Community leaders advocated Wednesday for various expansions and improvements to public transportation services throughout the Ohio Valley.

“Like in most cities, transportation is part of the heart of our city,” Region X Transportation Committee member Susan Hagan told attendees at the Ohio Valley Regional Transportation Authority and the Eastern Ohio Regional Transit Authority’s recent board meeting and public hearing at WV Northern Community College in Wheeling.

Hagan and other advocates suggested several ways OVRTA and EORTA could improve public transportation, such as by expanding services to include low-income housing units existing outside the City of Wheeling.

“Transportation is just a vital thing that every city needs,” Hagan told board members. “If you travel, not just within this country but also overseas, then you’ll know that you can take the bus in Paris easier than you can take the bus in the City of Wheeling, and you can get more places around Europe by that bus. Of course, they have a greater population, but, at the same time, you would think that in a smaller city, it would be even easier to do.”

Hagan said there are five low-income housing units surrounding the City of Wheeling where residents currently cannot access public transportation, which causes significant issues for those seeking employment.

“It is very hard to help people start moving forward in life when they have no transportation to their jobs,” Hagan said. “We can get them jobs, but we can’t get them to those jobs, because not only do these places exist outside of transportation, but they exist in areas where it is also dangerous to walk.”

Currently, there is no practical way for Highlands residents who rely on public transportation to hold a 9-to-5 job, and Oglebay residents and employers are experiencing similar issues, she said.

Hagan said one potential solution to this problem is micro-transportation, which would mean sending smaller vehicles into low-income areas to bring people within reach of current services.

Another issue which needs solving is the lack of evening transportation, Hagan said.

Hagan said she helps manage three local businesses owned by Toni DiCarlo, and while plenty of people are applying for jobs at their shop downtown, very few are available to work at their surrounding locations, due to a lack of transportation.

“We have two other stores at the Highlands and in Glen Dale, and we cannot get people to either of those stores because, unfortunately, they do not have transportation,” Hagan said. “So, my problem currently is not a lack of people actually applying for jobs. My problem is not being able to get people to those jobs.”

Hagan said issues with public transportation are connected to issues with homelessness and addiction in Wheeling.

“Everybody’s always talking about this thing of ‘fixing the homeless problem,’ but it is hard to even start to do that when we do not even have the transportation that we need—not just for them to get to jobs, but also to get to their appointments,” Hagan said. “We know you have to be able to get from Wheeling to Warwood because Social Security is in Warwood and Jobs and Hope is here in Wheeling and Work Force is back in Warwood—and then your probation officer is somewhere else. One thing is here and the other thing is there.”

This dilemma also applies to people seeking treatment for addiction and other medical services, Hagan said.

“We get a lot of people who come to us and say they need to go to rehab,” Hagan said. “And I don’t know how many people realize this, but if you can’t catch that person within a very short amount of time of them deciding they want to go to rehab—well, the chance of them still wanting to go to rehab three days from now when you can actually get them transportation is very slim. Because they are afraid. Because they start to feel in pain. Because a whole litany of reasons. Transportation effects absolutely everything that we do in this whole area.”

Kayla Straight, a peer services navigator with NAMI Greater Wheeling, told board members that when she lived in low-income housing, she was fortunate because there was a grocery store near her building, but today’s residents are struggling because there is no transportation and no grocery store close by.

“As a child, I lived in Wheeling Station, and my mother did not have a car. And we were lucky enough that at that time we still had a grocery store in walking distance, but that no longer exists,” Straight said. “I know people who still live in that community who have to depend on family or friends or other people who live up there to get them to grocery stores just so they can feed their children. So, transportation is a very big need for those outlying communities.”

Ryan Adams and Ryan Ewing, both AmeriCorps members serving at the Mother Jones Center for Resilient Community in Wheeling, raised similar concerns about available routes and praised the board’s work in implementing Wheeling’s twice-a-week route to the Moundsville DMV and Reynolds Memorial Hospital.

Adams said the MoJo has created a project called UpLift West Virginia and an initiative called Hold that Bus, which both aim to bridge barriers to employment, such as obtaining IDs.

“Since that route opened, we have successfully gotten IDs for 126 people. That is life-changing,” Adams said. “If you’ve never lost your ID and had to go get another one at the DMV, you might not know how much of a crisis that can be. But about 35% of the people we help are people from our homeless community. And they are working. So, it’s very big for them to be able to get their IDs.”

