San Luis Obispo - Caltrans - State of California

SAN LUIS OBISPO REGION
COORDINATED HUMAN SERVICES-PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION PLAN
South County
‣ Within Five Cities area, extensive need to and from human service agencies and lowincome
client residences in Grover Beach and Oceano.
‣ Between Five Cities area and San Luis Obispo Creekside Career Center for lowincome
consumers.
‣ Between Five Cities area and San Luis Obispo for employment, often at times earlier
and later than existing operating hours.
‣ Nipomo trips within and between Five Cities for a variety of trip purposes, including
employment and services.
‣ Travel out of County (including Santa Maria, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles County –
UCLA, Children’s Hospital, others) for medically-related trips.
Region-Wide
‣ Consumer need for seamless, easier travel within the San Luis Obispo region into
adjacent Santa Barbara County with regard to standardization of fares, and bus passes,
operating hours and days of service. Interest in improved connections and increased
speed of travel between areas.
‣ Information needs across all target groups, on behalf of individual consumers and on
behalf of the human services personnel working with consumers; consistent messages
about the difficulty of accessing information, of knowing where to get information, of how
to interpret and use the information available to address consumer travel needs.
‣ Social Services Agency needs for improved access to bus passes and ability to
purchase subsidized fares on behalf of neediest consumers.
4.4 SUMMARY OF OUTREACH FINDINGS
From these discussions with consumers and their representatives there surfaced several
overarching needs that should guide the development of recommendations. These include:
1. The importance of addressing individualized needs.
Some very individualized kinds of needs did surface, from the difficulty for the frailest of
seniors in making reservations or in handling long rides to the needs of young children to
travel in a safe, supervised environment that doesn’t involve other users. Other needs
related to the trip purposes, as with those at the Creekside Career Center needing to
complete a day of programming or activity there and then getting to the Maxine Lewis
Memorial Shelter by the time the evening meal is served. Behavioral health consumers
similarly need to be protected from the sun, due to medications, and can become overly
anxious about waiting in spaces that are perceived as “public”. Migrant worker travel,
not yet readily documented here, presents other kinds of needs.
Clearly meeting the travel needs and the unmet transportation needs of these target
populations requires tailored, specialized services that are truly responsive to the
challenges they present. Such kinds of individualized needs are known far better to
human services’ agency personnel and less clear to the transit operators. Mechanisms
to communicate these needs, in ongoing ways, are critical.
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OCTOBER 2007