San Luis Obispo - Caltrans - State of California

SAN LUIS OBISPO REGION
COORDINATED HUMAN SERVICES-PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION PLAN
Low Income Individuals -- Families
Consumers of public social service programs obtain assistance from agencies and
organizations through various channels. They may be court referrals where there has been
an allegation of child abuse or child neglect. These cases can be a probation referral, where
the family is in danger of losing their children to out-of-home placement. Some families are in
immigrant populations and are non-English speaking, or speak English with limited
proficiency. Single parents, enrolled in Medi-Cal and Healthy Start programs or with children
attending Headstart, are family units with typically more than one child. These are among the
low-income clientele of responding human service agencies.
This population is generally physically healthy, able to walk and move about the community,
but may not own a car or the single working car in the family is used by the household wage
earner. Use of fixed-route service is possible, but information must be readily accessible and
services must not be so inconvenient as to discourage use. Consumers have one or more
children, potentially making use of fixed route transit services more difficult.
Pricing of transportation services is also an issue. This segment of the population is by
definition low on financial resources, and therefore struggles with the expenditure of these
scarce resources for transportation versus food and other basics.
Low Income Individuals -- Homeless Consumers
Individuals who are homeless or on the verge of homelessness have few to no resources and
a single bus fare or token is usually beyond them. These consumers have very limited
access to information and learning a bus route or the particular routing to get to a desired
destination is a complicated task, simply because so many life issues impinge upon them.
Similarly, even where the individual might qualify for ADA paratransit, they have limited to no
success to a telephone to schedule a trip pick-up. There can be children accompanying a
homeless individual, usually a female, all of whom need bus fares. In some instances, as
with children participating in after-school programs and shelter-oriented activities, very young
children may be traveling alone.
For these persons, so many activities of daily living are difficult and complicated.
Caseworkers hope to make the transportation element easier so that access to jobs and a
better quality of life become more readily possible. However agency personnel also note that
reported transportation problems are sometimes used as a reason for “not trying”. Where
these legitimate difficulties can be eased or smoothed, it encourages the individual to grapple
with the “culture of poverty” and work to better their circumstances.
6.3.2 Organizationally-Oriented Characteristics of Need
Trip Types Needed
Organizations surveyed were well aware of selective consumer needs and both public transit
and human services agencies spoke to the need for medical transportation and the crossjurisdictional,
long-distance trips that typify non-emergency medical trips. This is despite
Ride-On’s ability to provide Medi-Cal transportation as a Medi-Cal vendor.
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OCTOBER 2007