and OCCK, Inc., 1710 W. Schilling, both in Salina; Ottawa County Transportation at 817 Argyle, Minneapolis; and the Concordia Senior Center at 109 W. 7th, Concordia.  At this time, drivers will not be able to sell these additional fare options.

The Salina locations will take cash, checks or credit and debit cards.  The Minneapolis and Concordia locations will only take cash or checks.

Starting January 2, 2018, regular fares will apply.  Basically one-way fares are $1.00 from town to town.  A trip from Belleville to Salina will cost $4.00.  Passengers will be able to pay a one time fare in cash each time they ride.

Passengers will pay the exact fare to the fare box on the bus.  The driver will not make change.

A Salina CityGo bus pass is included in the Salina fare.

The 81 Connection bus service has three bi-directional trips each day, Monday through Friday.  The first route starts in Belleville at 6:45 a.m., then heads south on Highway 81 to three stops in Concordia, a stop at the Highway 24/Highway 81 junction, a stop in Minneapolis and stops at 7th and Walnut and Wal-Mart in Salina and then heads back to north to the same stops.  The bus runs this loop twice and finishes in Belleville around 5:40 p.m. each day.

A second bus leaves Salina at 1:00 p.m. and heads north on Highway 81 to the same stop in Minneapolis, the stop at the Highway 24/Highway 81 junction, three stops in Concordia and the stop in Belleville, before heading back to Salina with the same stops.  The bus finishes in Salina around 6:00 p.m. each day.

Poles and signs have been installed at the stop locations.  Riders can find stop and time information on each pole.

The 81 Connection is operated and managed by OCCK Transportation.  Initial funding for the project came from the Earl Bane Foundation, who provided the 30% local match, as well as the Kansas Department of Transportation, who provided the remaining 70%.

For more information about the 81 Connection and Kansas Rides, visit www.ksrides.org.  For more information about OCCK, Inc., visit www.occk.com.  For more information about CityGo and OCCK Transportation, visit www.salinacitygo.com. Or, contact Michelle Griffin, Mobility Manager (mgriffin@occk.com), or the OCCK Transportation Center at 785-826-1583.

Public Transportation Fights Poverty

Access to transportation is the single most significant factor in enabling people to escape poverty. Public transportation access can have a greater impact on a person’s ability to escape poverty than:

  • Crime
  • Single-Parent Households
  • Student Test Scores

 

Moving Up the Income Ladder

Longer commute times reduce the chances that low income families will be able to move up the income ladder. In areas where there is little or no public transportation, families are more likely to be stuck in the cycle of poverty with much more limited access to jobs or employment choices than people with access to a car or reliable public transportation.

Read more here:  http://voicesforpublictransit.org/blog.aspx?id=08-24-2017

Why Doctors Should Consider Giving Their Patients a Ride

By Suzanne Alewine | 04/24/2017 05:00 AM EDT

In 2014, Leo Haralson’s big toe turned black, a casualty of his battle with diabetes. A veteran and a former software developer for the U.S. Navy, he had insurance through both Medicare and the Veterans Affairs Department, so getting good health care shouldn’t have been a problem. But after the toe was amputated, he developed an infection that spread to his bones. Haralson needed daily oxygen treatments at a hospital to halt the infection.

Haralson and his wife, 65, motorcycle enthusiasts originally from Wisconsin, had retired to southern Missouri, seeking a warmer climate and a home in the middle of the country so they could drive off in any direction. They built their dream home on the outskirts of the town of Mountain View, named for its commanding view of the Ozarks. But his wife could no longer drive, and with his foot in bandages, Leo couldn’t either. The hospital was 30 miles down Highway 60 from his home, and the local transit provider has bus service only on Wednesdays. Without a way to get to the hospital every day for a month, Haralson faced losing his leg—and his ability to live independently.

Transportation comes up in virtually every conversation about rural health care, particularly in the past few years as hospital closures have increased the distances many patients need to travel. Missouri has closed three hospitals since 2010, victims of cutbacks in reimbursement from insurers and the government. Distances patients must travel are increasing.

As policymakers look at ways to improve the health of rural Americans, it’s becoming increasingly clear that transportation is a critical missing link between patients and providers.

The problem isn’t necessarily a lack of rides; many places, like Missouri, have a variety of transportation options for people who can’t drive. Medicaid provides some non-emergency transportation for eligible patients. Some local communities run van services, particularly for seniors. The Southern Missouri Transportation System and OATS, a nonprofit transit company, provide van services, as well. And there are medical transportation services including emergency ambulances.

