To get to his job at Walmart in Ravenna, Kent State University junior Odin Amador-Gorby must rely on public transportation and Ubers. He doesn’t own a car due to high prices for even used cars in the Kent area.
At the Lakes at Franklin Mills, 84-year-old Bob Mather needs rides to doctor’s appointments and local stores. He stopped driving last year and now pays acquaintances to drive him when family and friends cannot, since he does not qualify for Medicaid-covered transportation.
Dominic Butcher, a 25-year-old in Kent, has been out of a car for six months and requires transportation to get to his career center. He receives free bus passes through Kent Social Services and the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, which, depending on the month, he may not be able to afford otherwise.
“I know a lot of people who need transportation,” Butcher said. “It’s a little bit difficult for people who don’t have the money to buy bus passes, like a 31-day bus. It may be troubling from the get-go, but communication with other people helps because you never know when somebody knows somebody that can help you.”
At times, the men face transportation insecurity, which occurs when a person lacks any kind of transportation to complete daily tasks.
In a county of more than 160,000 people, 11.15% reported incomes below the federal poverty level, 15.04% had disabilities, 7% did not own a car and 16.67% were 65 years old or older, according to data from the 2020 Census. These groups may be the most vulnerable to transportation struggles.
Since Portage County is predominantly rural, a fixed-route public bus service may not be the easiest option for many residents, according to the 2023 Regional Coordinated Public Transit Plan published by Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study, which analyzed Summit, Portage and northeastern Wayne County’s transportation resources. So, that leaves people to find rides through other options, such as public on-demand, non-for-profit and private services. For Medicaid-eligible residents, there are more choices – but even still, people struggle to find adequate transportation.
Kellijo Jeffries, director of Portage County Job & Family Services, said she sees a cross-section of families, young people and older residents struggling to find transportation in Portage County.
“I definitely think public transit availability is an issue in Portage,” she said. “We know that there’s outlying areas in Portage County where public transit doesn’t run yet. With the very few providers we have in the community, there’s only so much availability of drivers, so that leaves people to try to get public transit or maybe look for taxi services. But again, those things cost.”
What transportation options are available in Portage County?
An option for those without a car or driver’s license in the county is a daily public transit system called Portage Area Regional Transportation Authority (PARTA), which has fixed route and door-to-door services for all residents at cost. According to PARTA, 14 fixed, urban routes run Monday-Saturday, though not all routes run through every township, city or village in the county.
PARTA’s Dial-A-Ride, or door-to-door service, is available for pickup or drop off at locations beyond .3 miles of a fixed-route bus option in all townships and cities in Portage County. This service is available Monday through Thursday until 11 p.m. and Saturday until 7 p.m., with 21 areas served – some only on specific days of the week.
To schedule a pickup, county residents must call (330) 678-1287 at least one day in advance.
Single fixed-route rides cost $1, with day passes totalling $2 and monthly $45. Dial-A-Ride is $6 one way. Kent State students can ride any PARTA fixed route (excluding express routes to Akron or Cleveland) for free with their student ID.
“We’re doing dialysis. We’re helping people take their kids to childcare. We’re doing doctor’s appointments. We’re doing people going to the grocery store, senior citizens going to adult daycare,” said Brian Trautman, PARTA’s chief operating officer. “There’s so many different pieces that we’re doing transportation for. I wish I could put enough buses and drivers on the road to cover all the demand.”
PARTA also has an Americans with Disabilities (ADA) service, which offers transportation from any location .75 miles or less from a fixed route stop (while in PARTA’s fixed-route zone) for people who can’t access a regular bus for various reasons. This service costs $2 per person (each rider can bring one caregiver for free). An application is required, and requests are made over the phone.
Trautman said PARTA makes around 250 Dial-A-Ride trips per day and averages 2,700 daily riders on all its fixed routes. By the first half of 2024, ridership increased 86% from that of the previous year, according to a news release from PARTA.
There are some other options for county residents needing a ride, though there are often restrictions on use. For example, Portage County Job & Family Services’ Non-Emergency Transportation Program offers free transportation to Medicaid-eligible adults and children seeking health services through four contracted providers.