Ewing, who also is a financial literacy coordinator with UpLift WV, said the two biggest barriers to employment that most people experience are issues with obtaining IDs and transportation.

“Evening transportation is an issue,” Ewing said. “We have a lot of people who rely on second-chance employers to gain employment—and there are not a lot of those around—and we can get people to those places, but we can’t get them back home.”

Ewing said an extension to evening hours and expansion of routes would be helpful for a lot of people who are seeking employment.

“The second step to the work that we’ve all been able to do together as a community to get people their IDs and to get them to work is to be able to get them back home from work or to be able to get them connected to those evening jobs. We are just trying to help people work, and that is an issue we’re facing,” Ewing said. “We’re getting work uniforms. We’re packing lunches. We’re getting bus passes. We’re doing everything on our end to try to get people to work. We just need that extension of hours in any form we can get it. That would be extremely helpful.”

Tate Blanchard, chief development officer with The IC Group, which owns local companies IC Staffing Solutions and IC Cab, said inadequate public transportation is an issue being faced not only by Wheeling but by the entire Upper Ohio Valley.

“I attend meetings like this all throughout the entire Upper Ohio Valley, and the number one opportunity for growth that we hear constantly is the opportunity for improvements in transportation,” Blanchard said. “There are far more people who live in the Upper Ohio Valley who do not own vehicles than those who do. Those of us who own vehicles understand that there is a significant financial burden that comes with owning a vehicle: the purchase, the gas, the maintenance. Not everyone can afford that. So, there are far more people in our area who need transportation through public entities than those who simply want transportation. We have to find a way to combat these issues.”

Blanchard said IC Cab so far this year has provided more than 250,000 trips to individuals from the Ohio Valley to their non-emergency medical appointments, which can be anywhere from Columbus to Charleston to Pittsburgh.

“Attending a lot of these meetings, I have found that the number one reason why individuals are not getting to and from their doctor appointments or to their life-sustaining treatments—whether that’s chemotherapy, dialysis, or substance abuse treatment—is because they have a lack of transportation to get to and from,” Blanchard said. “You ask any health care system in this area and they will tell you the exact same thing: They have people who are missing their doctor appointments, who can’t get to their chemo, who can’t get to their dialysis because of a lack of transportation.”

Blanchard said all transportation providers across the Upper Ohio Valley, in their current capacities, collectively are insufficient and incapable of meeting the immediate needs of the population.

“That is how vast the need for transportation is across the Upper Ohio Valley,” Blanchard said. “With IC Cab, we are doing everything that we possibly can, but there is a struggle. So, as transportation providers, we have to work together to figure out the solutions to these problems—and not work against each other.”

Attendees such as Claudia Raymer, executive director of the Ohio County Family Resource Network, also discussed Token Transit, which is meant to allow people to pay for OVRTA bus passes using a mobile device, but has been causing problems for users because purchased tokens expire after just 30 minutes.

“We are still getting feedback of people buying it, and they don’t know it’s going to time out in 30 minutes,” Raymer said. “So, they paid for this fare, and they go to use it, but it’s not there. Apparently, that’s a setting within Token Transit that can be fixed.”

Raymer also raised concerns surrounding implementation of multi-month and annual bus passes.

“One issue is if you buy a bus passes on the 20th, it’s still going to expire at the end of that month. It’s not a month in terms of days, but in terms of that actual month,” Raymer said. “Is there a way to get on the website so I can go buy a multi-month or annual pass for someone? If Kelly started a job and Kelly needs to be sure that she can get to and from her job for six months, it is so much more stable if I can get a six-month bus pass. But if I call OVRTA, they don’t always even know if we can do that. We had someone last month tell us that we can’t do annual bus passes, and we actually had to tell them, ‘Yes, we can.’ And I think that’s a solvable issue with the website and staff training.”

Raymer and other attendees suggested various initiatives aimed at raising public awareness about already-existing transportation services and de-stigmatizing usage of those.

“A public awareness campaign about how to ride a bus—maybe a community day of just, ‘Here we go! We’re riding the bus today!’” Raymer said. “When you think about people who already ride the bus, those are skills they might have, but if you’ve never ridden it and you’re not sure where to be or when to be and what all that looks like, then it can be really daunting and intimidating. It’s all about community participation.”