But all of those systems have problems and gaps. For Medicaid, rides must be ordered five days in advance, and cannot include secondary stops, even just to visit a pharmacy to fill a prescription after the doctor visit, without prior approval. Van and bus services run once or twice a week on fixed schedules and routes that may not match a patient’s appointment times. And ambulances are expensive.

There’s a bigger problem, too: The current system puts the burden of navigating those options and schedules on patients, even as they are struggling with illness and symptoms like pain, confusion and fatigue. In Missouri, we have found that when getting a ride isn’t simple and affordable, patients will forgo care. And that means that their conditions can worsen until they become acute and result in an ambulance ride to the ER instead—the most expensive option of all.

Clearly, the existing system doesn’t work well for anybody. Patients are overwhelmed and often give up. Doctors and hospitals lose time and revenues because of “no-shows.” And ambulance companies are transporting patients who didn’t know whom else to call—and then don’t get paid if an insurance company or Medicaid decides it wasn’t an actual emergency.

As a health care consultant and the executive director of the Missouri Rural Health Association, I helped develop a program to test whether there was a better way. We got seed money to hire a “mobility coordinator” who could arrange rides for patients who needed them. Our program, called HealthTran, trained clinic and hospital staff to ask patients at the time they made appointments whether they needed a ride. And if they did, they alerted the HealthTran coordinator who would contact them, assess their transportation needs and figure out a cost-effective solution.

Leo Haralson was one of HealthTran’s first patients. In his case, the coordinator determined that because of his infection, he needed private rides from his home in Mountain View to Ozarks Medical Center in West Plains, 30 miles away. She arranged 70 rides for him at a cost of $6,000. That wasn’t cheap, but it paid off. The hospital benefited by being able to bill Medicare $13,000 for the oxygen treatments and avoiding penalties for a hospital readmission. Medicare saved the cost of a leg amputation and possible transfer to a nursing home.

As always in health care, a key questions is, “Who pays”? What HealthTran learned is that it’s actually cost-effective for clinics and hospitals to provide the service at no cost to the patients because providing rides reduced the number of no-shows.

Here was how it played out at one hospital system: In just 17 months, HealthTran provided 2,470 rides for patients receiving services, at a cost of just over $66,000. Including staffing, the total cost of coordinating and paying for transportation was approximately $95,000, an average of $33 per ride. These patients resulted in over $730,000 in payments to the hospital and its clinics. In short, for every $1 invested in transportation, the hospital earned $7.68 in reimbursement.

The return on investment in transportation is so strong that it can pay off even for individual doctors. A missed appointment means missed revenue, loss of provider productivity, patient rescheduling and most likely a sicker patient. If 20 percent of scheduled appointments are missed on a weekly basis, and the average charge for that primary care visit is $150, a provider who typically sees 20 patients per day will miss out on $3,000 each week (or 1 entire day’s worth of revenue), while staffing costs remain constant. At $225 per visit for specialty care, the provider misses out on $4,500. Over the course of a year, the health care provider is missing out on $156,000 to $234,000. Considering the average cost of a ride for these patients at $33, the annual cost of paying for transportation and mobility coordination would be about $45,000. This is a $3.46 to $5.20 return for every $1 invested in transportation.

And that doesn’t even consider the improved patient outcomes and those long-term savings to the health care system.

Perhaps the biggest payoff is that it helps senior citizens like Haralson and people with disabilities to live successfully in homes of their own rather than move to nursing homes or assisted-living facilities, placements that can erode their health and cost the government and other insurers much more money in the long run. If Haralson had required a leg amputation, that would not only have cost Medicare and Medicaid upward of $1 million, but left him disabled and likely forced to move to a nursing home. Instead, Haralson was able to continue to live at home and fend for himself. These days, he’s spending his retirement helping deliver meals to homebound seniors in his community.

So, why aren’t more hospitals offering no-cost transportation to their patients? One reason is that well-intentioned federal regulations have created unnecessary hurdles. In an effort to avoid a practice known as “self-dealing,” hospitals are not allowed to directly provide transportation to patients. While there were a few instances in the past of hospitals unfairly profiting by providing transportation between nursing homes and hospitals, the practice was not widespread. Still, the rules designed to eliminate that practice now make it difficult for providers to take on the transportation problem directly. That’s why the HeathTran model offers a solution: By using an outside coordinator to make the arrangements, HealthTran helps hospitals maintain an arms-length relationship from transportation services.

In theory, driverless cars could someday address some of the need for medical transportation. But I’m skeptical that will solve the problem for most patients because a key factor in health care is human interaction. Many patients who need transportation are seniors, or have a disability that can make it hard to get to and from their front door and the vehicle without assistance. At least in Missouri, and I would venture to say in many other areas of rural America, people need a human connection—a person in the community, familiar with the community—to connect the health, transportation and payer systems in a way that makes good, common sense. And besides, we can’t wait for a driverless future. Patients in rural America need a solution now.

