By Ana Medina, WTVQ
After hearing from the community, those with Building a United Interfaith Lexington through Direct-Action or BUILD knew they needed to do something to help the transportation woes of many including those with a mental illness or a disability.
“One of the things that we went to with the micro transit would be when you live a mile away from a bus stop, how do you get there? You might have some disability issues that you can’t get there. So if we have micro-transit, you could take a smaller bus to either the bus stop or take it to the grocery store, take it to to go to the doctors,” said council-at-large member Chuck Ellinger.
In an effort to cater to them, the organization came up with the potential solution of a micro-transit service in the city.
Currently Lextran offers the paratransit service called WHEELS, “for one thing with wheels you have to do it 24 hours in advance in this you don’t have, after you could do it 30 minutes, you would have an app that you could do use like WHEELS,” added Ellinger.
So what is micro-transit service? In essence, it is like a mini bus that is available anywhere and comes at any time you need.
Ellinger helped bring the initiative to the community.
“We’re just trying to bring the, the issue towards the public and, and Lextran, and Lextran knows it’s an issue and, and it just, it’s one of those, the squeaky wheel , gets the grease and, the more you talk about it, the more people say, this is something we need to address,” also said Ellinger.
Those with BUILD and the city want Lextran to implement a pilot program to test the micro-transit service first.
View the original story here.
