San Luis Obispo - Caltrans - State of California

SAN LUIS OBISPO REGION
COORDINATED HUMAN SERVICES-PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION PLAN
• Concerned about mixing Headstart children with adults, or even youth, on vehicles.
• About 10 percent of Headstart children have some type of disability.
• Resources are narrowly focused on population and tied to individuals; can’t easily use
for “match” in grants.
• Medically-related trips for children and their families are very difficult; agency staff often
have to transport; usually to regional facilities that will take MediCal (San Luis Obispo or
Santa Barbara); UCLA and Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles; U.C. San Diego and
Scripps eye clinics.
• San Luis Obispo Unified School District notes that it has difficulty filling part-time
positions with qualified persons who can meet the state school bus operators’
regulations. Interest in “building” the pool of qualified drivers and finding ways to
increase the pool of persons who can be considered for school bus training.
Potential Projects
Operations or service alternative projects: Driver training pilots that attract, train and utilize
drivers in specialized transit, then establish possible career path mechanisms to bring them
into school bus driver training programs; Lucia Maria School District and the McKenney
Ventura programs; possible role for churches and for volunteers; creative responses to
remote areas of Shandon and California Valley with attention to concern for not mixing
children with other riders.
Capital projects: Replacement of Headstart vehicles.
Seniors
• Difficult for seniors coming from northern coast communities; timing of bus connections
is too long for coming into San Luis Obispo – must wait three hours to get back home
north of Morro Bay [Cayucos to SLO and back]; exhausting.
• Need for door-to-door and door-through-door assistance for seniors.
• Seniors in mobile home parks have special needs; “aging in place population”; which
had transportation services as younger persons but now reliant upon service programs
difficult for them to ask or pursue.
• Seniors need assistance carrying bags to and from the bus.
• Assistance needs are varied and change with individuals over time; potential for
increasing levels of assistance as the aging processes progress.
• Senior riders need opportunities to use public restrooms.
• Need for low-cost transportation; very difficult for fixed-income seniors to afford Ride-On.
• Sometimes Ride-On needs more seats on the van; vehicle seating capacity is too
limited.
• Ride-On advance reservation is okay but sometimes seniors need same-day reservation
capability.
• Ride-On is not always using the right vehicle; sometimes needs a lift; sometimes too
high to climb aboard.
• Smaller vehicles and low floor vehicles are easier for seniors to board.
• Seniors are daunted by Ride-On telephone options; hard to know which service is
appropriate to take.
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OCTOBER 2007