Missouri’s HealthTran was designed to bridge the transportation gap between patients and providers in a way that works for all sides. Rural America needs more of these solutions. If we can’t make it easier for rural patients to get to and from their homes and their doctors, the whole country will pay for it down the road in greater medical costs and poorer health outcomes.

Suzanne Alewine is a health care consultant and executive director of the Missouri Rural Health Association.

81 Connection to Continue Complimentary Fares Through 2017

November 16, 2017

Salina, Kansas – The new fixed route bus service from Belleville to Salina, 81 Connection, will continue complimentary fares for all riders through the end of December 2017.

“With the upcoming holiday season, we wanted to make it easier on people to get around north central Kansas,” said Michelle Griffin, Mobility Manager for the region.  “By continuing our complimentary fares, we can make sure that happens.  Ridership has been gradually increasing the past few months and we want to continue that trend.”

Starting January 2, 2018, regular fares will apply.  Basically one-way fares are $1.00 from town to town.  A trip from Belleville to Salina will cost $4.00.

Passengers will pay the exact fare to the fare box on the bus.  The driver will not make change.

A Salina CityGo bus pass is included in the Salina fare.

Additional fare options are available for frequent riders.  A six trip ticket strip (6 tickets worth $1.00 each) will be available for $5.00.  A punch card with 24 punches worth $1.00 each can be purchased for $20.00.  A monthly pass for unlimited rides during the current month can be purchased for $50.00.  Locations to purchase these options will be announced at a later date.

The 81 Connection bus service has three bi-directional trips each day, Monday through Friday.  The first route starts in Belleville at 6:45 a.m., then heads south on Highway 81 to three stops in Concordia, a stop at the Highway 24/Highway 81 junction, a stop in Minneapolis and stops at 7th and Walnut and Wal-Mart in Salina and then heads back to north to the same stops.  The bus runs this loop twice and finishes in Belleville around 5:40 p.m. each day.

A second bus leaves Salina at 1:00 p.m. and heads north on Highway 81 to the same stop in Minneapolis, the stop at the Highway 24/Highway 81 junction, three stops in Concordia and the stop in Belleville, before heading back to Salina with the same stops.  The bus finishes in Salina around 6:00 p.m. each day.

Poles and signs have been installed at the stop locations.  Riders can find stop and time information on each pole.

The 81 Connection is operated and managed by OCCK Transportation.  Initial funding for the project came from the Earl Bane Foundation, who provided the 30% local match, as well as the Kansas Department of Transportation, who provided the remaining 70%.

For more information about the 81 Connection and Kansas Rides, visit www.ksrides.org.  For more information about OCCK, Inc., visit www.occk.com.  For more information about CityGo and OCCK Transportation, visit www.salinacitygo.com. Or, contact Michelle Griffin, Mobility Manager (mgriffin@occk.com), or the OCCK Transportation Center at 785-826-1583.

Public Transit Helps Keep Veterans and Service Members Moving

Public transportation provides essential mobility options for veterans. And veterans help keep public transit rolling by working for public transportation systems around the country.

Please read more on this blog post from Voices for Public Transit.

Thank you again to all the brave veterans who are keeping Americans safe at home and abroad.

Learn about Transportation Services for Salina and Saline County

The Salina area has a wide array of transportation services to meet the needs of its citizens.   Everything from general public fixed route bus service, paratransit, taxi services, and more.  Read more to find out what service best works for you:

https://salinacitygo.com/transportation-services-2/

 

OCCK Transportation Plans Ribbon Cutting for 81 Connection

For Immediate Release

September 7, 2017

Salina, Kansas – OCCK Transportation has scheduled a ribbon cutting for 81 Connection on Friday, September 15th at 11:00 a.m. at 340 N. Santa Fe, Salina.

81 Connection is the new regional fixed route bus service that runs from Belleville to Salina, three times daily, Monday through Friday.  The route officially started on September 5th and has stops in Belleville, Concordia, Highway 24 Junction, Minneapolis and Salina.

Members of the Kansas Department of Transportation will be in attendance with a short speech by Catherine Patrick, State Transportation Engineer.  The Salina Chamber of Commerce will facilitate the ribbon cutting.

The general public is encouraged to attend.

For more information about OCCK, Inc., visit www.occk.com.  For more information about CityGo and OCCK Transportation, visit www.salinacitygo.com.  For more information about 81 Connection, visit www.ksrides.org, or, contact the OCCK Transportation Center at 785-826-1583.