By day, I work for the local paratransit and non-emergent medical transportation company.
Being a client that also uses our services really gives me a double-sided view of what goes into making this service work as well as it does. There's a lot that goes into scheduling and routing to try to keep vehicles on schedule and get people around our metropolitan area.
It's made harder these days by the need for social distancing in a paratransit vehicle. Where we could pick up up to ten people in a single vehicle in the before times, we're now limited to four to maintain spacing.
This means we need more drivers and vehicles on the road when trip volume increases.
Our fare collection has been suspended for months. There's a law on the books -- federal one, mind you -- that states that paratransit cannot charge more than 100% over what the related fixed route mass transit charges.
Fixed route charges nothing right now, so, double nothing is nothing.
So we're doing our best with fewer drivers all across the board. I had to remind myself a couple of times when I was waiting, but now I can share it with folks that get upset that they're not picked up when they want to be, and hope to help them understand a bit more about how this whole system works in the age of physical distancing.