Other private or non-for-profit options in the area can provide transportation support if someone meets their eligibility requirements, which usually involves qualifying for Medicaid.
“If they’re on Medicaid, then we can help them get to medical appointments or dialysis or any kind of medical necessity appointment. Well, what happens if they don’t have Medicaid, if they still have that need? We see that,” Jeffries said. “They don’t qualify for that program.”
Kent Social Services and JFS can help with acquiring free bus passes based on certain qualifications and with finding transportation options.
The current options
The existing services work well for some residents, like Amador-Gorby, who lives in a PARTA fixed-route service area.
The 23-year-old lives right off Kent State’s campus and rides the bus nearly everyday. Monday through Thursday, he takes advantage of the university’s free campus bus service for students. On Fridays and Saturdays, he usually uses PARTA’s door-to-door option to get to work.
Amador-Gorby is in JFS’ Comprehensive Case Management and Employment Program, which helps low-income young adults. He also has recently received a monthly bus fare voucher through OhioMeansJobs.
“I’m able to take the buses all very well,” he said. “It’s really nice and wonderful being able to travel even though I don’t have a car. You could even go out to Cleveland or Akron on the PARTA bus, too. I really do love our transportation system here in Portage County.”
The door-to-door service does not run Sundays (limited fixed routes run then, too), so instead, Amador-Gorby pays for an Uber or Lyft to get to his last shift of the weekend.
Amador-Gorby said this is the only downside he finds to using PARTA, but he balances transportation costs well with his job, with the future goal of buying a car.
“Hopefully one day, I will get a car when I graduate and get my salary-based job, and I’ll be able to afford one, with the insurance and the car payments and the repairs and all those things,” Amador-Gorby said. “I’m not ready for that yet.”
Butcher said his home’s proximity to stores allows him to only really worry about transportation when he needs to get to Maplewood Career Center in Ravenna. Studying welding, he takes classes from 5:45 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday-Thursday. He walks to his day job at Kent Social Services.
“[PARTA’s] pretty good,” Butcher said. “Their drivers are, nine times out of 10, very good drivers. The dispatcher, they’re very lenient, with an understanding about people’s responsibilities.”
The Kent resident has used PARTA’s door-to-door service and a local transportation company with funding help in the past, but those options usually got him to Maplewood too early or too late. Now, still using fixed routes when needed for errands, he rides to classes with a friend.
“When I was going to Maplewood for my welding, I would get off work at three o’clock,” he said. “Then I would have to go home, and they would be picking me up at like 3:48 p.m., and my class normally doesn’t start until 5 p.m. That was not necessarily a big issue with me, but it was like I could have been doing other things instead of sitting at a place that I couldn’t even do anything at for almost two hours.”
Challenges arise
If a person does not live by a fixed route or cannot use one to get to near their desired location, PARTA’s Dial-A-Ride service could be the next-best option outside of ride-hail services.
However, Trautman said relying on Dial-A-Ride to get to work or other time-sensitive affairs is “risky business.”
“If you’re the only person in Randolph that’s asking for a ride that day, and there’s 10 people looking for rides coming out of Deerfield, that bus is going to go to Deerfield and pick those 10 people up, and you’re going to get left out,” he said. “I always tell people this just because I want to be very upfront about it. When you don’t live on a fixed route, it’s not always going to work, and you should always have a backup.”
Trautman said Portage County’s aging population provides a challenge when trying to accommodate as many Dial-A-Ride requests as possible.
Currently, 18.6% of the county’s population is 65 and older (compared to 18.8% of Ohio’s total population). Trautman said people in this age group tend to live in smaller, more rural towns like Randolph, Edinburg and Atwater that are farther away from busier sections of the county, meaning they live farther from fixed routes or the places they want to go.
Mather, a widower who has Medicare and private insurance, no longer drives due to impaired vision from macular degeneration and needs transportation to errands, doctor’s appointments in Twinsburg and Akron, and to chapter or alumni meetings for Kent State’s Phi Delta Theta fraternity.
His daughter in Kent, Stacia Kaschak, said she has researched nearly every option possible for her father, but none have fit.
“It continues to be a hot topic of conversation in our family,” she said. “He’s lost his independence.”
