San Luis Obispo - Caltrans - State of California

SAN LUIS OBISPO REGION
COORDINATED HUMAN SERVICES-PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION PLAN
The public transit agencies are reporting a larger fleet of back-up vehicles, with 75 percent of
their vehicles used daily, in contrast with human services agencies where 86 percent of reported
vehicles are in use daily. Public transit vehicles tend to be larger and are more likely to be liftequipped.
Human service agency vehicles are more likely to be smaller and only 3 percent of
vehicles reported are lift-equipped.
Vehicle Use
The utilization of vehicles is of paramount interest to this inquiry as it suggests a baseline of
services now provided and a means by which to measure increases in the quantities of services
provided, over time. Reported data is presented below in Table 3-8.
Table 3-8- 2007 Stakeholder Survey
Vehicle Utilization
Vehicle Utilization
Total GP Trans + General Public Human Services
Human Services Transport Agencies
N=31 N=9 N=22
Total Monthly One-Way Trips Reported 73,552 65,326 8,226
Annualized One-Way Trips X 12 months 882,624 100% 783,912 89% 98,712 11%
Total Monthly Service Miles Reported 264,943 237,488 27,455
Annualized Service Miles X 12 months 3,179,316 100% 2,849,856 90% 329,460 10%
Note: Ride-On CTSA is included among the public transit operators’ counts above, providing approximately 11,000
trips monthly with 80,000 service miles.
Table 3-8 suggests the volume of transportation trips reported through this survey is almost
900,000 trips annually provided by the responding agencies. Nine transit organizations are
presenting one-way trip information totaling over 65,000 trips monthly, 89 percent of all trips
reported. A larger number of human services organizations, 23 agencies, report just 11 percent
of all trips reported at over 8,000 trips monthly.
Because human service agencies typically count consumers, rather than trips, there is some
concern about the reliability of the numbers represented in Table 3-8. Human service agency
reporting of transportation tends to count a round-trip as one trip. One consumer travels out
and back, equaling one trip. Experience in other counties has shown that the human service
agencies are using different methodologies to report standard transit indicators. A consequence
of which is that they are probably “under reporting” trips provided in relation to public transit
reporting procedures. These numbers therefore, for the human services programs, simply
provide a point of reference and general comparison but probably are not as reliable as those
reported by the public transit agencies for which standardized reporting definitions exist.
3.2.5 Funding Reported for Agencies Providing Transportation
A final area of inquiry is that of funding. What level of funding supports the programs reported
and what are the sources of those funds is of considerable interest to considering and
developing coordinated initiatives.
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OCTOBER 2007