CATS provides transportation to senior citizens, people with disabilities, rural residents, veterans, disadvantaged residents, and the general public. Approximately 90,000 trips are provided on an annual basis. Approximately 350-400 trips are provided daily. The primary service area is Cumberland County. Most trips are provided in the County borders with some trips being within 5 miles beyond the border and some to the Philadelphia and Delaware major medical facilities. Transportation purposes include medical appointments (doctors, hospitals, dialysis, physical therapy, etc.), shopping, vocational training, work-related purposes, and other purposes as requested. • Staffing currently includes 21 permanent drivers and 5 substitute drivers, as well as 9 office staff responsible for trip scheduling, customer service, dispatching, schedule editing, internal and external reporting, billing grant sources, and general administration. • The current fleet includes 25 plus vehicles of various sizes and configurations. Most are 12 to 16 passenger capacity buses, all wheelchair equipped. Two are mini vans. (see attachment __ for current fleet specifications) • Currently on an average day, approximately 17 vehicles/17 drivers are used to meet the transportation needs of clients. • Current services are door to door. • Trip make-up: Currently all trips /17 daily runs are demand response; however, consideration of deviated fixed routes are being considered. • Advanced reservations are required from riders for demand response transportation. About half the trips are scheduled one trip at a time by riders who phone the scheduling line to make a reservation. Reservations for these trips can currently be made from 3 days to 30 days in advance. About half the trips are subscription trips / standing orders which are batched into the schedule in advance, most for 6 months into the future. Batched scheduling is used for certain types of transportation (dialysis riders, vocational training programs, work related trips, and others) where the same rider goes to the same location on a regular recurring schedule, as frequently as every day per week. • Currently all services are provided fare free to passengers. Funding to support the program is provided by federal, state and local grant funding sources. Each of these funding sources have specific reporting requirements for financial and ridership data which must be met in order to draw down grant funds. Reporting to these funding sources is a critical and important task and the selected solution must provide the necessary data for this purpose. • Consideration of combining demand response system with a small deviated fixed route system currently operated by Workforce Development.