Kaschak has called up multiple private companies, but they only worked with Medicaid qualifiers or only offered transportation to work specifically. Ubers are not available at the times and days of Mather’s appointments, she found. The fixed-route PARTA option is not something Mather’s family is comfortable with, and the NET program serves only those with Medicaid.
While his family is able to drive him at times not conflicting with work and school schedules, Mather usually finds a ride from a friend or acquaintance he pays.
This transportation struggle causes frustration for Mather and his family, according to Kaschak.
“It really has impacted his quality of life,” she said. “It is so limiting. My family can only assist so much. Something else is needed. Even though he’s done very well for himself, seniors are still on fixed incomes. So, when he’s paying out of his pocket, that’s money he could be doing something else with.”
Improvements PARTA is working on
In AMATS’ 2023 Regional Coordinated Public Transit Plan, the association provided recommendations for improvements PARTA, along with two other county’s public transit providers, could make to increase the transportation services’ effectiveness. Financial recommendations included:
- Expanding hours of fixed-route and on-demand services
- Funding public transit services to reach popular employment areas
- Adding same-day scheduling for on-demand transportation
PARTA, which Trautman said has close to the 30 full-time and 30 part-time drivers it needs, now looks to implement microtransit, a “public version of the Uber app.” Trautman said the company is in the early planning stages of the idea.
The microtransit option would run within boundaries set in a certain area. So, people could not use the service to get from town to town, but they could use it to travel from business to business within a designated polygon.
“You say, ‘I’m at whatever address, and I need to go to Walmart,’ [then the app] would [read], ‘Okay, this is the soonest trip we can get you.’ We might say we could be there in 15 minutes, or it might say we can get you in an hour and a half,” he said. “You can either accept that trip or a round trip, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
PARTA already has added updates through its mobile ticketing and new route-tracking app called Passio GO!
Earlier in October, PARTA increased service by adding more service to four fixed routes, as the bus service returns to pre-pandemic service. With increased service, ADA options increase, too.
In the next year, Trautman said PARTA will complete an overhaul of its Dial-A-Ride and fixed route service for route planning. The agency will look at areas where there is increasing need for transportation, like Brimfield, as well as ensuring there are options to get to locations such as local colleges, NEOMED in Rootstown and University Hospitals’ center in Streetsboro.
PARTA’s current technology helps the agency look at where rides are needed most, like in single-family areas or households without cars, by using Census data, the busses’ automatic rider counters and software.
“The question is: Are we still serving the best demographic out there?” he said. “Are we still hitting the best areas with these routes? Would we do better if we moved further out to the east or further out to the west? It’s going to make some high-quality kind of impact, where people are going to be saying, ‘Well, this is a lot better.’”
How the government can create change
After exhausting what seems to be all available options for her father, Kaschak said something needs to be done to make transportation more accessible for all, but she did not have a solution.
Jeffries said Portage County Job & Family Services does not have a line item in their budget for transportation. JFS projects it will spend $280,000 annually to cover costs of salaries for four drivers and four contracts with area providers offering transportation services to residents of Portage County and to support Child Protective Services’ case plan services.
This number does not include purchases of bus passes or trips covered by the Medicaid-funded NET program.
In an email, Jeffries said more social service and behavioral health systems could add or expand their menu of services to include transportation for clients with help from transportation-specific funding from the state. As food, clothing and shelter rank as basic needs, she encouraged transportation to be added to that list.
“Not that I’m suggesting that the government get involved in transportation programs, but for some social service funds that are available, it would be really great for there to be flexibility in how county agencies, such as Job and Family Services, can use some of our funding,” she said. “For communities that have transportation scarcity or insecurity, it would be great if we could get special social service allocation to help people in that space. There’s a few programs out there where we can help, but there’s just not enough special funding.”
During his work with Kent Social Services, Butcher said he sees a great need for increased transportation access, not only for himself, but for the community.
“I deal with a lot of people that are not necessarily struggling, but are having a rough time,” Butcher said. “I see them walking all the time. I mean, eight o’clock, nine o’clock at night – the last bus doesn’t stop running until 11 o’clock. They can get the transportation, but I feel like none of them can afford it.”
